Admiral Commanding, Orkneys and Shetlands Admiral Commanding, Orkneys and Shetlands The Admiral Commanding, Orkneys and Shetlands was an operational commander of the Royal Navy. His subordinate units, establishments, and staff were sometimes informally known as the Orkneys and Shetlands Command; they were charged with the administration of the Orkney and Shetland Islands and operating and defending the fleet base at Scapa Flow that was the main anchorage for both the Home Fleet and Grand Fleet at various times. The Orkney and Shetland command was usually only formed at the outbreak of war to provide for the defence and administration of the main base for the
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.