Pentland Road - 2

This plaque is affixed in All Saints Parish Church, High Wycombe. It is in memory of the captain of the Rawalpindi, which went down in battle in the North Atlantic on 23 November 1939. Edward Coverley Kennedy (father of the late broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy) commanded the converted liner as she encountered three German warships between Iceland and the Faroes. He managed to relay their position to Royal Navy HQ in London. The Germans ordered Captain Kennedy to surrender, as he was hopelessly outgunned. He refused to do so, and sent a shell at one of the German boats, which bounced harmlessly off its armour. The following "battle" resulted in the sinking of the Rawalpindi, and the loss of eight sailors from the Isle of Lewis. Four others were taken POW and taken to Germany. Captain Kennedy was Mentioned in Despatches, something that is held to be underrated in view of the gallant sacrifice he, and his men, made. Even the German navy command acknowledged the bravery of the Raw...

The fact that there are relatively few different first names and surnames in the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland is well documented. It therefore came as no surprise to read of the confusion surrounding the news of the death of a Norman Mackay, as reported by the Stornoway Gazette of 2 May 1941. The news has now been confirmed that Seaman Norman Mackay (Mac Dhanie), Cross-Skigersta Road, was lost when the ship on which he was serving was sunk. Norman's parents were aware that he was on the same ship as Malcolm Murray, 21 Swainbost, and Don. Murray, Swainbost, received word some weeks ago that his son was missing. At that time, when no news came to the parents of Norman Mackay, we all expected that he was safe, but we have now learned that a telegram was sent instead to the parents of another Seaman Norman Mackay, residing at Shader, Point, when the ship was sunk. But Norman Mackay, Shader, was among the survivors and arrived home on leave on the day his parents received the tel...

I have now completed the transcription of tributes to the men from Lewis and Harris who lost their lives during the Second World War in the year 1940. There were 61 tributes in all, of which below eight were group tributes. HMS Wyvern Dunkirk HMS Vandyck HMS Boreas and HMS Wren HMT River Clyde HMS Dunvegan Castle HMS Esk and HMS Express SS Haxby The total number of casualties from Lewis for 1940 was 93, and 7 from Harris.Two casualties (originating from outwith the Outer Hebrides) lie buried in the islands, and are mentioned here in italics . John Gunn , 32 Eoropie , Royal Naval Reserve Donald Campbell , 6 Lionel , Royal Naval Reserve , HMS Exmouth Hector Macdonald , 10 Tolsta Chaolais , Royal Naval Reserve , HMS Exmouth Norman Macdonald , 19 Upper Bayble , Royal Naval Reserve , HMS Exmouth Hector Mackay , 27 Sheshader , Royal Naval Reserve , HMS Exmouth John Daniel Macleod , 9 New Holdings, Leurbost , Royal Naval Reserve , HMS Exmouth John Morrison , 6 Melbo...

By early 1941, considerable numbers of island servicemen were held as prisoners of war at various locations across Germany and territories under its sway at the time. The Stornoway Gazette of 28 March 1941 published a map to show where the various camps were located.

This is the gravestone for Seaman Herbert Charles Hill, who, according to the gravestone, died on 18 January 1941 at the age of 19. The clipped edges of the stone signal that this is a non-world war gravestone in the care of the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission. Hill served in the Merchant Navy on SS Eaglescliffe Hall. The Stornoway Gazette of 21st March 1941 picks up the story: A body was seen floating in Stornoway Harbour near Number One Wharf on Wednesday afternoon of last week. When recovered, the body was found to be that of Herbert Charles Hill, a seaman, of Port Talbot, Glamorgan. Hill went missing about two months ago from a merchant ship then lying in Stornoway Harbour. It was thought at the time that he might have left the port on board a trawler with whose crew he was on friendly terms. [Edit]. Seaman Herbert Charles Hill was the son of crane-driver Henry Hill (himself deceased) and Sarah-Ann Hill of 18 Pendarvis Terrace, Aberavon, Port Talbot, Glamorgan [Wales]. The ...

