Writing about the Iolaire

Although it took place in 1918, the Iolaire Disaster on the Isle of Lewis is still very present in the minds of islanders. On New Year's Eve 1918, close to Stornoway harbour, HMY Iolaire run aground on the Beasts of Holm. 201 men died.

The trauma had a terrible effect on the island. I know families of men who went through it, who never talked about it. The Centenary of the Iolaire Disaster, which took place in 2018, allowed people to access their grief in some way. Artists made work about it (much of which was facilitated by the Lanntair Gallery in Stornoway) and people shared their feelings about what happened.

In this post :

• The story of the Iolaire Disaster in 1918
• Poet Murdo MacFarlane's poem about the Iolaire
• Anne Frater's poem about Iolaire
• An Lanntair Gallery's marking of the centenary of the Iolaire Disaster
• The Third Wave Short Story
• Iain Chrichton Smith's poem - Iolaire

The story of the Iolaire Disaster in 1918

The Iolaire Disaster is little known, considering it was the second worst maritime disaster in British waters during peacetime. On New Year’s Eve, 1918, servicemen from the island were returning from the Great War to the Isle of Lewis on HMY Iolaire.

The Iolaire went off course and struck the Beasts of Holm, at the mouth of Stornoway Harbour. A terrible sea. Complete darkness. The waves broke her back and she foundered. Some made it to land. One man, Ian Mhurdo, managed to get a rope to the shore and some made it to shore that way. Am Patch, climbed the mast and held on till daylight. 

201 men lost their lives. 

Writing a short story about the Iolaire Disaster affected me in unexpected ways. Māori writer Tihini Grant, calls it ‘the deeply saddening burden’. The more you enter in stories like this, the more the burden grows.

Even now, writing about it, I feel the saddening burden. 

Poet Murdo MacFarlane's poem about the Iolaire

The Melbost Bard, Murdo MacFarlane, was on the shoreline the following morning. Just a boy at the time. The Iolaire’s Captain was there, by the graveyard, with two life jackets on. A man stood there looking at him and said to him. ‘Cha do shàbhail siud thu. That didn’t save you.’ One of the men who was lost, MacFarlane says, had been at war for four years and was found drowned at the foot of his mother’s croft. 

Here are the final lines from MacFarlane’s poem – ‘Last night the Iolaire was lost/Raoir Reubadh an Iolaire’.

The tragic details are overwhelming, too much to take in at once. The men who made it to shore, only to go back out to the ship to try and find their brothers. The men who wandered the hills for days with their guilt that they survived. 

Talking to the families of survivors, many of them said that the men never spoke of it. It was a traumatic event of great scale. It undoubtedly caused a community trauma which was like a quiet waterfall through the generations. 

Anne Frater's poem about the Iolaire

The poet Anne Frater wrote a poem about her grandmother Màiri Iain Mhurch’ Chaluim, who lost her father that night. He was on the rope when it broke. Here is an extract.

An Lanntair Gallery's marking of the centenary of the Iolaire Disaster

During the Centenary, An Lanntair Gallery in Stornoway led an artistic project which became on outlet for this community grief. It was important. A new memorial was made, by the artists Will Maclean, Marian Leven and Arthur Watson. A number of documentaries were made, which let people speak. 

An Treas Suaibhle was a musical work created by Julie Fowlis and Duncan Chisholm, and musician Iain Morrison worked with visual artists Dalziel & Scullion to produce a piece called Sàl. (Link to iPlayer but not currently available.)

The Third Wave short story

I wrote a short story for BBC Radio 4 called the Third Wave which was based on the story of the Iolaire Disaster. You can find out more about it in the next blog post - The Third Wave.

Writing a short story about the Iolaire Disaster affected me in unexpected ways. Māori writer Tihini Grant, calls it ‘the deeply saddening burden’. The more you enter in stories like this, the more the burden grows.

The story was on the National Curriculum in Italy and I had the good luck to speak to a class of young people who had studied it, at the Liceo Artistico Caravaggio in Rome. Class 5B. Italy has its own stories from that awful war, which I knew nothing about. So many untold stories, but they have to live somewhere. Often, they make their way as emotions through the generations. 

The young people asked some great questions. Would the island have been different now, if it hadn’t have happened? I think so. Think of the individual stories. The mothers and fathers waiting. The wives and girlfriends waiting. The sons and daughters waiting. Och, it’s too much, is it not. When you begin to glimpse the true weight of the darkness. 

The students’ specialisation was Architecture. They asked if I had visited the place of the disaster and how it made me feel. Yes, there is no describing the feeling in ways which make sense in words.  What they had lived through. And the rocks are so close and the steep, so hard to climb. 

They wouldn’t have been much older at all, than these young people. 

Tihini Grant quoted Kahil Gibran to me – “is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?”. We try and make some sense of things through art. But that can only go so far. In the end, such a tragedy is unknowable in its entirety. We can only glimpse it in parts. For if we did, it would surely overwhelm us. 

Iain Chrichton Smith's poem 'The Iolaire'

I will finish with Iain Chrichton Smith's poem called 'The Iolaire'. It is the thoughts of a Man of Faith, a Minister, on the morning after the disaster.

