The Iolaire Disaster, 1919

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The loss of the Iolaire is unusually well documented for its time. The Admiralty file (now ADM 116/1869 at the National Archives, Kew) holds telegrams, reports and the minutes of the naval court of inquiry. The Fatal Accident Inquiry was reported almost word for word in the press. The Stornoway Gazette covered the disaster from its first issue after it, and survivors were recorded for Gaelic radio from 1959 onward. The main gap is the start of the voyage: no list of passengers was taken at Kyle, and the ship's log and charts went down with her. That is why the number aboard, the number saved and the number lost all vary a little between sources. This card gives the 1919 figures and the modern figures side by side rather than choosing one.

John MacLeod, in When I Heard the Bell (2009), draws on the Admiralty file, the inquiry record, the papers of the Iolaire Disaster Fund, newspapers, broadcast interviews with survivors and family memory on Lewis. He is a Lewis-connected journalist and is openly critical of the Admiralty, of Rear-Admiral Boyle and of Commander Mason. His dates, times, figures and quotations from the record are treated here as established where the record supports them. His judgements on blame, on drink, on the Admiralty's conduct and on the long silence on Lewis afterwards are his view and are marked shared. His book predates the research done for the centenary, so where his figures differ from later ones both are given.

Lewis and the war at sea

established Lewis had 29,603 people at the 1911 census. MacLeod gives the commonly cited figure of 6,712 Lewis men who served in the First World War, about half of them, some 3,100, in the Royal Naval Reserve. The RNR had opened its Stornoway station in 1874 and recruited fishermen and merchant seamen for their skills at sea. By 1914 it had about 30,000 men across Britain, and MacLeod reckons a tenth of them were Lewismen. Island reservists served through the whole war: in the North Sea and the Atlantic, in minesweeping trawlers, at the Dardanelles, and with the Royal Naval Division at Antwerp in 1914, after which a number were interned in the Netherlands for the rest of the war.

shared The island's losses were heavy. About a thousand Lewismen died before the Armistice, and the Lewis War Memorial above Stornoway carried some 1,150 names when it was dedicated in 1924, including the Iolaire dead. MacLeod puts this at about 17 per cent of those who served and calls it twice the national average. Other writers think the proportion was not exceptional for a Scottish district, and the comparison depends on how the national rate is counted.

The muddle at Kyle of Lochalsh

established In December 1918 the Navy began sending Scottish reservists home on leave for New Year, which mattered more than Christmas in Presbyterian Scotland. Special trains ran from Devonport and Portsmouth to Inverness and on to the railhead at Kyle of Lochalsh. Neither the movements officer at Kyle, Lieutenant-Commander Walsh, nor the Stornoway command under Rear-Admiral Robert Boyle had been told how many men to expect or when they would come. The MacBrayne mailboat Sheila, a ship of 280 tons, had already sailed full on 30 December and left nearly fifty men at Kyle. On the morning of 31 December Boyle sent his depot yacht, the Iolaire, to help. She reached Kyle at about 4 p.m. and struck the pier as she came alongside.

established Minutes later a telegram told Walsh that 530 men had entrained for Kyle at 11.40 that morning. Boyle later reported that more than double the notified number arrived. MacBraynes had no other ship to send. Walsh asked Commander Mason whether he could take 300 men. As Walsh later told the inquiry, and as quoted by MacLeod, Mason replied: "Yes, we could take that easily enough." The yacht had boats for about 100 people and about 80 lifebelts. The first part of the train arrived at 6.15 p.m. and 190 Stornoway men were marched aboard the Iolaire, counted at the gangway but not named. When the second part came at 7 p.m., 60 men went to the Sheila and 70 to the Iolaire. Skye men went to Portree by drifter. Harris men were ordered to wait at Kyle until Thursday 2 January, but eleven of them boarded the Iolaire anyway.

shared MacLeod sees Walsh as a man overwhelmed by other people's carelessness, and Boyle's decision as an expedient one taken to avoid hundreds of men being stranded over New Year. He also argues that the name misled some men, who boarded believing she was the earlier, faster Iolaire they already knew.

