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    When I Heard the Bell: The Loss of the Iolaire
    Unavailable
    When I Heard the Bell: The Loss of the Iolaire
    Unavailable
    When I Heard the Bell: The Loss of the Iolaire
    Ebook444 pages5 hours

    When I Heard the Bell: The Loss of the Iolaire

    By John MacLeod

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    On 31 December 1918, hours from the first New Year of peace, hundreds of Royal Naval Reservists from the Isle of Lewis poured off successive trains onto the quayside at Kyle of Lochalsh. A chaotic Admiralty had made no adequate arrangements for their safe journey home. Corners were cut, an elderly and recently requisitioned steam-yacht was sent from Stornoway, and that evening HMY Iolaire sailed from Kyle of Lochalsh, grossly overloaded and with life-belts for less than a third of all on board. The Iolaire never made it. At two in the morning, in pitch-black and stormy conditions, she piled onto rocks only yards from the harbour entrance and just half a mile from Stornoway pier, where thronged friends and relatives eagerly awaited the return of their heroes. 205 men drowned, 188 of them natives of Lewis and Harris - men who had come through all the alarms and dangers of the First World War only to die on their own doorstep, at the mouth of a harbour many could themselves have navigated with ease, on a day precious to Highlanders for family, celebration and togetherness. The loss of the Iolaire remains the worst peacetime British disaster at sea since the sinking of the Titanic.Yet, beyond the Western Isles, few have ever heard of what is not only one of the cruellest events in our history but an extraordinary maritime mystery - a tale not only of bureaucrats in a hurry, unfathomable Naval incompetence and abiding, official contempt for the lives of Highlanders, but of individual heroism, astonishing escapes, heart-rending anecdote and the resilience and faith of a remarkable people.In the first English account and on the ninetieth anniversary of the 'dark ship', John MacLeod tells the story of the Iolaire, the astonishing commitment of the people of Lewis to the war against the Kaiser, its sickening end, and the way of life the disaster effectively destroyed - a tipping-point, he argues, in the overthrow of an old human economy and which deprived the Isle of Lewis of an entire generation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBirlinn
    Release dateDec 10, 2012
    ISBN9780857905116
    Unavailable
    When I Heard the Bell: The Loss of the Iolaire
    Author

    John MacLeod

    John MacLeod was born in Lochaber in 1966. After his 1988 graduation from Edinburgh University, he began his career at BBC Highland in Inverness and quickly established himself as a freelance writer. He has won several awards, including Scottish Journalist of the Year in 1991, and has contributed to many publications including the Scotsman and the Herald. He currently writes a Thursday column for the Scottish Daily Mail and is the author of a number of highly acclaimed books.

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    • 5/5
      Fascinating account of the wreck of the Iolaire [pronounced YOO-luh-ruh], the second largest peacetime ship disaster in the British Isles, occurring only seven years after the sinking of the Titanic, on the 1st of January, 1919 in the wee hours of the morning. This yacht, HMY Iolaire commandeered by the British Navy, was bringing more than 200 sailors of the Royal Navy Reserve to their home in the Outer Hebrides. Due to naval ineptitude and that of the officers on board, plus a stormy night, poor visibility, and a helmsman who didn't know the area, the yacht crashed into a reef not far from where it was supposed to land at Stornoway on the island of Lewis. Also, it was overcrowded and lacking a full crew. Given no orders, the men attempted to save themselves; some men survived and most died. The author was extremely fortunate; his great grandfather who might have been on the Iolaire, was directed onto another ship which made a safe and uneventful landing. After the wreck, the author tells of inquiries into what might have caused it, the fates of the various families of Lewis and Harris, and economic conditions in the Hebrides up to time of writing the book. To this day, this disaster is still seared into the consciousness of Lewis after nearly one hundred years later. The poignancy of this sliver of history moved me nearly to tears. I appreciated the author's deep research into all aspects and also his charts and list of men, where they were from down to street addresses, and what finally happened to them. Many Gaelic-language poems were written: the author included two or three of the better ones but nothing of the quality of Hopkins' "Wreck of the Deutschland". I feel the whole book was a labor of love.Highly recommended. (less)