Coast is home.
We're back,
to explore the most endlessly fascinating shoreline in the world -
our own.
The quest to discover surprising, secret stories
from around the British lsles continues.
This is Coast.
We're about to embark on a voyage of discovery.
Our destinations are the glorious islands of the British lsles.
Jewels set in spectacular seas,
with a treasure trove of secrets in store.
This is an epic adventure to explore the mysteries of the isles.
We'll journey far into the north,
where Neil is intrigued by the curious case of the death of Lord Kitchener.
His face was instantly recognisable.
He was the poster boy of army recruitment during the First World War.
He arrived here in Scapa Flow on 5th June, 1 91 6.
A few hours later he was dead.
NlCK: ln the south, England's biggest island beckons.
lt's a mystery how these needles of chalk on the lsle of Wight
have hung on so long.
Coast newcomer Andy Torbet
is scaling new heights to solve a geological puzzle.
This rock face represents about a million years,
so for every metre l go up, that's about 30,000 years.
NlCK: As we head way out west in Scotland,
our voyage of exploration takes Tessa
on a mission to see a magical light in the sky.
Will sunset reveal the mysterious green ray?
My own magical mystery tour starts here on Orkney.
Orkney is actually a collection of 70 islands.
The harbour at Stromness has been a settlement
since the time of the Vikings.
The sea was the highway the islanders needed to survive.
Stromness was once a jumping-off point for global adventure.
The town was connected to the wider world
by mighty sailing ships stopping over in the port.
lf only we could have been here in the great days of sail.
Well, how about that?
And l'm hoping to hitch a lift on an island-hopping ride.
Every year a fleet of tall ships races around the harbours of the globe,
recreating historic trade routes.
This year they're passing through the Northern lsles of Scotland.
The community here was transformed by the tall ships.
They brought wealth, but they also took men away.
lt's a classic dilemma for all small isles.
When the wider world comes knocking,
is the attraction of island life strong enough to keep communities together?
- Permission to board. - Welcome aboard.
Thank you.
To explore the effect these vessels had on the islanders,
l'm signing on as a crew hand aboard the Norwegian tall ship Sorlandet.
My destination is Shetland,
but l'm planning to stop off at tiny Fair lsle.
lt barely registers on the map,
but the community there thrives,
even though many other Scottish isles have been abandoned.
lt's a mystery how those on Fair lsle manage to hang on.
l want to discover the secret of their success.
With a favourable wind, we'll get to Fair lsle within two days.
We're under motor power now,
but soon it'll be all hands on deck to unfurl the 27 sails.
The islands of Orkney are disappearing below the horizon.
l'm just putting myself in the shoes of the islanders
who boarded ships just like this
to sail to new lives in faraway lands.
lt must have been hugely exciting.
But their excitement was tempered by the prospect of hard graft,
and so is mine.
They've just taught me how to coil a rope, which is actually quite simple,
or it would be if you were standing on your kitchen floor at home,
but this floor's moving around all over the place.
Then, before we've really got going, apparently it's time for bed.
The ship runs on shift work, and l'm on an early.
But sleep doesn't come easily when the boat's lurching
and there's only a few hours of darkness.
lt's four o'clock in the morning and l've just got out of my bunk.
l'm on the four to eight watch. Got to get up on deck.
The boat's going all over the place.
l think they put all the sails up in the night.
Like sailors of old, l'm keeping a log,
a video diary of my voyage.
We're far out to sea,
being blown along under a rig full of square sails.
Look at this.
What a sight.
This is what a square rigger looks like
under a lot of sail out in the North Atlantic.
Pretty impressive.
There's precious little time to take in the view.
Bad weather's blowing in
and we've got to crack on towards Fair lsle.
Mind your footing. There are people sleeping below.
While the ship swings into action,
Captain Ulf Hed calmly plots our route,
heading for a small speck of land.
Fair lsle looks like a tiny rock in the middle of the ocean,
completely on its own.
Why do you want to take the ship to Fair lsle?
- There is barter with the inhabitants of Fair lsle. - Barter?
Yes. Where you trade things that you have for things that they have.
They used to do this with the ships in the old days.
They would trade their woollen mittens for fish hooks or some things like that.
What have you brought from Norway to trade with the inhabitants of Fair lsle?
We brought some goat cheese, some brown Norwegian goat cheese.
OK. And do you think they'll like that? Do you know that they like goat cheese?
l think it remains to be found out.
And the only issue we have now is that if the seas pick up too much,
we will have an issue with anchoring at Fair lsle.