I received the following information from Trevor Bell, the webmaster of the Rangitane website, about Alex Macrae (see previous post ). There appears to have been some confusion about Alex's fate after the sinking of the Rangitane. Mr Bell advises me that: " In ‘Ordeal by Sea’ by Sydney Walters, the definitive history of the New Zealand Shipping Company during WW2, it lists Alex Macrae as being killed on Rangitane. This was at variance with various other records and I was able to confirm that he survived Emirau but died not long after ." The below information was supplied to Mr Bell by Stornoway Historical Society in 2005, and I am happy to attribute source: He was in Manila during the Philippines War, in Taku Forts during the Boxer Rising, troop carrying in the Boer War and at sea in the First World War. He was a Journeyman at Fairfields in Govan when he went to sea in January 1899 and by May 1900 had passed his Board of Trade examinations for 2nd Engineer.  Al...

I have transcribed as many tributes as could be found in issues of the Stornoway Gazette from 1940. More will follow from later years in the Second World War in days and weeks to come. Caution has to be exercised with these clippings. Sometimes, the names are incorrect; sometimes, a man is reported missing, but later turns up alive. I have access to the full listings of the WW2 casualty lists from Lewis and Harris , and can therefore doublecheck. A case in point is that of Refrigeration Engineer, Alexander Macrae, late of 21 Keith Street, Stornoway. His ship, the Rangitane , was torpedoed in December 1940. He survived and was marooned, before being picked up and returned home. Unfortunately, Alex Macrae died whilst returning home in May 1941, aged 65.  Incidentally, the story of the Rangitane (linked to above) is worthy of a read in itself. 

James Chisholm first appeared on my radar when I transcribed the Napier Commission's Report for Castlebay. I was not able to find much on him in the censuses, apart from the one for 1901. I therefore enlisted the help of Sandy Stephens in South Uist, who kindly unearthed the following information on Canon James. I summarise from " Catholic Highlands of Scotland ", by Frederick Blundell, originally published in 1917. He was priest in Barra and environs between 1883 and 1903, during which he built a chapel in Mingulay. His main work is the building of the new church, the present-day edifice, in Castlebay. He appealed for its construction in 1887 on the grounds that the previous building could not accommodate the numbers of parishioners (between 2,200 and 2,600), which in fact were spread over eight different islands. It needs to be borne in mind that in the 1880s, the Bishops Isles (Barra Head, Mingulay, Pabbay and Sandray) were still inhabited with sizeable populations. ...

I have read John Macleod's excellent account of the Iolaire Disaster, When I heard the Bell , and can only fault it on some of the sweeping statements in its first chapter. I specifically want to answer the assertion that people from the Isle of Lewis did not care about the fact that the Netherlands were invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940. This, allegedly, because the Dutch had remained neutral during the 1914-1919 war and had interned more than a hundred islanders at Groningen between October 1914 and the Armistice of 11 November 1918. I have worked with a local historian in Groningen to unearth the story of the internment camp (dubbed HMS Timbertown by the inmates). Under its policy of neutrality, Holland could not be seen to be favouring either side (Germany or England), so when combatants from either of those two other countries ended up on its territory, they had to be interned until the end of the war. Releasing them to their homeland would place the Netherlands on the si...

The first witness to give evidence at Balmacara in August 1883, Duncan Sinclair, came with some hard-hitting statements regarding the way tenants were treated in the parish of Lochalsh. It would appear that he intensified some of the statements a bit. Those who were allowed by the proprietor to remain after the factor had expressed his determination to have them evicted, in these words, " Go you must, even though you should go to the bottom of the sea ," were allowed a mere fringe of the township, bordering on the rocky sea-shore. [...] at the commencement of the sheep-farming mania, when the people were regarded as a nuisance to be got rid of by driving them out of the country like noxious vermin, or by crowding them into barren promontories or boggy hollows which were useless for sheep [...] Lord Napier proceeded to verify that the translations accurately reflected what the people had actually said. 30059. I understood you to say that the English phraseology of tho...

When trawling for tributes to those from the Western Isles who fell in the Second World War, I came across the story of Malcolm Macaskill, late of 24 Northton, Harris. He was one of several islanders (from Lewis and Harris) that were lost when the destroyer Exmouth was sunk off Wick on 21 January 1940. Reading through the tribute to Malcolm in the Stornoway Gazette of 12 April 1940, it would appear that he was instrumental in bringing enlistment in the Royal Naval Reserve to the men of Harris. As the tribute states, sailors from Harris were debarred from joining the RNR on account of the fact that they were too far from a seaport. To those of us who know the islands well, this is ridiculous. Any point in Harris is not more than a mile or two from the sea - at the most. However, some bureaucrat in London must have thought that Leverburgh nor Tarbert qualified as a seaport, and that therefore the nearest seaport is Stornoway - at least 30 miles from any village in Harris. It took the i...