History of Orkney should continue to be observed in Orkney and Shetland. Thus the udal succession and mode of land tenure (that is, absolute freehold as distinguished from feudal tenure) lingered to some extent, and the remaining udallers held their lands and passed them on without written title. The islands cluster round the huge deep-water anchorage of Scapa Flow like a protecting hand, and in both World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy had a major base there, enabling them to challenge any attempt by German warships to emerge into the ocean through the Norwegian Sea. After the Armistice in
Naval warfare in the Mediterranean during World War I to bombard the cities of Bizerte and Bône in the French protectorate of Tunisia. Pursued by larger French and British forces, the "Goeben" and "Breslau" ran for Turkey, where they were nominally transferred to the Ottoman Navy when the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the Central Powers side, and fought several battles against the Russian Black Sea Fleet until Russia's surrender in 1917. After the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Allied side in 1915, the strategy of the Allies was to blockade the Adriatic at the Otranto Straits and monitor the movements of the Austrian fleet.