NlCK: This tall ship is too big to get into the tiny harbour on Fair lsle.
lnstead we're planning to drop anchor offshore.
The bad weather could scupper that plan.
l've just come off watch,
and Fair lsle is just off the ship's rail.
lt's the most remote inhabited island in the British archipelago
and l've been wanting to set foot on it for most of my life.
Just seeing it is exciting,
but we don't know yet whether we're going to be able to go ashore
because there's a strong wind and a big swell.
We're just going to have to wait and see.
Weather permitting, l'm hoping to meet the small community here on Fair lsle
to discover how they've kept going when other isles were abandoned.
lt'sjust one of the marvellous mysteries to explore in the Scottish islands.
Shrouded in cloaks of sea mist,
the Western lsles can seem like a shadowy secret world,
fertile territory for the making of myths.
Spectacular sights and tall tales
captivated a new breed of tourists around 1 50 years ago.
They departed from new gateways to adventure,
like here at Largs.
Following in the footsteps of Victorian travellers,
Tessa's searching out the truth of an island tale
that seems much stranger than fiction.
TESSA: ln the late 1 800s,
the sleepy town of Largs was a thriving tourist destination.
The golden ticket for travel-hungry adventurers of the Victorian age
was a grand tour of the Western lsles.
The new craze for paddle-steamer voyages drew people here from far and wide,
especially those obsessed with a scientific sense of discovery.
One such traveller was French author Jules Verne,
a founding father of science fiction.
ln 1 879, Verne, in search of new wonders, travelled to the Western lsles.
The man who wrote Around The World ln Eighty Days
and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
was inspired here to write a book about a natural phenomenon,
part fact, part fiction.
The mysterious and elusive green ray.
ln the book Jules Verne describes a fleeting green flash of light
that reveals itselfjust as the sun sets.
He called it ''le rayon vert'', meaning the green ray,
more commonly known as the green flash.
The novel tells the story of a young woman, Helena,
who, having read of the green ray,
sets off on a voyage to the Western lsles
to try and see it herself.
Legend tells that the green ray destroys illusions
and will allow her to find true love.
Joining me as l begin my voyage into the islands is lan Thompson,
who has studied Verne's book.
Does the green ray really exist? Will we be able to see it?
Yes, the phenomenon certainly exists.
We don't know that Verne himself witnessed it.
There's nothing in the correspondence or diaries to prove that.
But it certainly does exist and it has been witnessed, photographed.
And l have here an example
where we see just for a few seconds this green flash, or green ray.
That was what Verne's heroine was after.
TESSA: And it's what l'm after too.
Like both Jules Verne and his heroine Helena,
l'm boarding a steamer to travel to the Western lsles.
The Green Ray is very interesting in Verne's huge output
because it's the one novel that follows exactly his own travel,
his travels in Scotland.
He adored all the myths and legends and history of Scotland,
and he regarded it as more or less his ancestral home.
Why in particular are the Western lsles a good place
for seeing this green flash phenomenon?
lAN: The western coast of the Western lsles
offered a completely unblocked view of the horizon at sunset.
So in other words, here where we are right now is no good.
lAN: You can't see a horizon.
TESSA: lt's clearly not an easy phenomenon to capture.
lt really does require very, very specific atmospheric conditions.
- What do you think our chances are? - Pretty slim.
TESSA: To have any hope, l need to push on to the open sea.
Like Helena, l'm determined to witness the green flash.
Has anybody else here seen it, though?
l wonder if you could tell me whether you've ever heard of the green ray?
l haven't, no.
l don't suppose any of you know anything about the green flash?
- No. - l haven't, l'm sorry. l don't.
Have you ever heard of the green flash?
- Oh, yes, l have. - Have you?
ln fact, l've seen the green flash.
Just as the sun goes down, just as it disappears over the horizon,
there's a green flash and it's quite amazing to see it.
TESSA: Reassured, l continue heading west.
lt's a race against the sun.
Back in Verne's day, the fashionable sets in London, Paris and Berlin
saw the Western lsles as the last wilderness of Europe.
lt's clear that Verne too was captivated by this place.
As he made his way through the lochs and out to the islands,
natural wonders like the Corryvreckan Whirlpool fuelled his imagination.
As did the imposing island of Staffa and the wondrous Fingal's Cave.
With sunset approaching, the paddle steamer leaves me behind.
l've arrived at the island where Verne's heroine
got her chance to see the green flash.
But she had better luck than me.
l've got a view of the horizon, but the clouds have closed in.
The sun's nowhere to be seen. The elements are against me.
