Speaker at the 10th March meeting of Anstruther Rotary was club member and retired naval officer Alan Wood. Alan chose as his subject the loss of HMY Iolaire in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1919. It was a maritime disaster that resulted in the greatest loss of life in British waters in the last 100 years; just 79 of the 284 men on board surviving.

The Iolaire, which had been a private yacht in peacetime, was requisitioned for the war effort and used for anti-submarine patrols. The ship had lifeboats for 100 and lifejackets for 80 when, at 19:30 on New Year’s eve she set sail from Kyle of Lochalsh, carrying men who had fought in the First World War back to the island of Lewis. It seems likely the overcrowding resulted from the desire to get men, lately arrived by train, back home for New Year.

The story is one of winter weather, high seas, darkness and confusion when, just 20 or 30 yards offshore and a mile away from the safety of Stornoway Harbour, the Iolaire hit the infamous rocks ‘The Beasts of Holm’, and eventually sank.

There was heroism too as John Macleod from Ness on Lewis, saved 40 lives, swimming ashore with a heaving line, along which many of the survivors made their way to safety.

But Alan brought a very personal dimension to the tragedy because one of the men lost, Pt. Herbert William Head aged 35, was the grandfather of his wife. We heard of the heartbreak experienced by islanders finding the bodies of their menfolk washed up for days and weeks afterwards. It was the most terrible time with 1,000 already lost in war and, after the Iolaire, the effects of the 1919 Spanish Flu.

A memorial in the form of a stone pillar was erected in 1958 at Holm, outside Stornoway and at the site of the wreck. It can be seen to starboard just approaching the harbour entrance by ferry.

Following questions, Alan was thanked by Eric Dewhirst.