author

C. W. Burrows

Best known for a vivid World War I-era portrait of Scapa Flow, this writer captured naval life with an eye for both everyday detail and dramatic history. His work blends personal experience, documentary interest, and a strong sense of place.

1 Audiobook

Scapa and a Camera

Scapa and a Camera

by C. W. Burrows

About the author

C. W. Burrows is known for Scapa and a Camera (1921), a heavily illustrated account of the British Grand Fleet base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands during and just after the First World War. The book was published by Country Life and George Newnes, with an introduction by Vice-Admiral F. S. Miller.

In that introduction, Burrows is identified as having served as cashier of the dockyard section at the base from May 1915 to March 1920. That close connection helps explain the book's tone: it is part memoir, part local history, and part photographic record of the ships, people, and wartime routines that shaped life at Scapa Flow.

Very little biographical information about him is easy to confirm from readily available sources beyond this work. What does come through clearly is his value as a firsthand observer, preserving the atmosphere of a major naval base and the aftermath of the German fleet's scuttling in 1919 for later readers.