Hebridean History

The Iolaire Disaster by Tony Wade - Call na h-Iolaire le Tony Wade

Maritime disasters have been big news in recent years. In 1998, the terrible accident off Iona brought into the sharpest possible relief the nature of our age-old relationship with the sea. The almost unbearable irony is that it also marked the 80th anniversary of another devastating but almost unheralded catastrophe; this calamity blighted a previous generation in the small island communities that lie off the west coast of Scotland; there is no book on the subject written in English, it is the worst peacetime shipping disaster in British coastal waters - have you ever heard of the Iolaire and the Beasts of Holm? Although "Titanic' swept the board at the Oscar's, making film history from aquatic tragedy, it is clear that reality is far more painful than fiction.

Hogmanay 1919 was a special occasion - even by Scottish standards! The Armistice was barely six weeks old and for the first time in five years, the weight of war had slipped from the revellers. In Stornoway, the major town of the Western Isles, the joy was exaggerated by the news that two vessels had left Kyle of Lochalsh, bringing home with them more than 750 survivors of the Great War.

Meanwhile, at Kyle of Lochalsh, H.M. Yacht Iolaire, despatched from Stornoway to collect the islands' men, was having some difficulty berthing; Commander Walsh, an administrative officer at the base noticed "a bit of blundering as she was coming alongside" but the tides were peculiar and "the damage to the pier was not severe"-.. He had also heard that "the Iolaire was not a good turning ship"... The status of the lifesaving equipment was also discussed with Commander Mason of the Iolaire. He claimed that the four lifeboats had a capacity of 100 and that there were 80 lifebelts on board. No definitive passenger list was ever taken, but there were at least 283 people on board, as the Iolaire left Kyle. The Titanic disaster was not yet seven years past-. There was great joy at the pierhead, as neighbours and schoolfriends met together again in the most joyful circumstances. Commander Walsh stated that "the men were slightly disorderly from the point of discipline" - this deplorable state of affairs can only be explained by the fact that it was New Year's Eve, some of them had not been home since enlisting in August 1914 and they had survived a war that had killed millions of their contemporaries, and many of their kinfolk. During the Great War 6,200 Lewismen volunteered for service, from a total population of barely 30,000. More than a 1,000 died - a ratio without comparison in any other area of the United Kingdom.

The mail steamer Sheila carried virtually all the former soldiers and civilians, whilst the Iolaire transported the 260 or so former naval ratings. These island people have been renowned seafarers since Viking times; open boats would sail 30 miles to capture young gannets, called 'guga', at their breeding colony on the island of Sula Sgeir north of Lewis. Some of the men aboard the Iolaire had been sunk several times during the war...

Songs and celebrations marked New Year 1919 as the Iolaire made its way across the Minch. The light at Arnish Point was spotted, and the looming lights of Stornoway harbour was the sign to prepare for arrival. It was also the beginning of a tragedy that is still felt throughout the islands.

There was some unease on board as the Iolaire passed a small fishing vessel on its' approach to the harbour entrance. The channel is only about 700 metres wide and the Iolaire had never made this trip at night before. As ratings however, it is unthinkable that the men would challenge the authority of the officers in command - even though many of the men had performed this manoeuvre hundreds of times before. There was even the thought that perhaps they had been away so long that the navigable route had changed...

The events of the next few minutes will never be fully understood as Commander Mason and the navigator, Lieutenant Cotter, along with all but five of the crew did not survive. It was clear the weather had worsened, with sleet showers racing across on a strong southerly - but not sufficiently to affect navigation. However, soon after 1am, the Iolaire struck rocks known as the Beasts of Holm.

In the darkness, no-one on board had any precise idea where they were until the first distress rockets were fired. The Iolaire was lying only half a dozen metres from land, but with a massive sea raging between the stricken vessel and the rocky shore. Many men immediately filled the two lifeboats, and drowned as they were swamped by the huge waves.

It was then that John Finlay Macleod of Ness, a small village that was to lose 21 men that night, with a combination of skill and utter selflessness, leaped from the listing ship, with a rope. He did not revisit the site of the accident for 46 years. At the age of 77, along with his son and Iain Murray, the first man to escape from the Iolaire using the rope that he carried, he returned and that evening for only the second time in his life, discussed the action that made him a hero in Lewis and saved the life of at least 40 men. His son John Murdo wrote the account in his diary the same day "He dropped into the sea - at the first attempt his fingers touched the plumb rock but the surge took him back out-. he waited until he let himself be carried in by the third high wave and landed on the slope. A foot lower and he would have been against the cliff face-he was then able to crawl up another three yards or so and sat down with the line in his hand and around his back-from the ship they shouted to hold tight as there were two men coming ashore. They pulled him to within two feet of the edge."

A heavier rope was attached and a loop was made around a rock to hold it fast and the men took it in turns to stabilise the rope until, exhausted, others would take their place. " A few more came off the ship the it stopped. Presumably the position on the boat from which they operated was swamped-there was no more response."