But l was brought up in Scotland,
so l'm not daft enough to have left the green flash to chance.
l've got a plan B.
l'm meeting Johannes Courtial,
who's giving me my very own green flash demonstration.
Johannes, how does a green flash actually work?
There's the sun, and when it's setting,
the light from the sun reaches the observer
by entering the atmosphere, where it gets bent.
When the sun sets on the horizon,
the light goes through a bit of atmosphere a bit like a prism.
- OK. - l happen to have one here.
So if the atmosphere's like a prism, what effect does that have on the light?
Well, what this does is it splits the sun's light into effectively a rainbow.
The red bit is at the bottom, the blue bit is at the top,
and as the sun then sets below the horizon, this rainbow disappears.
The blue is at the end, so that would set last,
but the green flash is green and not blue.
And that is because blue light is scattered out by the atmosphere.
This is why the sky is blue.
And that's why in this rainbow blue is missing
and then the top colour is green.
So the last colour that is disappearing below the horizon is a bit of green,
and that's it, that's the green flash.
Eureka! So can you re-create the green flash here?
Well, we'll do our best. We have all we need, l think.
We have a fish tank with angled sides. This will act like a prism.
TESSA: To make the tank mimic the bending power of the earth's atmosphere,
we fill it with water...
..add powder to scatter the light...
and finally a torch, our sun.
- l can see some form of rainbow here. - Yeah, l do see it, actually, Johannes.
A kind of bluey-green rim.
But l thought that that green flash was meant to be at the top,
the last bit of the sun to disappear not on the right-hand side.
That's because our atmosphere here is standing on its side. This way is up.
TESSA: With a little magic touch,
it starts to look a lot more like the setting sun,
complete with mysterious green flash.
Given what we've been up against, l think you've worked wonders.
This is amazing. l actually understand it.
And though l may have cheated a little,
with the help of a German scientist and a plastic fish tank,
l've joined the lucky few to have seen the rare and mysterious green flash.
NlCK: l'm sailing aboard the Norwegian tall ship Sorlandet,
on a voyage between the Northern lsles of Scotland.
We've arrived at Fair lsle, a wonderfully remote community.
l've wanted to come here for years, since l first heard about it as a boy.
But tall ships are too big for Fair lsle's tiny harbour,
so we need to find calmer water to launch a boat.
Captain, we seem to be sailing to and fro along the shore of Fair lsle.
ls there a problem?
ln the north end, up there where the other ships are, there is a bit of swell.
So now we're at the south end of the island.
We're going to pass it, turn the ship around,
come back and see if we can anchor
just about where we are now and a little bit closer to shore,
and it ought to be safe.
NlCK: We're hoping to drop anchor off this remarkable island,
still home to about 70 people.
A tiny stepping stone between Orkney and Shetland,
Fair lsle is surrounded by an ocean of sea.
3,000 miles over there is Canada,
and hundreds of miles in that direction is Norway and mainland Europe.
Fair lsle sat in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
Arriving by trading ship helps solve the mystery
of how small island communities used to support themselves out here.
Whenever the people on the island saw a sailing ship coming past,
they'd try and sail out or row out to meet it.
Today, we're going to try and meet them and barter with the islanders.
You step in quickly as l tell you.
NlCK: But getting off a big ship isn't easy.
These are tense moments.
MAN: Give us the line.
Well, that was one of the most exciting embarkation moments l've ever had in my life.
But we're now going to head for the shore
through what's pretty impressive swell.
Fair lsle looks pretty remote on a map,
but it feels even more remote once you've arrived at it.
Finally, after years of anticipation, l get to set foot on Fair lsle.
This is a big moment for me. l feel quite emotional about it.
(Cheering)
- Thank you! - Welcome!
Thank you! Thank you very much. That's a very nice welcome indeed.
ln the past, islanders would exchange fresh goods and their famous knitwear
for brandy, tea, flour and other essentials from the trading ships.
They've been frantically knitting traditional keps, fisherman's hats,
which they hope to barter.
This is a famous Norwegian brown cheese.
WOMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is the Linie Aquavit.
WOMAN: lt's been over the equator. - Oh, yes.
l think we'll have to open that tonight for all the knitters first.
lt's easy to see this as a bit of fun,
but exchanges like this happened for hundreds of years,
keeping island communities alive.
Fantastic.
Barter complete,
l've just an hour or so left to explore this fascinating island.
There's a mystery at the heart of this community that intrigues me.
What made them stay when life became difficult?
Not so long ago, it was touch and go here on Fair lsle.
l've got an article here from the Shetland Times of 1 956.
