Scapa Flow 1919

It took twenty years to build this fleet,
Four years to lose the war,
Millions dead and no one knows,
What the dying was all for,
The King’s run off to Holland and they jailed the mutineers,
Six months since the killing stopped
We were still anchored here.

Maybe a country rose and fell in Oldenburg god only knows,
And all we saw was the rise and fall of the tides in Scapa Flow.

We were ragged we were dirty,
Though we knew didn’t care,
Our only flag was a linen rag,
As lank and lousy as our hair,
Esprit de corps and dignity they ran off with our hope,
One day I robbed an officer,
I sold his iron cross for soap.

The day was June the twenty first,
And the year nineteen nineteen,
The day the seacocks opened,
Still the strangest I’ve yet seen,
By semaphore and searchlight we sent the signal on it’s way,
Von Reuter’s still the only man,
To sink a navy in a day.