Surrender Day Luncheon at Royal Van Yacht Club

The Naval Officers Association of British Columbia held its annual Surrender Day luncheon at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club Jericho clubhouse on November 22nd. This historic event was first celebrated in 1919 by a group of RVYC members who had served with the Royal Navy in the Great War, and has continued without major gaps but for later war years.
The "Surrender" refers to the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in November, 1918. Enterprising Orkneyans organized tours of the seventy-three ships, then peacefuly at anchor--until, it being apparent the war was over for the German fleet, their crews scuttled them or ran them aground  ten months later. By the outbreak of World War Two most of the ships had been salvaged by the British. Only eight of the scuttled vessels remain on the bottom of Scapa Flow.