PANALBA

A Tragic Waste

David Anson 06/12/2009 11:26 AM

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The scene of the disaster at Quintinshill

The First World War had its share of tragic incidents; of pointless loss of life: but Scotland suffered two of the most intensely tragic and entirely pointless losses of life.  Both took place far from the major battles; both took place in Scotland; one on Scottish soil as soldiers left for the front and one in Scottish waters as sailors returned long after Armistice.

In the early hours of Saturday, 22nd May 1915, almost five hundred officers and men of the Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment), members of Battalion HQ, A and D Companies of the 1/7th (Leith Territorial) Battalion, a local volunteer battalion mobilised at the outbreak of the war and known as ‘Leith’s Own’, were speeding South on a troop train en route for the port of Liverpool where they were to embark for Gallipoli.  One of two trains carrying the battalion, they had mounted the train at Larbert station, Stirlingshire, Scotland, having till then been involved in Coastal defence duties in their homeland.

At approximately 06.49, as most of the men dozed or slept peacefully in the gas-light’s glow of the locked, wood-framed carriages, at Quintinshill, a little north of Gretna Green, travelling at 70 mph on what should have been a clear line, their train collided head-on with an stationary goods train. Quite simply, the signal men in charge at Quintinshill had forgotten about the stationary train!  In addition to the up and down mainlines, Quintinshill signal box controlled two passing loops, used to enable faster trains to overtake slower ones ahead.  That morning, with the two passing loops already occupied, the nigh-shift signalman had already shunted the slow train of empty trucks onto the opposite running line (the up line) to let an express train, following on the down line, overtake and had omitted to point out the fact on handover to the day-shift signalman. This had caused the initial collision but within seconds, as fit and wounded began climbing from the remains of their train, and before anything could be done either to effect any rescue of trapped and dead or issue any warning, the North bound passenger express collided with the wreckage, adding to the carnage as the wrecked Royal Scots’ train was telescoped to little more than a third its proper length.  A goods train in the down loop and a further train of coal empties in the up loop, hit in the process of the initial major impacts, further increased the scale of the disaster.

Most of the Royal Scots had been travelling in wood-framed vehicles with gas-lighting and fire immediately began to consume the debris but fire engines from Carlisle took over three hours to arrive at the scene. Casualties were appalling whereas those in the steel-structured, electric-lit carriages of the express were relatively light by comparison.

At a sombre roll-call at 11.30 that morning, less than sixty members of the Battalion answered their names. The final toll stood at 227 killed and 246 injured with The Royal Scots suffering the vast majority of casualties, with 214 killed, including 3 officers, 29 NCOs and 182 men killed or burnt to death out of a total of 485 on board; representing 42 per cent of the Battalion’s entire casualties for the whole war. Such was the intensity of the ensuing conflagration many of the dead could not be identified and in some cases merely metal buttons, buckles, and Regimental insignia survived. Thousands lined the route of the cortege when the majority of The Royal Scots’ dead were buried with full military honours at Rosebank Cemetery, Edinburgh. A memorial bearing all 214 names still stands in the cemetery.

That the remnants of the Battalion eventually arrived in Gallipoli on 13th June, where they took part in the bloody attacks on Gully Ravine and Achi Baba, cruelly highlights the bitter irony that the majority of those young men originally en route to a foreign place whose name they would have hardly known, should have perished so tragically on home soil before even a shot was fired.

Both signalmen were later imprisoned for their neglect.

The Quintinshill crash remains to this day the worst disaster in the history of British railways.

The Isle of Lewis had had a hard war. Of some 6,200 men who had heeded the call nearly 1,000 had died. Every family on the island had lost fathers, sons, brothers or uncles. So, the night of 31 December 1918 was tense with expectation. The war was finally over; the world was at peace and after four long years the men who had served king and country were on their way home.

The Kyle of Lochalsh was thronged with hundreds of laughing, boisterous servicemen crowding onto the quay. The English – the foreign men – had all celebrated Christmas, as was their custom, but the men of the Highlands and Islands traditionally marked New Year – Hogmanay – so the regular steam-ferry, the SS Sheila, was soon packed as returning, freshly demobbed Islanders struggled to get home to their families for the celebrations.  It was decided the Royal Navy should transport their own and allow the rest to the S S Sheila and the Iolaire was ordered across the Minch from her berth in Stornoway to carry out the task.

A luxury yacht before the war, under the name of the Amalthaea, and requisitioned for use by the navy in anti-submarine and patrol work for which she was renamed the Iolaire – Gaelic for "Sea Eagle".

