HMY Iolaire

One hundred years ago today occurred one of the worst maritime disasters in United Kingdon waters since the loss of SS Norge in 1904. It was undoubtedly the most tragic single occurrence to befall the combined island of Lewis and Harris.

The Islands had already lost about 1200 men in their prime during The War. The addition of 174 Lewismen and 7 Harrismen within yards of the shore of home made the tragedy even harder to bear.

Only 75 of the passengers survived, and the death toll may in fact have been higher as the ship was overcrowded and passenger records were incomplete. Many of the survivors were saved by the actions of John F Macleod, Port of Ness, who jumped from the boat with a line, miraculously made land, wedged himself in the boulders and hauled ashore a hawser, along which most of the survivors struggled to safety.

The tragedy has  been the subject of a number of books and many articles and there have been and will be many acts of remembrance during this week in which I shall, hopefully, participate and about which I hope blog.

Last evening there was a torchlight procession to a service and concert of remembrance attended by Scotland's First Minister and HRH Prince Charles.

I will not try and repeat much that has already been written but for anyone with an interest in the Islands, history, maritime history or who are just curious to know some more I will provide some links.

Wikipedia  Stornoway Historical Society  Virtual Hebrides  Hebridean Connections

Books:

The Darkest Dawn: The Story of the Iolaire Tragedy by Malcolm Macdonald and Donald John Macleod. (2018) Publisher: Acair. The most authoritative and thorough account of the event with details of those lost and those who survived.

When I Heard The Bell - The Loss of the Iolaire by John MacLeod. Publisher:  Birlinn Limited.

There are more which can be found by Googling "Books Iolaire disaster"

Happy Birthday to the Web

Today is the 10,000th day of the Web. Put another way the Web is 27 years and about 4 months old.

On day 1,208 the dial-up melody rang in our ears and, since then, in the ears of anyone who watches a movie from that era where emails are involved. 

However all this is fairly academic for most of us because the use of emails didn't really become relatively commonplace until the mid 1990s. Hotmail, for example, started in 1996/7.

I wonder when the WWW is viewed 100 or 1000 years from now how significant it will be regarded. 

When I was very young my maternal grandparents lived in a large house where the main power was gas and the heating was largely coal. The wireless (the name in those days for a radio) was powered by an accumulator. The accumulator (a type of electrical battery which can be charged and discharged and recharged many times) would be collected by a local company and recharged every couple of weeks. They had a vacuum cleaner which was huge and not particularly portable and was powered by a person who pumped a handle rather like this one only significantly larger. It was a two-person operation.

I often talked with my grandmother in later years (bearing in mind that she died 45 years ago at the age of 93) of the huge changes that had taken place in her lifetime.

In year 1887 when my grandmother was born the first British motor car was just about appearing. In 1971 the motor car with all its technology as we know it today was not even a dream. When she died the personal computer wasn't known never mind the World Wide Web. She did live to see the first moon landing (in 1969). Ironically the computer in the Apollo had a miniscule amount of the computing power of the simplest of mobile phones today.

The changes that have appeared in my lifetime sometimes blow my mind. I wonder if the changes that my son and subsequent generations will see will be as huge. Of course I will never know.

Thankful Thursday

It's been a strange day.  Strange but good.  I rose expecting a quiet day ahead.  As I was contemplating breakfast Gaz Skyped to ask if I could pop out to the house site and see the chap who's doing the foundations and get some information.  No bother at all.  I'd just arranged to have coffee in town with a friend so it all fitted in well.  During my driving and whilst doing various other tasks today I wrote a dozen Thankful Thursday posts.  Can I think of a single one as I come to commit thoughts to paper (well to the ether actually)?  No.  So being thankful for having a good memory isn't one of them I guess.  In fact I've always had a really terrible memory.  Bummer really.  What was I saying?  Oh yes.  Thankful Thursday.

Did you know that King James IV is reputed to have believed that children were born with a 'natural' language?  To find out he had two newly born children brought up in isolation on a remote Island with a dumb nursemaid.  I have no idea what the outcome was although I think we can safely assume that the children didn't grow up speaking Scots.  Kink James' native language was, I believe, Scots, although he also spoke Latin, very well and French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish fluently.  It was rather a tragedy that such a monarch - probably the best of the Stuart line - should have seen the defeat of his nation to the English at the Battle of Flodden 500 years ago. 

Well so far I'm not doing very well.  Perhaps if I wait until tomorrow the ideas will return.  Then again....  Did you know that the following are the International Holidays for this month?

Sep 08	International Literacy Day
Sep 13	International Chocolate Day
Sep 15	Software Freedom Day
Sep 16	International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer
Sep 19	Talk Like a Pirate Day
Sep 21	World Gratitude Day
Sep 22	World Car-Free Day
Sep 29	Inventors Day

No? Nor did I. You'll notice that September 21 is World Gratitude Day. They've stolen your idea Jaz.

Me? I'm just thankful that I've managed to get through Thursday unscathed.  Well, assuming nothing untoward happens in the next 1 hour 50 minutes..