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Starts: 17:30
Ends: 19:00
NOTE: This talk will now be online only
On New Year’s Day 1919 HMY Iolaire struck rocks close to the entrance to Stornoway harbour on the isle of Lewis and sunk with the loss of over 200 men. The vast majority were service personnel returning to the Outer Hebrides at the war’s end. To lose so many men was a huge blow to island communities who would have been, in a traditional economy, heavily reliant on their input and support. It is reasonable to say that this disaster impacted on every household on Lewis especially. There is equally no doubt that this impact, when coupled with Spanish Flu, T.B., and the mass emigration of the 1920s, resonated both emotionally and materially across the rest of the century. Indeed, only since the last quarter of the twentieth century has there been open discussion and commemoration of the disaster within the community.
Our project, which asks why silence was the main form of coping and recovering from this collective trauma, has brought together researchers at the Centre for History, UHI, and the Iolaire Centre – an island-based organisation established to create a heritage centre which tells the story of the Iolaire tragedy and the consequences which flowed from it. Our aim is to assess long term impact and discern the ways in which people coped with, remembered and commemorated the disaster. In short, we explore the socio-cultural legacy of the disaster.
This is a long term project and we have just completed our first year of research. This talk by Dr Iain Robertson and Professor Marjory Harper will, therefore, offer our initial findings, set these in the wider context and outline what we hope to do next.
online
Free
Booking from UHI Centre for History website
UHI Centre for History
Email history@uhi.ac.uk
www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/centre-for-history/history-talks-live/