The captain of the Iolaire, Commander Mason, voiced his concerns to Commander Walsh, in charge at Kyle, about the paucity of life-saving equipment onboard. She was kitted out with only two lifeboats and lifejackets for 80. Even more worrying she had never sailed into Stornoway harbour at night, a tricky enough manoeuvre in daylight.

All such discussions were brought up short by the arrival of yet two more trains at the quay and spilling out still more demobbed men. Commander Mason acquiesced and ordered the 284 servicemen, mainly navy reserves, up the gangplank and onto the ship.  At 9.30pm, the Iolaire and her happy cargo sailed out into the dark of Old Year’s Night; passengers seeking shelter wherever they could throughout the vessel; most sleeping only fitfully in the cramped conditions such was their excitement at seeing their homes and their families again.

12 miles out of Stornoway Harbour the weather turned. The crew of a local fishing boat watched the Iolaire pass them and in their later evidence told how they felt she had appeared not to change course to make harbour. One of three suggested courses considered at later official enquiries and investigations into the Iolaire’s probable navigation at that point and other events leading up to the sinking.  What is clear is that, for whatever reason, a navigational error or neglect, the Iolaire steamed straight onto Biastan Thuilm - the aptly named Beasts of Holm; a rocky outcrop just short of Stornoway harbour entrance with a small light attached to the rock warning mariners of the approaching danger.

Visibility was poor. Sleet was falling and the seas were being whipped into a raging maelstrom. When the Iolaire collided with the "Beasts" she listed heavily almost immediately. Nobody on board knew where they were, or what had happened. The boat was lying barely 20 feet from land, but between the ship and the rocks was a boiling, raging sea. As many as fifty men jumped into the water and tried for shore only to drown in the freezing water just a few feet from shore. The Iolaire’s two lifeboats were launched, but were swamped immediately as too many men battled for too few seats.

Men clambered for the highest points on board as the seas swept the Iolaire’s decks: the gun platform at the stern, on the bridge, or up the masts in the rigging.  Many were simply swept away; others fell into the seething water as they climbed.

At three o’clock in the morning the ship’s back broke and she went under.

As the men onboard slowly drowned one man, John Macleod, managed to make shore towing a line with which rescuers were then able to haul a stronger rope along which 25 men managed to escape, precariously heaving themselves along it hand over hand; a feat of heroism that was to earn John the highest peacetime aware for heroism for his incredible courage and strength.

Donald Morrison climbed a mast as the ship went down and clung on as she submerged. Incredibly, he was picked up alive the next morning at 10 o’clock, having spent eight hours in the water.

His brother was not so lucky. He drowned alongside 205 men who had faced shot and shell, in some cases had had their ships torpedoed beneath them and survived hours, even days, in open seas before being rescued, only to die within sight and sound of their own homes and loved ones.

The Lewis Roll of Honour records the poignant loss of Kenneth Macphail whose death epitomises the tragedy: "He was the sole survivor of a ship torpedoed in the Mediterranean in October 1917. He had a terrible experience before he was rescued having been nearly 36 hours in the sea until washed ashore in Algeria. Pathetic in the extreme it is to think that this powerful seaman after so miraculous an escape in the Mediterranean perished within a few feet of his native soil."

As New Year’s Day broke across the islands, families so eagerly awaiting their loved ones began to hear rumours of a terrible disaster. Men walked miles from villages to Stornoway in search of news only to be devastated by the heartbreaking news. As The Scotsman of 6 January soberly noted: "The villages of Lewis are like places of the dead. The homes of the island are full of lamentation – grief that cannot be comforted. Scarcely a family has escaped the loss of a near blood relative. Many have had sorrow heaped upon sorrow."

Days went by and hope was cruelly kept alive as still not all the men were recovered. Boats left the harbour in search of bodies to return as night fell to a silent crowd waiting at the harbour. In 1959 Donald Macphail, speaking on Gaelic radio, recalled the moment his friend found the body of his son: ‘The man’s son was there, and I remember he was so handsome that I could have said he was not dead at all. His father went on his knees beside him and began to take letters from his son’s pockets. And the tears were splashing on the body of his son. And I think it is the most heart-rending sight I have ever seen.’

Two investigations were ordered. With the crew dead no conclusion was reached, other than to rule out drink as being the cause. A public enquiry held later found that the deciding factor in the tragedy was the lack of lifebelts and life craft in the vessel.

The Iolaire disaster was the third worst peace-time catastrophe (for loss of life) in 20th Century British maritime history.  Though understandable, the resultant trauma and its effects can never be adequately quantified but Roddy Murray director of An Lanntair museum in Stornoway is on record saying "We can speculate on its contribution to the mass emigrations of the twenties, its effect on the Lewis character, the rebirth of an inherent fatalism. Its effect was like the Passover of the Old Testament."