\u201cEvery summer, when I was a child, my parents would take me and my brothers up to the Outer Hebrides, which was very different to the south of Scotland<\/a> where we grew up,\u201d says William. \u201cWe were immersed in Gaelic culture, and I became very aware that I was descended from the people there. It was an idyllic time \u2013 there was a real warmth.\u201d<\/p> The Outer Hebrides is an archipelago off the west coast of Scotland that includes the islands of Lewis, Harris, the Uists, Benbecula, Barra and St Kilda. The oral tradition is a major part of the culture, with a rich folklore and store of family stories passed down the generations by word of mouth. This is how William learnt about much of his family, along with records of births, marriages and deaths, parish registers and rentals, plus other miscellaneous collections giving structure to the tales he uncovered by talking to relatives. William discovered that some of his ancestors possibly descended from the MacLeod chiefs who lost the island of Lewis many generations ago, but some of his research is more recent.<\/p> \u201cMy great grandfather Donald Macleod was born in 1879,\u201d says William, whose family, like many on the island, have adopted a lower-case \u2018l\u2019 in the Scottish surname<\/a> Macleod. \u201cHe served with the Royal Naval<\/a> Reserve (RNR) during the First World War<\/a> and was on a steamer, possibly the Baron Ardrossan<\/em>.\u201d Donald was injured when the ship was hit by a torpedo in around 1916, and was sent to the hospital in Edinburgh. He wasn\u2019t able to return to the war, so he had to go back home before the Armistice.<\/p> That torpedo may have saved his life. Two boats, HMY Iolaire<\/em> and SS Sheila<\/em>, sailed from Kyle of Lochalsh on the Scottish mainland on 31 December 1918, full of servicemen going home after the war. Spirits were high, and the men were looking forward to getting back for the New Year celebrations. But on 1 January 1919 tragedy struck.\u00a0<\/p> William vividly remembers his grandmother\u2019s account. \u201cThat night everybody on the island was up and waiting,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe Sheila<\/em> arrived in Stornoway, but there was no sign of the Iolaire<\/em>. She had hit rocks \u2013 the Beasts of Holm \u2013 just outside the harbour. More than 200 of the 280 men on board drowned.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cApparently the news was spread by people running from one village to the next. Islanders who hadn\u2019t heard the news could hear weeping and wailing from the next village, so they knew that something awful had happened.<\/p> \u201cThe islands still have a grief about them \u2013 that day they lost about 10 per cent of those who had signed up with the RNR. A whole generation of women never married and never had children.\u201d<\/p> William\u2019s granny\u2019s father helped recover the bodies. \u201cIn her village, there were four men on board the Iolaire<\/em>. Three died and just one survived. The man felt guilty to the end of his days. He gave evidence at the inquiry, and I\u2019ve read his testimony.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> More recently, there was the sinking of HMS Rawalpindi<\/em>, on which William\u2019s great uncle sailed. \u201cNorman was born in 1913,\u201d says William. \u201cAs the Second World War<\/a> came round, like many of the Outer Hebridean fishermen he signed up for the Navy. He was to go on HMS Rawalpindi<\/em>. I suspect that the men going on board knew they were doomed, because she wasn\u2019t properly armoured.<\/p> \u201cMy grandpa Bill went down to the docks with Norman to see him off. Norman turned to him and said, \u2018Goodbye Bill, I won\u2019t see you again.\u2019 And off he sailed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> On patrol north of the Faroe Islands on 23 November 1939, HMS Rawalpindi<\/em> encountered two German warships. She bravely stood her ground, but was sunk within 40 minutes, although she managed to signal the Germans\u2019 position back to base. Norman was among the 238 men who were lost that day.\u00a0<\/p> Almost 90 years earlier, in November 1850, six men perished in B\u00e0thadh M\u00f2r Shuardail<\/em> (the \u2018Big Drowning of Swordale\u2019). Swordale was a village on Lewis of about 100\u2013150 people. \u201cNobody\u2019s quite sure what happened. Some reckon that a whale came up underneath their boat and capsized them. Others think that they went down because they overloaded the boat with the seaweed they were collecting to use as fertilizer,\u201d says William.\u00a0<\/p> All of the occupants drowned, leaving six widows and more than 20 children below the age of 16 fatherless. \u201cOne of the men was my 4x great uncle<\/a> John Macleod.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> However, there are positive stories too. William\u2019s grandmother\u2019s brother Murdo Macleod was also in the Navy in the Second World War. \u201cAmong many other adventures, he shot down a German plane from the deck of the minesweeper he was on, rescued two Germans when the plane ditched, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal at the palace by George VI. He took my granny with him. She remembered the king as a nice, quiet man, with a bit of a stutter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> As well as births, marriages and deaths and census records<\/a>, William used some unusual records held by the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. \u201cHere I found the collection of Rev William Matheson. He was a very influential Celtic scholar based at Edinburgh University. He made notes of things that people told him, transcribed rentals and recorded inferences drawn from material. He also wrote articles for the Stornoway Gazette<\/em>, one of which I developed in my third booklet The MacLeods of Garrabost Revisited<\/em>.\u201d<\/p> \u201cAt the National Records of Scotland, they\u2019ve got lots of miscellaneous old documents,\u201d adds William. \u201cThe one that I\u2019m proudest of finding is a letter from 1786 that nobody else seems to have noticed, which is full of genealogical information.\u201d<\/p> William also had a lot of guidance from Bill Lawson, the foremost Outer Hebridean researcher, who lives on Harris. \u201cHe\u2019s researched every Outer Hebridean family that has existed in the past 250 years \u2013 about 27,000 when one includes those who emigrated \u2013 in great depth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> Through Bill, William made contact with Andrew P MacLeod, the Clan MacLeod genealogy coordinator, and through him a lady in East Kilbride. She had written to the Stornoway Gazette<\/em> claiming that her family was related to the MacLeod chiefs.<\/p> \u201cShe has kept the writings of her grandfather, who was born in 1878. There are about 14 pages and she had always wanted them to be looked after, but was not sure how to proceed. They are wonderful documents, and she agreed that we could publish them.\u201d These became William\u2019s first booklet, Family Traditions \u2013 John Macleod, 11 Melbost<\/em>.<\/p>![\"A](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2024\/04\/Iolaire-stone.jpg\")
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