The Iolaire Disaster

The Iolaire disaster was a devastating maritime shipwreck that occurred in the early hours of New Year's Day, 1 January 1919, when the naval yacht HMY Iolaire hit rocks and sank just 20 yards from the shore of the Isle of Lewis. The tragedy killed 201 of the 285 people on board, the vast majority of whom were Scottish sailors returning home to the Outer Hebrides after surviving the horrors of the First World War. It stands as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in British history, described by contemporaries as the "crowning sorrow of the war"