V83

Also known as: V-83

Tucked against the east shore of Rysa Little, the V83 is a footnote to the great scuttling that became a dive site in its own right. When the order came to open the seacocks on 21 June 1919, British sailors boarded this torpedo boat destroyer and ran her aground before she could sink. Ernest Cox later pressed her into service during his audacious campaign to raise the battleship Hindenburg, and an unsuccessful attempt to refloat her in 1926 left her where she sits today — upright on a gentle slope, broken into two halves. The bow section is fragmented in about eight metres; the stern sits more recognisably in 15 to 16. There is rarely any current, and the maximum depth barely troubles a single-cylinder pony bottle. For divers arriving in Orkney with basic qualifications, or veterans looking for a gentle warm-up, the V83 is an ideal introduction to Scapa Flow — a bite-sized piece of the same history that lies in the deep water beyond.