How Hampshire sinking led to renaming
of a Canadian town
London artist aims to make transatlantic connection
By Gillian Wylie
(From The Orcadian dated June 14, 2001)

Berlin - Ontario - Orkney - the connection might not be immediately obvious, but one London-based artist is making it - and making it known to a wider audience.

Artist Abigail Reynolds, who is associated with Goldsmith's College in London, was in Orkney last week filming the sea off Marwick Head which engulfs the wreck of HMS Hampshire - making it the final resting place of Lord Kitchener 85 years ago.

And herein lies the connection - once her work is completed, Abigail intends to exhibit it at an exhibition at the newly built City Hall, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada - a town named after Britain's ill-fated Minister for War - a town which until 1916 was called Berlin.

Abigail spoke to The Orcadian about the exhibition and how she came to be filming here.

"I was invited to put in a proposal for an art show in Ontario. This is to be a contemporary art exhibition and the artists have been asked to create "site-based" art."

She is one of 16 artists who will be showing, in September, in and around the new building in an exhibition entitled "Then we take Berlin", after the song ("First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin") performed by Leonard Cohen.

Abigail decided to take a novel approach. "So I did a bit of research."

She explained that until 1916, Kitchener had been called Berlin.

"The problem came during the First World War. That part of Canada is close to Toronto and until the First World War there were settlers from Germany and the UK, and there were no problems."

However anti-German sentiment grew as the war went on. "There was a park - Victoria Park - in the centre (of the then Berlin). There was a bust of Queen Victoria on the one side and one of the Kaiser on the other. The one of the Kaiser ended up in the lake."

She added: "The main industry in Berlin was crockery, which was stamped ÔMade in Berlin'. It got to the point where it wouldn't sell."

The citizens of Berlin, too, were becoming increasingly uncomfortable about the name, so in late 1915 it was proposed that there would be a ballot - new names were suggested for Berlin and then the people were to vote for their favourite. The first shortlist was vilified as being bland and ridiculous, so in the spring of 1916 a second short list was drawn up. The final list, Abigail said, was scheduled for June 10, 1916.

"On June 7, the news of Kitchener's loss spread across the world."

Kitchener was entered at the last minute, and won by a small majority.

"This interested me," continued Abigail. "Okay, Lord Kitchener drowned, and I assumed it would have happened somewhere off Canada. I was really surprised when I found out that it was in Orkney and in sight of land.

"It's amazing that this patch of Orkney has had this connection with City Hall - two Ordnance Survey locations intimately connected. I just wanted to make this work to link these patches of land."

"On Tuesday evening at eight o'clock it is 85 years to the minute since HMS Hampshire was sunk. All I'm going to do is to be on the cliff top and focus the film camera," she explained.

The film she used was Super 8 which gives the final picture the "flickering" quality of early black and white film. This will be projected in City Hall, both on a large screen and on 20 small monitors: "So that when you walk in you will hear the sea first, and then see the film on all these screens."

The film will be accompanied by other exhibits, including artefacts belonging to Kitchener, which are being lent to Abigail by Kitchener's niece.

While she has been here, Abigail has spoken to a number of local people such as Scapa Scuba divers and visited as many relevant sites as she could including Stromness Museum and the Naval Museum in Hoy to glean as much information about the sinking of HMS Hampshire as she can during her brief stay. Many of these people and places she has filmed as part of a personal documentary of her quest which will be shown as part of the exhibition.

For Abigail has found this project something of a quest - even when it came to identifying the exact time the Hampshire was sunk. " It struck the mine between 7.45 and 8pm, and took 15 minutes to sink, so eight o'clock is the nearest I can get.

"There does seem to be a mystery surrounding the sinking - no rescue crafts were allowed to go to the ship, and the documents on it have not been released - which they would have normally been by now. It makes it difficult to find out when to film."