by Bill Ogle
If you have visited one of the shows where we have had a stand, you may well have read our recruitment flyer. If not, this is how it looks. But you may ask, what is the ship. The caption reads ss Metagama Leaving Liverpool, Oswald Franklin Pennington (1885-1953), Museum nan Eilean, ArtUK; and this is her story.
The museum is located at Stornoway, in the Outer Hebrides, and this picture was used at the museum in April 2023 to mark the 100th anniversary of the departure of two emigrant ships from that area. The ss Marloch departed from Lochboisdale on 15th April 1923 for St John, New Brunswick. On board were at least fifty families from Barra, Eriskay, South Uist and Benbecula totalling some 300. Within a week, the ss Metagama left Stornoway on 21st April, when a further 300 passengers joined those who had boarded at Glasgow; her destination was Montreal, but heavy ice conditions forced her divert and follow the earlier sailing to St Johns, New Brunswick. Further large-scale departures occurred throughout the 1920s & 30s.
The departures of these two ships were particularly noticeable, because the vast majority of those Hebridean passengers were young, the average age being about 22 years. Following the loss of so many in the First World War, it was another blow to the morale of those left behind
According to local historian Catriona Dunn, Lewis had a hard war with almost 1,000 men dying during the conflict. She says the islands had already lost a higher proportion of servicemen than most other areas of Britain and this meant the Iolaire disaster was an unimaginable horror. Just weeks after the slaughter of World War One ended, the Hebridean Isle of Lewis was hit by the crowning sorrow of the war.
In the early hours of 1 January 1919, naval yacht HMY Iolaire, which was carrying sailors returning from the war, hit rocks as it approached Stornoway and sank. More than 200 people drowned, just yards from the shoreline and the safety of home.
Small communities lost a lot of men, on top of losses during the war itself – there was just an unspeakable grief,” she says. Many feel that what happened contributed to future emigration from the Western Isles.
In her short life, Metagama successfully completed 151 North Atlantic round-trips.
| ss Mareloch | ss Metagama | |
| Built | 1904 | 1915 |
| Builder | Workman, Clark & Co | Barclay, Curle & Co |
| At | Belfast | Glasgow |
| Built for | Allen Line | Canadian Pacific |
| Original name | Victorian | n/a |
| GRT | 10,635 | 12,420 |
| Length ft | 520 | 500 |
| Beam ft | 60.4 | 64 |
| Change of ownership to Canadian Pacific | 1917 | n/a |
| Main engine | Steam turbine | 2 x quad expansion |
| Power | 15,000shp | 1,492nhp |
| Propellors | Three | Two |
| Speed knots | 18 | 16 |
| Passengers – Forst Class | 346 | 520 |
| Second Class | 286 | n/a |
| Steerage | 1,000 | n/a |
| Cabin | 1,200 | |
| Laid up | 1928 | 1931 |
| Scrapped at Pembroke Dock | 1929 | |
| Scrapped at Bo’ness | 1934 |
