Iolaire Listings

This listing shows all on board HMY Iolaire at 1.55 am on 1 January 1919, grouped by village where the men came from. The list of casualties is shown first, then survivors (if any of either).

The list was compiled by Malcolm Macdonald of the Stornoway Historical Society in February 2006, amended August 2007.

A full list of names can be viewed here.

Portraits were scanned from Loyal Lewis, Roll of Honour 1914 - 1918.
Pictures of gravestones from own collection.
All images provided by Guido Blokland.

Last updated: July 2018

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi There,

My name is Alan McKim and I have family in Stornoway. A friend and I were visiting there recently and upon my return I wrote a song with a man called John Beck about the Iolaire disaster. This is a story which truly moved me as I began to research further. I sincerely hope that all those who are in any way connected to those who perished, like what we created.

The song can be found on my MySpace page at
myspace.com/alansmusic.

The track is entitled, 'Stornoway'.

Michael McNeil said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Iolaire

An extraordinarily stupid way go: An Admiralty enquiry found no satisfactory explanation for the disaster. Its inconclusive findings generated much ill feeling amongst the Lewis population, amidst accusations of a "whitewash". While drunkenness among the crew was discounted at the enquiry, the vessel was sailing at night, in poor visibility and in deteriorating weather. The entrance to Stornoway harbour is not the most straightforward of navigations and it is possible that navigational error was to blame. This hypothesis appears to be supported by the crew of a fishing vessel who noted that Iolaire was not navigating the correct course for entering the harbour.

I suppose you'd have to have been there. Sad.