The opening line is strong - The green washed over them. It talks of erasure. Of the lack of existence of anything but the waves.

The green washed over them. I saw them when 
the New Year brought them home. It was a day
that orbed the horizon with an enigma.

The New Year bringing them home has two meanings. You 'bring the New Year in' when you celebrate it. But the reason this New Year is bringing people home is because of the end of the Great War.

There is a litany of images which each test his faith and understanding of what happened. Nothing is real. What has happened does not reconcile in any way with his worldview.

It seemed that there were masts. It seemed that men
buzzed in the water round them. It seemed that fire
shone in the water which was thin and white
unravelling towards the shore...

It seemed.. it seemed... the mask of reality has moved. The mast of the Iolaire is iconic for two reasons. In the photographs of the ship after she ran aground, the mast is prominent, tilted and unnatural. And it is because of the story of Am Patch from Ness, who climbed a mast to survive. His brother did the same and he watched his brother fall to his death. On being picked up the following day, Am Patch offered to help row the boat that picked him up.

The fire in the water. It may be that the elements have become so confused. It may be the contrast of the dark of the night before with the sun of that day arriving, after the bad weather had passed and there was enough daylight for people to be able to get out to the ship.

... It seemed that I
touched my fixed hat which seemed to float and then
the sun illuminated fish and naval caps,
names of the vanished ships.

The fixed hat is how he sees his faith, his role. It is his guiding star in life. The fixed hat contrasts with one of the recurring images from survivors and eye witnesses. That it, the caps of the sailors, their kit bags and the toys they had brought home to children, to families, floating on the water. The names of the vanished ships - Servicemen would have the name of their ship embroidered on their cap.

In sloppy waves,
in the fat of water, they came floating home
bruising against their island. It is true
a minor error can inflict this death
that star is not responsible. It shone
over the puffy blouse, the flapping blue
trousers, the black boots. The seagulls swam
bonded to the water. Why not man?

That star is not responsible - the unfeeling nature of the universe. The first breaking with divine providence. Bruising against the island. One man who was lost washed up at the foot of his mother's croft near where the Iolaire ran ashore. A bruise, yes, but one that can never heal. A cry of anguish, why can something else survive this but not a man.

The lights were lit last night, the tables creaked
with hoarded food. They willed the ship to port
in the New Year which would erase the old,
its errant voices, its unpractised tones.
Have we done ill, I ask?...

The pier in Stornoway was full of people waiting for the ship. Food saved during the hard times of war to celebrate it. Hope, a possible hope after years of war.

Have we done ill? The Calvinist view is that God causally determines the actions of people, but that people are also held responsible for these actions. It is also found in the Calvinist world view, that there is acceptance that a human cannot understand sometimes why a tragic event happens.

... My sober hat
floated in the water, my fixed body
a simulacrum of the transient waste,
for everything was mobile, planks that swayed,
the keeling ship exploding and the splayed
cold insect bodies. I have seen your church
solid. This is not. The water pours
into the parting timbers where ache
above the globular eyes. The sack heads turn
ringing the horizon without a sound
with mortal bells, a strange exuberant flower
unknown to our dry churchyards...

The awfulness of what has happened is entering him, affecting his body. The horizon is ringed with drowned men, There is no staying separate from it. The grief pours into him as the water pours into the ship. This section starts to talk of a crisis of faith. However, one can also see Chrichton Smith's own beliefs through these lines. He was an Atheist.

...I look up.
The sky begins to brighten as before,
remorseless amber, and the bruised blue grows
at the erupting edges. I have known you, God,
not as the playful one but as the black
thunderer from the hills. I kneel
and touch this dumb blonde head. My hand is scorched.
Its human quality confuses me.
I have not felt such hair so dear before
not seen such real eyes....

The humanisation of this lost sailor is powerful. The blonde hair, now dumb. That he has not felt such hair so dear before turns the corpse from a lost sailor to someone loved. Somebody was waiting for him. A mother who knew that blonde hair better than her own hands after raising him. Or a wife. Contained in it is the youth of the man, now all gone.

....I kneel from you.
This water soaks me. I am running with
its tart sharp joy. I am floating here
In my black uniform, I am embraced
by these green ignorant waters. I am calm

He kneels away from God. What has happened has made him lose his faith. The only way forward is to become part of it, part of the element that has caused the sorrow. He joins with the green ignorant waters, the same waters he talks of in the first line of the poem. Does he survive?

I will leave the final word with Iain Chrichton Smith. This is what he wrote in his book 'Towards the Human'.

The sea, monster and creator, has remained with me as a well of
fertile symbolism. I think of the many dead—some I have known-
drifting about in it, being refined there forever. One of the best
footballers in the island was drowned there one terrible night.
Another boy was blinded by an oar. The lolaire sank there on New
Year's morning, in 1919, bringing home from the war two hundred
men to be drowned on their own doorsteps, a tragedy that breaks the
mind. And yet on summer days how innocent it looks, how playful, how almost Mediterranean. How easily like a human being it is transformed from serenity to anger, from calm to sudden outbursts of rage. On an island the sea is always present. 

END.