The yacht and her crew

established The ship was not the original Iolaire. She was built by Ramage and Ferguson of Leith in 1881 as the private steam yacht Iolanthe: a three-masted, schooner-rigged vessel with an iron hull, about 189 feet long and 27 feet in the beam, drawing 15 feet. She was renamed Mione in 1897, Iolanthe again in 1899 and Amalthaea in 1906, when she belonged to Sir Donald Currie. The Admiralty took her over during the war and fitted light guns and wireless. In the autumn of 1918 she replaced the larger, steel-built Iolaire of 1902 as depot ship at Stornoway and took over that ship's name. MacLeod notes that most photographs published as the lost ship actually show the earlier yacht.

established Her commanding officer was Commander Richard Mason, RNR, aged 44, of Handsworth near Sheffield. The navigating officer was Lieutenant Leonard Cotter, RNR, aged 49, of Cowes on the Isle of Wight. With two engineer officers and 23 men, she was running with about half her usual crew, the rest being on leave. MacLeod states that neither Mason nor Cotter had ever brought a ship into Stornoway at night. Boyle had ordered the yacht to anchor in the bay on her return rather than berth at the pier, with a drifter ferrying the men ashore.

The voyage

established The Iolaire left Kyle at about 7.30 p.m. Mason told Walsh the barometer was rising and he expected about ten knots. The ship was badly overcrowded. Many men had no seat and lay on open deck or in the chartroom and galley, and most were tired after long journeys by troop train. The night was dark but clear, with a southerly wind astern that freshened after midnight and brought squalls of drizzle. A deckhand steered from midnight to 1 a.m. Mason then went below and Cotter took charge, with only the helmsman to assist him. No look-out was posted forward, although the bridge was about 100 feet from the bows. At about 1.30 a.m. the deckhand was sent below to call the hands to make the anchor ready.

established Men who knew the coast grew uneasy. Several told the inquiries they saw land and breaking water close to starboard for some minutes before the end. The skipper of the fishing boat Spider, coming home from the Shiant Bank, watched a steamer pass him and hold on towards Holm. He said he remarked that she would not clear the headland.

The Beasts of Holm

established At about 1.55 a.m. the Iolaire struck the Beasts of Holm, a reef off Holm Point on the eastern side of the harbour entrance, which is only about 700 yards wide. She heeled hard to starboard. Dozens of men were thrown or washed into the sea at once, and none of those first in the water is thought to have lived. The engines were stopped. Passengers lowered the boats without orders, and they were swamped or smashed against the hull. Rockets were fired, but they made no bang. The signalman at the naval battery reported the first blue one as a ship wanting a pilot, and precious time was lost. The wireless would not work, and the searchlight was not used. After some minutes the ship swung with her stern almost against the shore, perhaps twenty yards from the rocks, and the sea broke over her. She went down about an hour after striking, leaving her masts above water.

shared MacLeod calls the officers' conduct after the strike unfathomable. Survivor after survivor told the inquiries that no orders were given. Cotter stayed on the bridge firing rockets and flares. Mason was seen or heard only briefly, once asking what had happened and once telling the telegraphist to send a distress signal.

The rope

established John Finlay Macleod, aged 32, was a boatbuilder from Port of Ness. He took a heaving line, tied it to his wrist, threw away his boots and went over the stern. Recalling it decades later, he said he let the first two waves go and waited for the third, "for it's always the highest", as quoted by MacLeod. It carried him onto the rock. Four or five men came ashore along the thin line. Then a hawser was pulled across on it and held by men on shore, who took turns anchoring it as more arrived. About 40 men, around half of all survivors, came ashore by that rope. Many others were swept off it by the backwash. When the ship sank the hawser was torn away.

established The Fatal Accident Inquiry jury recommended Macleod to the Carnegie Trust and the Royal Humane Society for recognition, and the Society gave him its award in 1921. He was never honoured by the Crown and died in 1978. The naval court's report stated that the hawser was moved amidships on orders from the bridge. MacLeod found no evidence for that in the testimony and says the men did it themselves.

Rescue from the shore

established Rear-Admiral Boyle was at his headquarters in the Imperial Hotel. A drifter under Lieutenant Wenlock went out after the first rocket, reached the edge of the breakers and could not get near. No crew could be found for the Stornoway lifeboat. The coastguard's rocket apparatus weighed about a ton and needed horses, which the naval base did not have. According to the coastguard's own evidence the call reached it at about 3 a.m., and the apparatus left the base at about 3.50 a.m., hauled by sailors; by then the ship had gone. An officer sent to find a car for the base surgeon spent hours knocking on doors in the town. The first medical party reached Sandwick at about 7.15 a.m. Survivors found their own way through bog and gorse to Stoneyfield Farm, where the farmer and his wife lit every window, took them in and fed them. The jury later thanked them by name.

established One young rating from Ness clung to the mast all night. After 9 a.m., once a naval whaler had spread oil on the water, a small boat came in under him and he climbed down onto it. His brother was among the dead.

shared MacLeod accepts that no lifeboat could have reached the wreck and that the rocket apparatus could not have saved many in the time. His criticism is that Boyle sent no one on foot to the scene, though sailors from the base could have reached Holm in about half an hour, and that widespread drunkenness in Stornoway that night slowed every attempt to get help.

