Fleet Surrender Exhibition
Expanded material from the exhibition to commemorate the
Surrender of the German High Seas Fleet in the River Forth, 21st November 1918
19th century to 1914
build up to war, growth of the navy, new naval bases and new defences in the Forth
01 – The Royal Navy in the 19th Century
02 – The Threat from Germany
03 – A Naval Arms Race
04 – New Naval Bases
05 – Forth Defences 1902
06 – Submarine Mining at Port Laing
07 – Carlingnose Battery
08 – Rosyth Dockyard Lock Gates
09 – Port Laing Naval Air Station
10 – Forth Defences 1914
11 – Anti-submarine nets in the Forth
12 – HMS Tarlair
1914 – 1918
13 – North Sea Naval Battles
14 – The Battle of Jutland – May 1916
15 – Destroyer pens at Port Edgar
16 – Ferrybarns Kite Balloon Station
17 – Codebreaking and the Zimmermann Telegram
18 – The US goes to war
19 – North Sea Minefields
20 – Forth Defences in 1918
21 – Rest and Recreation
22 – Those who fell
1918 – the end of the war, the Armistice and Surrender of the High Seas Fleet
23 – 1918 The End of the Land War
24 – Mutiny of the German Navy
25 – Signing the Armistice
26 – Celebrating the Armistice
27 – Accepting the Armistice conditions
28 – Submarine surrender at Harwich
29 – Royal Review of the Grand Fleet
30 – The Grand Fleet prepares for the surrender
31 – The Meeting of the Fleets
32 – The Merchant Navy
33 – The French Navy
34 – Watching the Surrender
35 – The German Fleet at Anchor
36 – Spanish Flu
37 – Transfer to Scapa Flow
38 – US Navy Homeward Bound
1919 – scuttling of the High Seas Fleet and the Treaty of Versailles
39 – Life in Scapa Flow
40 – “Paragraph 11 – Confirm”
41 – Scuttle
42 – The last fatalities of WWI
43 – The Treaty of Versailles
1920 – 1945 – the fate of the Ships – British and German
44 – The Royal Navy after WWI
45 – The fate of the German ships
46 – Raising the sunken destroyers
47 – Raising the capital ships – Cox and Danks
48 – Raising the capital ships – Metal Industries
49 – The remaining seven ships
The Last word from 1918
50 – Beatty’s message to the British Empire
Printed material from the exhibition
Armistice documents
Original Armistice documents in French
Original Armistice documents translated into English
Newspaper Reports
The surrender reported in the Manchester Guardian
The surrender reported in The Times
Contemporary Publications
The Graphic Souvenir
Triumph of the Royal Navy
Naval Papers
HMS Cardiff logbook for November 1918
Beatty’s Orders to the Fleet
Orders issued to Granton armed trawlers
Other Accounts of the Surrender
Personal accounts
Midshipman Adam
Commander Tweedie
Commander Tweedie’s daughter – Mona
Lord Cameron
St Leonards Gazette
US Navy accounts from
Lieut Francis Hunter on USS New York
and
from The History of USS Texas
(The full version of North Sea Days – The History of the USS Texas is available HERE)
and a German viewpoint from
Admiral Scheer
Video presentations
We ran three video loops at the exhibition based on newsreel material that was licensed from the Imperial War Museum.
Our license covers viewing at exhibitions, but not on-line. However you can view the original unedited material on the website of the Imperial War Museum.
The triumph of Britain’s Sea Power
(There are two reels of film – look below the video screen to select reels 1 and 2)
Gaumont Newsreel – The Surrender of The German Navy
Audio Recordings
We made audio recordings of the first-hand accounts of the surrender from:
W.B. Adam a lowly midshipman,
Commodore Tweedie in charge of the destroyer flotillas of the Grand Fleet,
his eight-year-old daughter Mona,
and Lord Cameron, who was then a Midshipman RNVR.
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