The Iolaire Disaster
The Island's Saddest Day
"Two Hundred drowned. The lighthouse flashed its light
A bare mile from home and there we lay
Fished from the avid waters in the night.
The flood shone fatly south at break of day
Assuaged by the New Year dead. From the safe height
We gazed straight downward. Only God could say
What dry and prayerless prayers we turned to pray."
(Iain Crichton Smith)
The local news in the Stornoway Gazette on 21/01/1919
A VISIT FROM LORD LEVERHUME
His Lordship visited the district last Saturday and after calling on the motherless children of the late John Macdonald,1 North Tolsta, who was lost in the Iolaire Disaster, he met some of the local people who had applied for new holdings.
THE GREAT DISASTER
Since we have sent in our last report the bodies of three of our local men have been recovered and buried in the local Cemetery- Donald Macleod and Malcolm Macleod, sons of Malcolm Macleod, 58 North Tolsta and Evander Murray, 45 North Tolsta. As we were burying these at night, verses from "The Burial of Sir John Moore", came to mind with strange persistency.
The bodies of Donald Campbell, no. 44 and of John Maciver, no 69, have not yet been recovered.
(Sadly, the bodies of these two men have never been recovered)