The really dramatic passage in this article says,
''The report indicates that by this summer,
it is possible that the island will reach the point of no return
as far as manning essential services is concerned,
so that evacuation will become inevitable.''
ln 1 956, a film crew came to capture the dying days of Fair lsle.
The tall ships had gone. The island was increasingly isolated.
Young men were forced to leave to find wives.
The population wasjust 47.
But the proposed evacuation never materialised.
So how did Fair lsle come back from the brink?
l'm meeting Anne Sinclair to share memories of life back then.
- Got that, south light. That's... - That's the lighthouse just down there.
Here's some Fair lsle knitting patterns.
- They haven't changed at all. - Well, no. lt's called traditional.
Yeah.
And that, l think, is my Auntie Molly's hands.
- You can recognise your aunt's hands? - Yep, they're the same as mine.
Anne's parents were from Fair lsle, but like many others, they'd left.
When the call came to help save the island, the family returned.
- So which year did you come back? - '57.
You came back here at the most difficult time in the island's history.
Yes, Dad especially was really quite keen to come back here,
and they did say if young farmers didn't come, they'd evacuate Fair lsle.
So that was the kind of final thing, and Dad said, ''Right, let's go.''
Why did Fair lsle survive as a community
when so many islands off the north coast of Scotland
became depopulated and then abandoned?
l think it was sheer determination to a certain extent,
but l think a lot of people really saw that this was a good way to live.
And there's quite a lot of young families over the years that came back
and it stayed fairly young, and l think that's important.
A lot of people have the idea, oh, Fair lsle, get away from it all,
it'll be like a magic place,
and in fact we're all human beings here the same as everywhere else.
lt's a magical place, but it won't solve anybody's problems.
They won't get away from anything.
Right now l've got to get back to the tall ship waiting for me offshore,
to continue my magical mystery tour towards Shetland.
l'm leaving Anne with a DVD of memories in exchange for a Fair lsle kep.
That way, and now you can put it to the side.
- That's warm. - A typical Fair lsle fisherman.
l'm not tough enough to be a Fair lsle fisherman.
Few are fortunate enough to live in the Northern lsles,
so they seem remote to many of us.
But if you're looking for uncharted territory,
surprisingly you can find it a stone's throw from the busy south coast of England,
on the lsle of Wight.
A short hop from the mainland, this is a popular holiday destination.
lt's England's biggest island,
but you'd think tourists would have explored every inch.
Well, not quite every inch.
Zoologist and ex-soldier Andy Torbet
is about to have an adventure on rocks where most would fear to tread.
AND Y: The lsle of Wight is a great location to explore geology in action.
The strata of different rock types are exposed for all to see and touch.
But there's one part of this island where the geology remains a mystery.
Geologists have been poring over the lsle of Wight for hundreds of years,
but there's one bit they've never been able to reach.
This is the geological map of the UK,
where the different colours represent different rocks.
lf we zoom in to the lsle of Wight,
you'll see this thin light green band represents the chalk.
But if we zoom in even closer,
you'll see the Needles aren't coloured in.
That's because geologists haven't been able to get out there to take a sample.
So they've asked me to help.
There's no doubt it's chalk, but what sort of chalk,
and why has it resisted the sea
when the surrounding chalk crumbled away long ago?
To find out, the geologists need a virgin sample
from the point of the needle,
chalk that's not contaminated with the sea gunge around the base.
There are very few records of this needle ever being climbed,
and up close l can see why.
l'm an experienced climber,
but l've never tried to scale a chalk stack in the middle of the sea.
l need to enlist a buddy with some local knowledge for a bit of training.
Yeah, it's getting that first six feet.
Dave Talbot has climbed on chalk before.
lt poses a unique challenge.
Crumbly chalk is made up of the bodies of tiny sea creatures
built up on the seabed over millions of years.
lt's very old and not very stable.
Bits break off all the time.
This is a typical section of chalk lift.
You can see things like this that kind of look really loose.
l don't know quite how...
Yeah, l mean, that's incredibly loose.
Even sections like this that maybe even appear more solid,
if you get your hand on it, as if you were climbing, it just crumbles away.
lt's really unpredictable.
Some of the sections can be quite solid but other bits really loose.
We don't know what we're going to encounter when we're climbing it.
Even these spikes driven into the rock can't be relied on in the event of a slip.
lt's not solid. Chalk's not solid.
The best way of doing it is just try not to fall off.
And if this glorious weather holds out,
we'll be attempting the climb tomorrow.
We'll have to keep our wits about us. You've seen what that chalk's like.
lt's going to be crumbly, flaky, unpredictable and really slippery at the bottom.
lt's going to be like climbing on cheese.