The dead and the count

established In January 1919 Boyle reported 284 people aboard, 24 crew and 260 passengers, with 79 known survivors. The Fatal Accident Inquiry found that 205 had died, and the Holm monument records 205 lost, 175 of them "natives of the island". MacLeod's 2009 list gives 201 named dead and 80 saved, and breaks the 1919 total of 205 into 178 from Lewis, 7 from Harris and 20 officers and crew. National Records of Scotland gives the official total as 205, with 184 Lewis men among them. Research by Malcolm Macdonald of the Stornoway Historical Society, published with Donald John Macleod as The Darkest Dawn (2018), names 201 dead. That figure was used at the centenary and in the Ministry of Defence's 2019 war-grave announcement, which reported 283 aboard and 82 survivors. An Lanntair's centenary material gives 179 of the 201 as Lewismen. Totals for islanders therefore run from 175 to 184 depending on the count and on how "native" is defined.

established Of the crew, four officers and 23 men, 20 died and 7 survived. All four officers drowned; only the bodies of the two engineers were found. The youngest of the crew was a 17-year-old signal boy from Aberdeen; the oldest passenger was 51. Of the eleven Harrismen who had boarded against orders, seven died. MacLeod notes that the Stornoway Gazette took decades to print the names of the crew and more than eighty years to honour the Harris dead.

established MacLeod gives 67 widows and at least 209 children left without a father. Six pairs of brothers died. North Tolsta lost 11 of the 16 men it had aboard. Every man aboard from Sheshader in Point (ten) and from Crowlista in Uig (six) was lost.

The bodies

established The ammunition store at the naval battery was cleared and used as a mortuary. Personal effects were bagged and numbered, and the numbers were chalked on the dead men's boots. Relatives came from all over the island to identify them, and carts took the coffins home to the villages. In one case a young man laid out among the dead was seen by his sister to move an eyelid and was taken to hospital, where he recovered. Bodies came ashore for weeks and some for months; a few were buried where they were found. MacLeod records 56 never found and eight more who could not be identified. Those eight lie at Sandwick under headstones reading "Known unto God". Crewmen with no grave are named on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

traditional It is said that Stornoway ran out of coffins within days and that more were shipped from Kyle. MacLeod reports this as a memory from an elderly witness, not from a record.

The naval court of inquiry

established On 3 January Boyle asked the Admiralty whether a court martial should be held. The Admiralty refused and ordered a court of inquiry. Survivors were summoned to Stornoway by telegram for 7 January, questioned, and "weeded out", in Boyle's word; 25 were kept back. The court, Commander J. G. Humphreys, Commander W. Bradley and Lieutenant W. A. Westgarth, heard them on 8 January and reported the same day. It said there was no evidence to explain how the accident happened, since none of the officers, helmsman or look-outs on duty had survived, and that no opinion could be given as to whether blame was attributable to anyone. It also found that no adequate or properly organised attempt had been made to save life. On Boyle's orders it re-examined eight witnesses about the rumours of drink and on 13 January called those rumours untrue and entirely without foundation.

established On 23 January the Admiralty's Director of Navigation, J. A. Welsh, concluded that the ship had probably been set about six cables east of her course, had altered towards Arnish beacon and had misjudged her distance from the light, and he said this did not point to careless navigation. Boyle refused to make the court's findings public. Under the fifty-year rule the file stayed closed until January 1970.

shared MacLeod regards the inquiry as hurried and steered: framed to apportion blame among the dead rather than to examine the rescue effort ashore, and wrong on points such as the hawser. He also points out that within a fortnight Boyle had agreed to sell the wreck to a scrap dealer, a sale suspended only after public uproar.

