Francis D R Coleman

Provenance Of A World War 1 German Imperial War Ensign from Scapa Flow Francis D R Coleman

When World War I hostilities ended in 1918, the German High Seas Fleet of 74 warships was interned at Scapa Flow in Scotland to await the outcome of Treaty of Versailles negotiations. On June 21, 1919, Admiral von Reuter succeeded in scuttling all but 22 of those ships - one battleship (SMS Baden), three light cruisers (SMS Emden, Frankfurt, and Nurnberg, and eighteen destroyers. My original goal in preparing this provenance was to tell the story of how a German Imperial war ensign was removed from one of those surviving ships, and found its way into my possession in Bloomfield, New York. As I went about this task, however, I found the story so compelling, including its historical context, that I decided to include some related highlights.