[Illustration: ST. MAGNUS CATHEDRAL FROM THE EARL'S PALACE.]
Kirkwall during the war was an examination base, and hundreds of craft of all nationalities passed through the harbour to be searched for contraband of war. Later, after the Armistice, it became the headquarters of our own and the American Mine Clearance Service, and the advent of four or five thousand American sailors contributed further to the prosperity and enlivenment of the town. Baseball, for example, and the "jazz," had not hitherto penetrated so far north as Orkney, and dancing soon became almost as great an obsession amongst the fair maidens of Kirkwall as it was further south.
To-day Kirkwall is again outwardly the same quiet town it was prior to 1914, but the infusion of new ideas and modes of life, which was inevitable from contact with so many of our own and American people, has produced many changes of mental and social outlook, and in no town will the years 1914-1919 be remembered for their historical significance more than in the capital of the Orkney Islands.
Stromness, situate at the western extremity of the mainland, is next to Kirkwall in size, and is in many respects the rival of the capital. Its position did not give it the same importance as Kirkwall during the war, although it was a convenient centre for some of the subsidiary activities of the Base. For a considerable period it was the headquarters of the Western Patrol, and the various building operations, including the wharf at Lyness and the Air Stations at Houton and Scapa, were supervised from the office of the Civil Engineer at Stromness. The accessibility of Stromness to the sea through Hoy and Burra Sounds, and the probability of submarine attacks on the Fleet through these channels, rendered defensive measures an imperative necessity, and at the time of the Armistice a triple series of boom defences, with the additional safeguards of sunken ships and minefields, rendered ingress a practical impossibility. One of the most remarkable of these defences was the Clestron Barrier between the island of Graemsay and Clestron. This was constructed of conical frameworks of steel rails, which were placed in position with their bases resting on the bottom of the channel, an operation rendered the more difficult by the tides which sweep around these shores, which give Stromness its name (the ness of the "strom" or current).