So hanging out on that stuff out over the sea
is going to be quite interesting.
The next morning we're all kitted up and ready to go.
- Nice bit of weather. - Spot on.
Little bit of breeze.
Morning, guys.
And we've been joined by Pete Hopson and Andy Farrant,
two scientists from the British Geological Survey.
Although the water looks calm, the swell is a worry.
The wind's picked up, so the swell's picked up.
Getting on the rock is going to be much, much harder than we thought.
Beautiful.
Safely off and kitted up, Dave's nominated me to lead the climb.
We need a pure sample of chalk from the summit
to work out why this pinnacle has defied the sea for so long.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Whoa.
That was my next hand hold.
Below!
You just can't trust anything you're doing.
That's what l'm talking about.
lt's fragile, it's crumbly, it's unpredictable,
and every time you pull on a hold or step up, your heart's in your mouth,
but it's an amazing place to be, especially on a day like today.
lt might not be the safest place in the world, but it's pretty spectacular.
The geologists tell me that from the sea line to the top,
this rock face represents about a million years,
so for every metre l go up, that's about 30,000 years.
Whoa.
Below!
That was a bit easier.
Done it. Champion. Still in one piece.
As we're climbing for the British Geological Survey,
we're able to take a sample of chalk away.
lt's not something we'd be doing otherwise.
- Hey, nice one. Well done. - Beautiful, mate.
- Good effort. - Cheers, buddy.
- Well done. - That was awesome.
lt's a bizarre way to climb. lt's quite intimidating.
We've got to figure out how to get down now.
AND Y: We'll get the rock samples the guys need,
get ourselves down, and that'll be mission accomplished.
Cool.
Our chalk sample will need detailed analysis at a lab.
Dave, nice bit of chalk.
But sample in hand, hopefully we can clear up one mystery right now.
Why have the Needles lasted so long?
ls the chalk harder than the surrounding coast?
We've got a way to find out.
This is a very simple field test.
lt's called a Schmidt hammer.
Right.
This device will give a number to the hardness of our sample.
There's the bang, and here we have a reading.
This one's 22. That's quite hard for chalk.
Now we compare it with the chalk the geologists have brought along from the mainland.
lt's barely reading 1 0 on here,
which is significantly lower than the one from the needle.
This is much, much harder.
AND Y: So why is the Needles' chalk much harder than normal chalk?
This chalk was moved by earth forces
and it was bent over until it was nearly vertical,
and the compression on that chalk
has created quite a lot of internal pressure.
The little pore spaces between the individual grains
have been filled with calcite minerals because of that pressure on the rock,
and that's what's made it significantly harder
than other samples of chalk that we see around the south of England.
So all the information we've brought back, is that going to allow you to finish the map?
PETER: Now we can move forward and finally print the new geological map.
NlCK: With the Needles on the map, there's one mystery less in our isles,
but still plenty more to explore.
l'm on an island-hopping adventure
aboard a tall ship in the waters of northern Scotland.
Now it's all hands on deck.
When the weather's against you,
it takes every able body to wrestle with the wild Atlantic.
l'm en route for Shetland,
following in the wake of islanders who left a familiar life on land
for the mysteries of the sea.
To find out what lay in store, like them, l'm travelling 1 9th-century style.
Back then, ships like this carried island men to adventure across the sea,
but it wasn't a free ride.
They often had to work their passage. l think l'd better do the same.
At sea, a boat becomes an island in itself.
Everyone needs to pull together and toe the line.
While some jobs are mundane, others are exhilarating.
l'm about to have the biggest adventure you can have on a tall ship,
which is going up in the rigging.
l've got a helmet camera mounted on my nut,
and the man who's taking me up is David,
who has a lifetime's experience on sailing ships.
- So, David, take me up. - lf you go first.
Here we go. This is...
Already the deck is receding below me now.
Whoa. Gosh, the wind's strong.
DAVlD: Yeah, the wind is about one third stronger up here.
NlCK: Oh, the ship's moving all over the place. This is really difficult.
- ls this where l clip on? - Yes, please.
DAVlD: On the wire itself. That's it.
NlCK: Clipped on. This is the moment.
Up and over the edge, leaning out over the deck.
- Arms out straight. - You're doing fine.
Pushing with my feet.
One foot on the platform. Two feet on the platform.
l'm up.
Expletive deleted.
Oh, man.
What a sight. What a sight.
To be up in the top of the rigging of a tall ship, looking out across the ocean,
the sails billowing with wind, totally timeless moment.
This is exactly what seafarers for hundreds of years have seen.
