The Western Isles - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 298

THE IOLAIRE DISASTER
Of the 6200 men from the Western Isles who served in World War I, around a thousand died
- the highest casualty rate per capita in the British Empire. Yet, on New Year's Day 1919 , in
the single most terrible tragedy to befall Lewis, another 208 perished. Some 530 servicemen
were gathered at Kyle of Lochalsh to return home to Lewis and their families on the mailboat.
As there were so many of them, an extra boat was called into service, the Iolaire , originally
built as a luxury yacht in 1881. The boat left at 7.30pm heavily overloaded, carrying 284 men,
young men and veterans, friends and relatives, to cross the Minch. In the early hours of the
morning as the boat approached Stornoway harbour, it struck a group of rocks called Blastan
Thuilm (Beasts of Holm). In the darkness, it was impossible for those on board to see that they
were in fact only twenty yards from the shore.
One man, a boatbuilder from Ness (Nis), a village that was to lose 21 men that night, fought
his way ashore with a lifeline which saved the lives of forty others. Another was saved by
clinging to the mast for seven hours, but he lost his elder brother, who'd postponed his return
so that they could come back together. Another man, when on active service, had spent
36 hours in the sea, the sole survivor of his torpedoed ship; now he drowned within sight of
his home. Every village in Lewis lost at least one returning loved one, and this, together with
the losses in the war and the mass emigration that followed, cast a shadow over life on Lewis
for many years. It was the worst peacetime shipping disaster in home waters that century.
There's a monument at Holm Point (Rubha Thuilm), overlooking the rocks, and the ship's bell
is in the Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway.

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For centuries, life in Stornoway has focused on its harbour , whose quayside was once
filled with barrels of pickled herring, and whose deep and sheltered waters were thronged
with coastal steamers and fishing boats in their nineteenth-century heyday, when over a
thousand boats were based at the port. Today, most of the catch is landed on the
mainland, and, despite the daily comings and goings of the CalMac ferry from Ullapool,
the harbour is a shadow of its former commercial self - the nicest section is Cromwell
Street Quay, by the tourist office, where the remaining fishing fleet ties up for the night.
Stornoway's commercial centre, to the east, is little more than a string of
unprepossessing shops and bars. The one exception is the old Town Hall on South
Beach, a splendid Scots Baronial building from 1905, its rooftop peppered with conical
towers, above which a central clocktower rises. One block east along South Beach, and
looking rather like a modern church, you'll find An Lanntair (Gaelic for “lantern”),
Stornoway's modern cultural centre (see p.302).

Lews Castle
Across the bay from the town centre • Castle interior closed until 2015 • Grounds open 24hr • Woodland Centre Mon-Sat 9am-5pm • Free •
T 01851 706916, W stornowaytrust.org.uk
The castellated pomposity of Lews Castle was built by Sir James Matheson in 1863 after
resettling the crofters who used to live here. As the former laird's pad, it has long been
seen as a symbol of old oppression by many: it was here, in the house's now-defunct
conservatory, that Lady Matheson famously gave tea to the Bernera protesters, when they
marched on Stornoway prior to rioting (see p.308); when the eccentric Lord Leverhulme
took up residence, he had unglazed bedroom windows which allowed the wind and rain
to enter, and gutters in the asphalt floor to carry off the residue.
The building - closed for over 25 years - is having a £14 million makeover to
transform it into a state-of-the-art bilingual museum, due to open in 2015. This will
be the new Museum nan Eilean , telling the story of the islands' geology, its Gaelic
culture, the struggles of the nineteenth century and the Leverhulme era - the museum
is even hoping to get six Lewis Chessmen on long-term loan from the British Museum.
For the moment, however, Lews Castle's chief attraction is its mature wooded grounds,
a unique sight on the Western Isles, for which Matheson had to import thousands
of tonnes of soil. Hidden among the trees is the Woodland Centre , which has a