Gambhira: Kirk Sound, Scapa Flow, Orkney

HY40SE 8008 4795 0119

N58 53.7 W2 54.2

NLO: St Mary's Bay [name: HY 477 005]

Stromness [name: HY 253 090]

Scapa Flow [name centred HY 36 00].

Formerly entered as site no. 8918

For adjacent and successor causeway (Churchill Barrier no. 1), see HY40SE 25.

See also HY40SW 8006.

For plan indicating the relative locations and orientations of blockships in this group, see Macdonald 1990, 125.

Formerly named War Merlin, this vessel was built by Short Bros, Sunderland in 1910, the engines and machinery being by NE Marine Engineering Co Ltd, also of Sunderland. She measured 121.92m in length by 15.95m in beam, and 8.66m in depth, and was of 5257grt. A three-cylinder triple-expansion engine of 517hp drove a single propellor.

The vessel was brought by the Admiralty on 5 November 1939, and was scuttled as a blockship in Kirk Sound on 10 November 1942. Following the completion of Churchill Barrier no. 1 (HY40SE 25), she was salvaged in 1943 for service as a sonar target in Liverpool Bay. She was finally sunk off Llandudno, North Wales.

Kirk Sound is not noted as such on the 1998 edition of the OS 1:50,000 map, but the name applies to the most northerly of the sounds on the E side of Scapa Flow, beteween Lamb Holm (to the S) and St Mary's village, Holm, Mainland (to the N). It is centred at HY 484 010, and is spanned by Churchill Barrier No. 1 (HY40SE 25).

The loss of this vessel is not cited by I G Whittaker (1998), and the cited location remains unverified.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 21 March 2007.

R and B Larn 1998.