Orkney from mainland Scotland sought refuge on Orkney and were helped on to safety in Sweden. In 1745, the Jacobite lairds on the islands ensured that Orkney remained pro-Jacobite in outlook, and was a safe place to land supplies from Spain to aid their cause. Orkney was the last place in the British Isles that held out for the Jacobites and was not retaken by the British Government until 24 May 1746, over a month after the defeat of the main Jacobite army at Culloden. Orkney was the site of a Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, which played a major
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.