#outer hebrides

On a blue-sky day in 2017, while wandering the rocky shore near South Bragar on the coast of Lewis, I met a man building a memorial stone all by himself. He paused in his work to tell me the story of the Six Brave Men of Bragar.

Stunning views after an afternoon of climbing Rueval on Benbecula.

Scotland

In the early hours of New Years Day 1919 tragedy struck when the naval yacht Iolaire struck a reef on approaching Stornoway Harbour.

It was the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Britain, since the sinking of the Titanic.

It has been described as the blackest day in the history of the Western Isles when more than 200 servicemen returning from the First World War died as their ship went down in sight of Stornoway harbour. Despite being Britain’s worst maritime disaster since the Titanic, the loss of the Iolaire remains little known beyond the isles.

The disaster occurred at 1.55am on 1st January 1919, when 205 Lewis and Harris men drowned as the HMY Iolaire sank in heavy seas. They had survived the war and were returning home for the New Year celebrations when the ship struck the rocks at Holm, 20 yards from the shore.

A report in the Stornoway Gazette recorded the impact of the tragedy:

No one now alive in Lewis can ever forget the 1st January 1919, and future generations will speak of it as the blackest day in the history of the island, for on it 200 of our bravest and best perished on the very threshold of their homes under the most tragic circumstances. The terrible disaster at Holm on New Year’s morning has plunged every house and every heart in Lewis into grief unutterable. Language cannot express the anguish, the desolation, the despair which this awful catastrophe has inflicted. One thinks of the wide circle of blood relations affected by the loss of even one of the gallant lads, and imagination sees those circles multiplied by the number of the dead, overlapping and overlapping each other till the whole island – every hearth and home it is shrouded in deepest gloom.

Messages of sympathy were received from far and wide, including from the King and Queen and from Lord Leverhulme, who had purchased the island of Lewis the previous year. He also led calls for a disaster fund to be set up and fund raising events were initiated.

The Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Associations of Edinburgh and Glasgow arranged to take collections in all picture houses under their control for a week. A fundraising concert was arranged in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh on 14th February 1919, at which Scott Skinner, the acclaimed fiddler and composer and many others performed.

A naval inquiry held at the time was not made public until 1970. It had concluded that no blame could be attributed to anybody as the ship’s log had been lost and all of the officers had perished.

The subject of my previous post, Iain Crichton Smith’s penned a poignant poem The Iolaire, about the tragedy and Peter May touched upon the tragedy in his novel, The Chessmen, part of the Lewis Trilogy.

No other area of the country saw such a high percentage of its young, male, fight and die in the war.

Local man John Finlay Macleod’s actions were crucial in saving 40 lives. Macleod saw the crash from the shore, grabbed a rope, and jumped in the water to set up a rescue line. The other 39 survivors either swam to shore or were rescued from the wreck, meaning that the rescue line was responsible for more than half of the rescues that night.

The Iolaire.

The green washed over them. I saw them when  the New Year brought them home. It was a day that orbed the horizon with an enigma. It seemed that there were masts. It seemed that men buzzed in the water round them. It seemed that fire shone in the water which was thin and white unravelling towards the shore. It seemed that I touched my fixed hat which seemed to float and then the sun illuminated fish and naval caps, names of the vanished ships. In sloppy waves, in the fat of water, they came floating home bruising against their island. It is true a minor error can inflict this death that star is not responsible. It shone over the puffy blouse, the flapping blue trousers, the black boots. The seagulls swam bonded to the water. Why not man? The lights were lit last night, the tables creaked with hoarded food. They willed the ship to port in the New Year which would erase the old, its errant voices, its unpractised tones. Have we done ill, I ask? My sober hat floated in the water, my fixed body a simulacrum of the transient waste, for everything was mobile, planks that swayed, the keeling ship exploding and the splayed cold insect bodies. I have seen your church solid. This is not. The water pours into the parting timbers where ache above the globular eyes. The lsack heads turn ringing the horizon without a sound with mortal bells, a strange exuberant flower unknown to our dry churchyards. I look up. The sky begins to brighten as before, remorseless amber, and the bruised blue grows at the erupting edges. I have known you, God, not as the playful one but as the black thunderer from the hills. I kneel and touch this dumb blonde head. My hand is scorched. Its human quality confuses me. I have not felt such hair so dear before not seen such real eyes. I kneel from you. This water soaks me. I am running with its tart sharp joy. I am floating here In my black uniform, I am embraced by these green ignorant waters. I am calm

–  Iain Crichton Smith