Sheòl an Iolaire

This is a picture of the Sheòl an Iolaire installation in Stornoway Harbour, which has been erected to commemorate the centenery of the Iolaire disaster on 1st January 1919. The boat-shaped, illuminated wooden posts depict the actual size of the ship, with white posts representing the survivors (79 of them), and 201 unpainted posts representing those who tragically perished as they returned home from WW1. It's eerie, spectacular and poignant. What strikes you immediately is the fact that the boat was clearly far too small to take 280 men, one of the major contributing factors to the scale of the disaster. Although the installation had originally been intended to be temporary, there has been a clamour for it to remain on a permanent basis.