The Fatal Accident Inquiry

established Lewis pressed hard for a public hearing. Stornoway Town Council, the Lewis District Committee, the new Western Isles MP Dr Donald Murray, the local churches and the national press all joined in. On 17 January the Admiralty told the Lord Advocate it would not object. The Fatal Accident Inquiry opened in Stornoway Sheriff Court on 10 February 1919 before Sheriff Principal MacKintosh, with a jury of seven local men. Counsel appeared for the Crown, for the Admiralty and, through the Stornoway solicitor J. N. Anderson, for survivors and some families. After two days the jury retired for just over an hour.

established Its unanimous verdict found that the Iolaire had gone ashore at about 1.55 a.m. on the rocks inside the Beasts near Holm Point, and that 205 had died. It found that "the Officer in Charge" did not exercise sufficient prudence in approaching the harbour; that the boat did not slow down and no look-out was on duty; that the lifebelts, boats and rafts were insufficient for the number carried; that no orders were given by the officers with a view to saving life; and that valuable time was lost between the distress signals and the arrival of the life-saving apparatus. It recommended better arrangements for moving that apparatus, a light on the Holm side of the harbour, and safe travel for servicemen in future. It added that no one aboard had been under the influence of drink and that there had been no panic.

shared The ship's telegraphist, the one witness who had spoken with Mason after the strike and had told the naval court he "seemed agitated", was not called before the jury. MacLeod treats this omission as significant. Admiralty papers show that its counsel felt the hearing had been like a criminal trial with the Admiralty in the dock. Boyle asked for a public statement defending the naval response; the Admiralty decided in April 1919 not to reopen the matter.

Drink, navigation and blame

shared Witnesses at Kyle, including the master of the Sheila, swore that the officers were sober when the ship sailed. MacLeod's point is that this says nothing about their state six hours later. He notes that Mason left the bridge an hour from port, that Cotter did not call him back, and that Mason gave no orders at all once the ship struck. He concludes that alcohol is a strong possibility, while allowing that shock and exhaustion are others, and he summarises the loss as "one of grossly negligent navigation". Island tradition, including his own grandparents', held that the officers had been drinking. The jury's finding against drink, made by local men at the time, has to be weighed against that tradition, and the evidence cannot settle it.

shared Three explanations of the course have been offered. The Admiralty's was the small set to the east described above. Captain John Smith, a Ness man and for many years master of the Stornoway mailboat, argued on BBC Gaelic radio that the wrong course was set off South Rona, so that the ship ran towards Tiumpan Head, and that a late correction to the west took her along the Point shore and onto Holm. The architect and yachtsman Alexander Reid, writing in 1978, suggested the yacht got into difficulty passing the Spider. MacLeod favours Smith's account because it fits the helmsman's evidence, the passengers' sightings of land to starboard and the timing of the voyage. None can be proved, because the log and charts were lost. MacLeod calls the episode a symbol "of bureaucrats in a hurry and of almost incredible maritime ineptitude".

Grief, silence and the emigration that followed

established The disaster came in the middle of the influenza pandemic, which drove burials on Lewis far above their usual level through 1919. The Iolaire Disaster Fund was launched on 13 January and raised over £9,000 by late 1919, by MacLeod's account. National Records of Scotland records a final total of £29,116 7s, help for 201 families and last payments in January 1938. Survivors received nothing from it. MacLeod describes the strain the fund caused as households argued over who counted as a dependant.

established Unrest over land broke out within weeks, with raids at Gress in March 1919. Lord Leverhulme's plans for Lewis collapsed in the early 1920s, and the fishing slumped. In April 1923 the Metagama sailed from Stornoway for Canada; MacLeod counts 242 young men and 23 women aboard from Lewis, and some accounts give higher totals. The Marloch and the Canada followed.

shared MacLeod argues that the Iolaire hardened the men who came home and the boys just too young to serve, making them less willing to accept Leverhulme's terms or the old order in their townships, and that it fed the emigration that followed. It is his reading, not a measured effect. He also describes a long silence. Many survivors would not speak of that night for decades, the Holm monument came some forty years after the disaster, and the first memorial service was not held until 1 January 1999. He reads this as trauma, not indifference: "These things indicate neither contempt nor carelessness. They testify, rather, to the depth of trauma." He warns against simple talk of collective repression, given what influenza did to the island the same year.

