Naval group pay their respects during visit to Orkney

A group of ten young Naval officers from the HMS Prince of Wales laid a wreath at the Royal Oak memorial within St Magnus Cathedral and performed a short ceremony of remembrance on Friday (18 November).

The group were on a battlefield study trip as part of their Cultural Study programme, and have been to Fort George and Culloden before spending a week in Orkney to visit Lyness, HMS Tern and the Ness Battery among other sites.

In the Cathedral, their “Act of Remembrance” commenced with the reading of an eyewitness account from Ordinary Signalman Kenneth G. Conway, a survivor of the HMS Royal Oak, and ended with the Naval Prayer and Naval Hymn.

One of the visiting group, Sub- Lieutenant Yanislav Yurkevych, said: “Being able to come to Scapa Flow and pay our respects to the many war memorials, particularly that of HMS Royal Oak, has been a sobering chance to reflect. Seeing the graves of naval officers the same rank as us, but many of them much younger, certainly puts things into perspective.”