At 1.55am on 1st January 1919, a naval yacht carrying sailors, including  Ordinary Seaman Macleod, home on leave ran aground on rocks near the village of Holm, a mere 20 yards from the shore of the Isle of Lewis and less than a mile from the safe harbour of Stornoway.

HMY Iolaire was crowded with 280 men, mostly naval reservists returning to the safety and comfort of their homes after the horrors of the Great War. On this dark night of Winter a force ten gale was blowing from the South, hard onto the shore, and there was a heavy sea running.

Men drowned as they jumped or slid into the sea from the pitching decks, were flung back into the angry foam from lifeboats awash and overloaded, were dashed against jagged rocks, or managed to swim and crawl ashore, only to die before they could reach shelter or aid.

By the time the first New Year’s Day of peacetime dawned, 201 men had lost their lives, 181 of them on the very shores of the island they called home.  Macleod’s body was never recovered.

(text from www.iolaire.org)