Agreed on all the above. Great story, great for you to do the dive. I am awaiting the old photos. Put one of your grandad up if you can - let the whole world see who was right!
Part of my reason for wanting to dive Scapa Flow is that both my grandfathers were there with their ships in WW2. My maternal grandfather has some great stories. Apparently they had a "temporary pub" set up for the sailors ashore and a long floating pontoon for the rowing boats to ferry the sailors from ship to shore to drink at the "pub".
So sailors go ashore, imbibe a few and meet back onthe pontoon to get the pre-arranged boat back to ship. Not getting back aboard was a serious offence so missing the boats was not an option - except for grandad.
He had a few, rolled down the pontoon and saw his boat rowing away! So the cheeky young lad that he was, he hitched a lift with another ship's crew and got them to make a detour so he could sneak back on board the QE without being missed.
He always said that you sat up in Scapa waiting for deployment knowing that if you left the flow and turned one way you were into the north Atlantic convoy which no-one wanted (but my other grandad did). if you turned the other way it could only get warmer! He ended up visiting the Seychelles, SA, Western Australia......
Lou