Iolaire

Over the 14 years I have been in Stornoway, I have made much of the maritime tragedy that was the Iolaire Disaster. In brief, in the early hours of 1 January 1919, the depot ship HMY (His Majesty's Yacht) Iolaire was bringing back nearly 300 sailors to Stornoway, after more than 4 years of war service. Upon approaching the entrance to Stornoway harbour, a navigational error drove the ship aground on a reef, the Beasts of Holm. More than 200 of those on board drowned, less than 80 survived. Of those who perished, the bodies of 60 were never recovered. The losses were keenly felt, and the tragedy was barely spoken of. It took 40 years for a memorial to be erected, on the shore above the place where the ship went down. It took a full century for a national commemoration to be organised.

In the evening of 31st December 2018, a torchlight procession wound its way through the streets of Stornoway. There were 201 torches, one for each man lost. I have never seen so many people in the town centre, on any occasion.





At 1.55 in the morning of 1st January 1919, sixty people met at the Iolaire Memorial on Holm Point, and a brief vigil was held. The RNLI lifeboat shone a light on the marker that stands on the Beasts of Holm reef, and the Coastguard provided lights for people to walk from the carpark to the memorial. The time was the exact time 100 years before when the Iolaire struck the reef.





At midday, some five hundred people congregated at the memorial. Prince Charles, the Lord of the Isles, read from the Bible and laid a wreath on behalf of the nation. A quarter of a mile offshore, the ferry Loch Seaforth was the scene of a separate commemoration, which resulted in 201 carnations being cast into the water by schoolchildren. A local diver went down to the remnants of the wreck to affix a wreath.



Stornoway has been very quiet since then.