Memorials, the bell and the war grave

established The Lewis War Memorial, a tower on Cnoc nan Uan above Stornoway, was dedicated in September 1924. A granite obelisk was put up at Holm Point overlooking the reef. MacLeod gives 1960 and says it was largely one North Tolsta man's initiative and was opposed by some; the Gazetteer for Scotland dates its dedication to 1958. An interpretive plaque was added at the site in 2001. MacLeod notes that it wrongly calls the ship wooden. In September 1970 divers recovered the ship's bell and her engine builder's plate. They were presented to Stornoway Town Council in June 1971 and are kept by Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway.

established On 31 December 2018 a plaque was unveiled at Kyle of Lochalsh station, where the men had embarked. On 1 January 2019 the centenary was marked at Holm and in Stornoway. Prince Charles attended as Lord of the Isles, with the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. The Prince unveiled a new memorial at Holm, Life Line, by the artists Will Maclean, Marian Leven and Arthur Watson and commissioned by An Lanntair. It is a bronze coiled heaving line set in a stone enclosure carrying the names of the dead and their home communities. In 2009 MacLeod complained that the wreck had never been declared a war grave. That changed on 2 September 2019, when the site came under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.

Song and poetry

established The best-known Gaelic song on the disaster is "Raoir Reubadh an Iolaire" ("Last night the Iolaire was wrecked"), often called "Òran na h-Iolaire", by Murdo MacFarlane (Murchadh MacPhàrlain, 1901–82), the Melbost bard. He was seventeen in January 1919 and saw the bodies on the shore at Sandwick. He wrote both words and melody. The song moves from a young woman baking for her sweetheart's homecoming to her finding him drowned in the wrack. MacLeod prints it with an English translation at the start of his book. Catherine-Ann MacPhee's recording brought it to a wider audience. Iain Crichton Smith, who grew up in Bayble, wrote the poem "The Iolaire" (Saltire Review, 1957) and later a second poem of the same title. The Rev. John MacLeod (1918–95), whose father was lost, wrote "Banntrach Cogaidh" ("War Widow"). Within weeks of the wreck Marjory Kennedy-Fraser sent £100 to the Disaster Fund from a Glasgow recital of Songs of the Hebrides.

shared MacLeod judges that most of the large body of verse written about the Iolaire fails to grasp what happened. He reserves praise for MacFarlane's song and Crichton Smith's 1957 poem.

• Iolaire is Gaelic for "eagle", but islanders, survivors included, always pronounced the ship's name the English way, as her officers did.
• The ship had borne the name Iolaire for only a few weeks; she had been the private yacht Iolanthe and then Amalthaea.
• She was built of iron, not wood, despite what the plaque at Holm says.
• Some men swapped from the Sheila to the Iolaire at the last minute to travel with friends, and some were ordered the other way.
• The rockets fired from the wreck made no noise, and many in Stornoway took the lights for New Year celebrations.
• The survivor taken off the mast used to say he was the only one of the 284 to step ashore on Stornoway pier.
• The mailboat Sheila was herself wrecked on New Year's morning 1927, at Cuaig near Loch Torridon, with no loss of life.
• In 1977 a fishing boat struck the Beasts of Holm and two men died; MacLeod records it as the only other fatal grounding there since 1919.

• Do not give a single number aboard, saved or lost as certain. Give the 1919 figures (284, 79, 205) and the modern figure of 201 dead together.
• Do not say the officers were officially found blameless. The naval court gave no opinion on blame; the public jury found the officer in charge had not used sufficient prudence.
• Do not state as fact that the officers were drunk. Both inquiries rejected it, and the case for it rests on tradition and inference.
• Do not repeat that the captain's body was found on the shore wearing two lifebelts. Mason's body was never recovered, and MacLeod doubts the witness could have known him.
• Do not repeat that a passenger warned the bridge and was turned away at gunpoint. No such evidence was given at either inquiry, and MacLeod notes the story is always told of a man who died, from the teller's own district.
• Do not claim the officers wrecked the ship deliberately. MacLeod dismisses the story as fantastic.
• Do not describe the Iolaire as a wooden ship. She was built of iron.
• Do not illustrate the lost ship with the common photograph of the 1902 Iolaire, a different and larger yacht.
• Do not say the boiler exploded as she sank. Divers reported in January 1919 that there was no sign of a boiler explosion.
• Do not state as settled that the wreck was secretly broken up for scrap in the late 1920s. MacLeod finds good evidence of salvage soon after the war, but the Stornoway Port Authority has disputed it, and the dating is uncertain.
• Do not call it the worst peacetime disaster in British waters without qualification. It is usually described as the worst peacetime British loss at sea since the Titanic.