The crew of these mighty vessels witnessed extraordinary sights
and no doubt spun some tall tales too.
Plying their trade around the Scottish islands,
the seafarers didn't just transport goods.
They carried stories passed from isle to isle,
generation to generation.
One of the most enduring tells of a mysterious creature,
the selkie.
The song of the selkie captivates one of our most legendary folk artists,
June Tabor.
JUNE: l'm a singer of songs that tell good stories.
And one of the great, truly great narrative ballads of these islands
concerns a seal.
The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry.
lt happened on a certain day
As this fair maid lay fast asleep
That in and came a grey selkie
Sat him down at her bare feet
A selkie, well, it's a seal in many parts of the Western lsles,
but it's also a magical mystical being
that uses the form of the seal
to travel between a land below the waves to the land of men.
The seal is a person. Look at those eyes.
Listen to the cries of the seals as they almost sing.
You can understand why people thought that there was more to them
than just an animal presence.
And, woe, alas, this weary fate
This weary fate that's laid on me
That a man should come from the west of Hoy
To father here the child on me
She's been seduced by an otherworldly creature,
who in the sea is a seal and on land is a man.
''l'm your child's father.''
She's horrified.
What's she going to do?
He offers to marry her, but she doesn't take him seriously.
''You can marry who you like. l won't marry you.''
And she has raised his little wee son
For seven years all at her knee
And once seven years were passed and gone
He's come with gold and white money
And then he comes back.
''Please marry me. l've brought gold. l've brought money.''
She still won't have him.
And he prophesies.
''l'm going to put a gold chain round this child's neck,
so if he comes back, you'll know it's him,
but l'm going to take him away.
And you, well, you'll marry somebody else, you'll forget me,
but he's going to be a gunner.''
And in time, as the selkie had prophesied,
she did marry a gunner.
And he went out on a May morning...
..and shot two seals...
..a big bull male...
..and a young male with a gold chain around his neck.
Oh, woe, alas
This weary fate
This weary fate that's laid on me
And so she sighs and so she cries
And her tender heart
lt broke in three
And so it was finished.
This is the most amazing place to be on a tall ship,
taking the helm in a good wind on the open ocean.
lt's an incredible feeling.
This is a voyage of real highs and lows.
l'm trying to steer a steady course to Shetland.
lt's a responsible job when you're at your wits'end,
after three days aboard, snatching sleep when you can.
There's one very odd thing that happens.
Your body clock goes completely peculiar.
Right now l have no idea what time of day it is.
lt must be evening cos l slept for two hours.
l got out of this bunk - l was sleeping fully clothed, like l am now -
and then l ate a meal which turned out to be supper.
Getting a bit tired. ln fact, l'm now permanently tired.
But the ship doesn't sleep.
There's an important tack at midnight.
Everyone's needed to move the massive sails.
- Are you ready to do this? ALL: Yes!
MAN: Yeah. Very good.
People standing over here, go forward.
lt's gone badly wrong. We've got some of the sails on one side of the ship.
Some on the other have got caught by the wind.
Now there's a rush on to try and get the ship straightened out.
Suddenly everyone stops.
The crew must rethink.
There's a palpable air of tension on the deck now.
MAN: Pull it towards me. Pull it towards me.
- Here we go. - (Man shouting orders)
Despite our efforts, the ship did more of a three-point turn
than an elegant tack.
But at least we're back on course for Shetland.
Tall ships connected the Northern lsles of Scotland to the globe,
but as well as trade, big boats have also brought tragedy.
Around 1 00 years ago, Scottish waters became a battle ground.
During the First World War, enemy ships stalked these shores.
To meet the German threat, the Royal Navy headed north to a base on Orkney...
..at the sheltered bay of Scapa Flow.
The navy's mighty warships went long ago,
but intrigue lingers in their wake.
Neil's exploring how the most famous face of the First World War
came to lose his life here in the most mysterious fashion.
This is the curious case of the death of Lord Kitchener.
NElL: Our tale begins in the summer of 1 91 6.
Scapa Flow is awash with ships of the British Grand Fleet,
the most fearsome instrument of war the world has ever seen.
On 5th June, HMS Hampshire is about to slip out for a covert mission to Russia.
On board is one of Britain's most celebrated men.
His face was instantly recognisable,
and nearly 1 00 years later, it still is.
Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener.
He was the poster boy of army recruitment during the First World War.
When he arrived here in Scapa Flow on 5th June, 1 91 6,
he was suffering from no more than a mild bout of sea sickness.
A few hours later he was dead,
and exactly how he died and why puzzles some people even to this day.