Just before the Iolaire finally sank three men made a desperate attempt to climb the masts. Two climbed the foreward mast and Donald " The Patch" Morrison, aged 20 climbed the mizzen. Donald was on board with his elder brother Angus, who had been demobilised earlier but had waited to return to the island with him. The storm continued to smash into the disintegrating wreck and at about 5 am the foremast snapped and Donald was left clinging, literally for his life, alone. Incredibly, The Patch survived the night at the top of the mast and was rescued the next morning at 10am having spent at least 8 hours in freezing temperatures and in the most traumatic of conditions. He spent only a day in hospital. Donald "The Patch" Morrison was one of the last survivors of the Iolaire, in every sense. He passed away only twelve years ago at the age of 92. The brother who had waited for him did not survive and Donald Morrison lived with this pain for more than 70 years.

The rescue attempts were surrounded by controversy, as the Court of Inquiry that took place in Stornoway in February revealed. Although the evidence presented made it clear that no help had been possible from the sea, it emerged that the lifeboat crew could not be roused. The life saving apparatus stored at the Naval base, was less than a mile away from Holm Point as the crow flies, but there was no horse available to pull it; 19 naval men were left with the task of manhandling it towards the scene, until a horse was found. Sub.Lieut Murray, trying to find a car to transport the surgeon, found "Ten or twelve people utterly incapable of giving a coherent reply"; and when he did find the owner of the local garage he was told that none of his drivers would come out on such a night. At this stage he asked for the keys to the garage, and in his desperation, even offered to buy a car without success. Eventually a vehicle belonging to the local Postmaster was commandeered "We left the sick bay at 6.40am, with Surgeon Owen-and first aid gear. After two short breakdowns, arrived at-7.15am". It was a further mile to the farmhouse where many of the survivors had sought shelter. It was more than four hours since the Iolaire had gone down.

The island was rife with rumour as the inquiry proceeded - why had the ship sank so close to home? Who was responsible? The fact that it occurred on New Years Eve led to the understandable assertion that the Officers had been under the influence of drink. This was not borne out by any of the witnesses however, and it seems clear that none of the Officers involved gave any indication of intoxication.

The conclusion of the Public Enquiry was "that the officers in charge did not exercise sufficient prudence in approaching the harbour: that the boat did not slow down, and that no look out was on duty; and that the number of lifebelts, boats and rafts was insufficient for the number of people carried". The criticism of the Navy's response was implicit in their recommendations that drastic improvements be made in the conveyancing of life saving apparatus and "that the Government should in future provide adequate and safe travelling facilities for Naval ratings and soldiers". Some consolation to the 58 widows and 209 children left fatherless by the disaster.

The Navy was quite rightly held responsible for the inept response to the accident, however it is doubtful how much could have been done given the nature of the wreck and its location. Almost unbelievably however, the Admiralty offered the wreck for sale 15 days after the disaster, with 88 bodies still unaccounted for. This crass insensitivity did nothing but increase the feeling of the islanders that their men had been treated with contempt, when so many of them had served so long and with such distinction.

205 men were lost that night; the village of Ness was not unique in the way whole communities were devastated. There were two families of eight children left fatherless, two of seven children, four pairs of brothers died, two men were already widowers...

In these days of soundbites and instant analysis, where the word tragedy is applied to the results of soccer matches, the Stornoway Gazette on January 10th 1919 summed up the emotion poignantly. "No-one who is now alive in Lewis can ever forget the 1st of January 1919, and future generations will speak of it as the blackest day in the history of the island, for on it 200 of the bravest and the best perished on the very threshold of their homes under the most tragic circumstances. The terrible disaster at Holm has plunged every home and every heart in Lewis into grief unutterable"

There was Kenneth Macphail, the only survivor of a merchant ship torpedoed in October 1917, who spent 36 hours in the sea before being washed up on the shores of Algeria. He did not survive the Beasts of Holm. His body was found, still wearing his large sea coat and his hands were in his pockets. It was as if he had simply resigned himself to his appalling fate.

There was Donald Murray, who died in May 1992; he enlisted with his great friend, John Morrison in 1914. They spent every day of the war together, initially under Winston Churchill in Belgium. They were first on the scene at the sinking of The Lusitania; they fought together in the slaughter of the Dardanelles, saw service in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. John Morrison did not survive the Beasts of Holm.

There was the old man from Breascleit, who, six weeks after the disaster was tormented by a vision of a body floating in Glumaig Bay. At daybreak he made his way to the Naval Battery, where the search for bodies was still being organised. He told the Officer-in- Charge, and asked him to check the name on the uniform if they found a body. The body was recovered in exactly the spot he described, it held a torch in its death grip. It was the body of the old man's son.

Roddy Murray, the Director of An Lanntair, Stornoway's arts centre, has a deep knowledge of the story of the Iolaire. As a Lewisman, his insight into the way the loss of the Iolaire scarred the island is fascinating. "The term 'post traumatic stress disorder' is now commonly used for the psychological state for those who survive disasters. And we could conclude that the Iolaire created this condition within the community of Lewis as a whole. Its effect on the mass emigrations that were to come, can't be dismissed"

The Stornoway Gazette used the expression "grief unutterable" and that is exactly what it became: Roddy Murray agrees "It might be said that here too, it is in a manner of speaking, invisible. Certainly, it was never confronted or accepted by the generation whose lives it touched".

This feeling is confirmed by the discovery that John Finlay Macleod lies in a cemetery, with a headstone that simply states "Boatbuilders of Ness"; The Patch lies less than 20 metres away - barely any further than the distance from landfall that proved too far for so many men of the Iolaire. He lies with his brother, Angus, who waited for him all those years before, below the inscription "Gus an coinnich sinn a rithisd " 'Until we meet again'...