World War I: German Battleships Scuttled at Scapa Flow

On June 21, 1919, the German Navy, feeling betrayed by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, scuttled most of its ships interned at Great Britain's Scapa Flow Naval base in the Orkney Islands. An excerpt from the article:

"The weather was unusually good on the morning of June 21 — not the usual combination of fog and rain. The sea was calm and the sky cloudless. Aboard the light cruiser Emden, which was then serving as his flagship, Reuter came up on deck wearing his full-dress uniform, with medals. Deep in thought, he paced up and down the quarterdeck. Just before 10 a.m., his chief of staff delivered an oral report informing him that the five British battleships that had guarded the Germans for so many months had left Scapa Flow — as luck would have it, the battle squadron had gone to conduct an exercise at sea earlier that morning. Shortly after receiving that news, Reuter had the code flags ‘D.G.’ raised on Emden, alerting his fleet to stand by for further signals. Then, at 10:20, more flags went up, communicating the message: ‘Make Paragraph II. Acknowledge.’

That harmless-looking order was in fact the prearranged signal for the entire High Seas Fleet to prepare to scuttle its ships. When his ships confirmed that his order was being carried out, Reuter sent up another signal: ‘Condition Z — scuttle!’ Reuter then gave Emden‘s captain his personal permission to do the same. German naval ensigns shot up the masts, while belowdecks seacocks and condenser intake valves were opened.

At 12:16 p.m., the battleship Friedrich der Grosse turned over and sank, the first ship to go down. ‘It was a marvelous sight,’ wrote a German destroyer officer. ‘All over the vast bay ships were in various stages of sinking.’ The handful of British boats and destroyers present steamed from one battleship to another, arbitrarily loosing small-arms fire in helpless frustration. Markgraf‘s captain and nine German sailors were killed in the fusillade; 16 were wounded. The British battleships, whose commander had learned of the scuttling, rushed back from maneuvers at 12:20 but could do nothing to stop 15 of the 16 German capital ships from going down. Only Baden was beached and subsequently refloated. The German crews took to lifeboats, from which they were picked up. Afterward they were placed on board the British battleships and were classified and treated as prisoners of war."
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