Conspiracy theories surrounding Kitchener's fate
swirl around these murky waters.
Ripples of intrigue remain
after the shock of terrible events that made grim headlines.
Look at this.
Not many people's death
would warrant a full front-page picture of a newspaper in 1 91 6,
but the nation was amazed and bemused by the loss of Kitchener.
Somehow the warship he'd been travelling on had sunk in home waters,
killing over 600 men, including Kitchener.
To the people he was a hero, a patriot and a friend.
They'd heeded his call to war.
WOMAN: Oh, we don't want to lose you
But we think you ought to go
NElL: ''Your country needs you'' was his rallying cry,
and his country did not disappoint him.
From 1 91 4 onwards, two and a half million men answered the call.
Whole communities, mates from the same factories and towns,
formed the famous Pals battalions.
By summer 1 91 6, this band of brothers had become Kitchener's New Army.
''We were two years in the making and ten minutes in the destroying,''
said one of Kitchener's New Army.
Pals battalions were brutally butchered
on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in July 1 91 6,
but Kitchener didn't live to see his men mown down.
He was dead before the battle could get under way,
while his soldiers and his country still loved him.
The nation demanded to know why HMS Hampshire sank
as it set out from Orkney with their national hero on board.
An investigation was conducted to formulate the official answer.
- How you doing, Nick? - Hey, Neil, good to see you.
l'm meeting historian Nick Hewitt,
who's going to give me the authorised version
of HMS Hampshire's loss and Kitchener's death.
So on 5th June, Kitchener is right here in Scapa Flow.
- He is. - And is this photographic proof?
This is the last picture we know of Kitchener, leaving the lron Duke,
walking along the decks to board the Hampshire.
Why is Kitchener en route to Russia, anyway?
Russia is on the verge of collapse
and Kitchener is the face of British military might.
He's a logical man to send round and put some pep in the Russians.
So what happens?
What they're looking to do is very simple,
to take Kitchener from Scapa Flow to Russia, which is in that direction.
The problem is there is what's described as the worst gale of the century.
The Hampshire sets off from alongside the lron Duke.
NElL: lnto the teeth of the gale.
NlCK: The captain sensibly starts to move her in closer to the shore,
to try and get some degree of shelter.
lt doesn't help, it's coming into their head, but it's the right thing to do.
What they don't know is that off Marwick Head
there is a small German minefield
that's been laid secretly by a U-boat the week before,
and the Hampshire runs straight into one of these mines.
NElL: That's the official account
the government hoped would lay the story to rest.
But some on the islands of Orkney remained uneasy.
They had witnessed mysterious events on the night of the tragedy.
We've reached the spot where Kitchener died,
about a mile, a mile and a half offshore.
The Hampshire lies upside down on the sea bed about 70 metres below my feet.
The ship sank in minutes. Over 600 men perished.
Despite the terrible storm,
islanders tried to help survivors struggling to get up the cliffs.
The rescuers felt more men should have been saved, so why weren't they?
- Hello, James. - Hello there, Neil.
James Sabiston heard strange tales passed down from his grandparents.
My grandparents and my mother lived here.
Two survivors managed to get to his grandparents'house
the night the ship went down.
l presume everyone was just in their beds.
Oh, yes, they were all in bed.
l think they came to the door,
knocked on the door about two o'clock in the morning.
And my grandmother went to the door and l think she was a bit worried,
wasn't sure if it was a spy or something coming in.
But she took 'em in anyway.
There's some photographs here. And that's one of Dick Simpson.
- l'm not sure who's with him. - He's just a boy.
- Yes, 20. - Aye.
- That's Chuck Bowman. - What did he say?
He said, ''Our ship's gone down and we want some help.''
There were some more maybe to be saved.
And so what did your grandparents do once they realised there was a tragedy?
My grandfather, he went out to the neighbour and got men from there.
They got ropes and they took up three survivors that way
before they were stopped by the authorities.
Your grandfather and the rest were stopped
from doing any more of the rescue?
Oh, yes, yes.
What is the word on why anyone would stop a rescue?
That's what makes it so suspicious, l would say.
You'd think there was something going on somewhere.
Who do you think the authorities actually were?
l don't know who this was,
whether they were naval authorities or police or who.
l don't know really who that was.
James's grandfather never did find out for sure
who'd stopped the rescue efforts or why.
This is the bay where the sailors were struggling to get ashore.
l'm hoping Tom Muir from the local museum
can shed more light on the mysterious authorities
who prevented the locals from helping.
TOM: There were troops down here.
There was an order from the admiralty
not to allow civilians down to the shore
because there might be sensitive papers washed up
which they didn't want falling into enemy hands.
