The Iolaire Disaster

By the end of the First World War the Isle of Lewis, with a population of only 30,000, had lost 800 men in land and sea battles throughout the world. And then this Hebridean island was dealt the heaviest blow of all. A further 200 men, nearly all of them natives of Lewis, died in one night - a few weeks after the war, after the fighting had stopped. In the early hours of 1 January 1919, in a rising storm and pitch darkness, the Admiralty yacht Iolaire, carrying naval ratings home on New Year's leave, was wrecked right at the mouth of Stornoway harbour, right on the shores of the Isle of Lewis itself. One man, John F. Macleod, managed to swim ashore with a rope and altogether some 70 men were saved. In this programme Macleod, some of the other survivors, and men and women of Lewis tell the story of that tragic night.