- Right, so it's at paranoia stage. - Very.
Do you think it's possible that the conditions that night were just so appalling
that the authorities might have been right in thinking
that no-one could help in the water, anyway?
They certainly could have helped.
The people around here were farmers, but they were also fishermen as well,
so they knew the tides, they knew where the rafts would come in,
they knew that life rafts would come in here at the Bay of Skaill.
So when the life rafts did come in, there was nobody there to help them.
They were just smashed against the rocks,
and there was that feeling
that if the authorities had allowed them to go out and help...
The human emotion, the desire to go and help them was denied,
and that cost lives.
Sailors Dick Simpson and Jack Bowman
were two of only 1 2 survivors.
Lord Kitchener and the rest of the crew perished.
The islanders raised money for a memorial to the tragedy,
but the story would not die.
The secrecy that scuppered local rescue efforts
suggested sinister motives to some.
Was the government hiding something?
The people may have loved Lord Kitchener in 1 91 6,
but many of those in power did not.
As secretary of state for war, he was accused of having overseen
the bungled and disastrous operation at Gallipoli,
with a cost of 1 00,000 Allied casualties.
And the army on the Western Front had almost run out of shells at one point
while Kitchener was in charge of munitions.
So he had lost some influential friends,
but had he made some murderous enemies?
The fame he'd won in South Africa during the Boer War, the violence of his death,
and the fact his body wasn't recovered gave rise to conspiracy theories.
l'm going to run three of them past Nick.
Firstly, had Kitchener's misconduct of the war
so infuriated ministers like Lloyd George
that his ship was deliberately sent into waters they knew were mined?
The key thing is they've already fired him.
ln December 1 91 5, he loses the operational control of the army.
He's got no control over the battlefield.
There's absolutely no need for the government to have him murdered.
- OK, we can put that one in the bin. - Absolutely. ln it goes.
This is a particular favourite of mine, without a doubt,
that Lord Kitchener goes to Russia
and there turns himself into a chap called Joseph Stalin.
NlCK: There's a moustache thing going on here.
l don't think we should dignify it with a response. lt's ridiculous.
What a shame. lt's marvellous. What a movie it would make.
l suppose in some ways this would possibly be the most credible.
The legendary spy, in inverted commas, Fritz, a South African,
embittered towards Kitchener particularly and the British in general
because his mother and his sister die during the Boer War,
that this man had sworn vengeance
and managed to somehow get aboard the Hampshire,
cause the explosion and then lived to tell the tale.
lt's the hardest one to disprove, l'll give you that.
He wrote a memoir obviously saying that he did it.
His claim that he gets on the ship and he sabotages the ship
and then he swims away and joins a submarine and gets away with it
when so many men were drowning in such appalling weather
is really, really hard to believe.
- OK. - l think we have to put Fritz in.
- Done. - ln he goes.
The people of Orkney still live with the loss of HMS Hampshire.
They tend the cemetery of sailors claimed by the sea,
men the locals couldn't save.
1 00 years on,
what are we to make of the curious case of the death of Lord Kitchener?
l can't help feeling that this sad episode
has been hijacked by the conspiracy theorists.
This isn't really about the death of a national hero, mysterious or otherwise.
lt's about a tragedy, it's the loss of over 600 lives
and the scars that remain on an island community that was unable to help.
NlCK: Orkney was where l started my island adventure.
Four long days and short nights later,
the edge of Shetland sits on the horizon.
Journey's end.
We've arrived off the Shetland lslands. We're waiting for the pilot.
The big seas have abated. lt's as calm and almost as flat as the Mediterranean.
And the Shetlands look as welcoming to me
as they always have done to voyagers coming in from across the ocean.
Wonderful sight.
l've made it, and l'm absolutely exhausted.
But what a way to arrive in Shetland
for a rare gathering of square riggers from around the globe.
Permission to come ashore.
Lerwick is absolutely packed.
lt's as if the whole island has poured down to the quayside
to see the ships come in.
The tall ships are on their annual race.
This isjust a brief stop-over for them.
But for me, the experience of life under sail
will linger long in the memory.
Friendships forged at sea,
formed from the shared experience of pulling together.
Making landfall on new shores
with a warm welcome for a stranger from down south.
l've travelled far but always felt at home.
Our islands hold a mysterious attraction.
Their magic spoke to our ancestors, and it still calls us.
One thing that unites us across these isles is that we're all islanders,
whether we live on rocks in the sea that are very large or very small.
Maybe the joy of coming to the coast
is that here we can still experience the very essence of our island story.