It’s an expensive hobby owning boats as some of my friends will attest. HMY Iolanthe, a 189 foot steam yacht, was built for Thomas Waller in 1881.
It had seven more owners in the next thirty-seven years. The first was Sir Adam Mortimer Singer, son of the inventor of the eponymous sewing machine, who knew how to spend money. He owned and bred racehorses, had a pilot’s licence, a country estate and was a generous philanthropist but he only kept Iolanthe for a year, passing her on to Donald Currie in 1890. He founded the Union-Castle shipping line, amassing a great fortune much of which he spent on good causes. He owned her for eight years. This is beginning to remind me of The Yellow Rolls-Royce. Next she belonged to the Duke of Montrose who changed her name to Mione, as a tribute to his wife, Hermione. She was a grand dame formidable, married to a duke and granddaughter of the 12th Duke of Somerset. She opposed women’s suffrage, warning “of the danger to the State if votes were given to large numbers of inexperienced women.” Whatever would she think of sixteen-year-old schoolgirls getting the vote?
Montrose quickly tired of life on the ocean wave and after little more than a year she was passed on to Sir James Horlick, Bt., inventor of the malted milk drink. Her name reverted to Iolanthe and he kept her until 1908 when she was bought by Florence Calvert who again only owned her for a year. Her next owner was Sir Charles Assheton-Smith, Bt., who changed her name to Amalthaea – a Greek nymph.
In 1915 she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and armed with two three -inch guns. Since RN vessels in the Napoleonic wars were usually armed with 32-pounder cannons, I am still reading Patrick O’Brian, three inches sounds rather feeble but it refers to the diameter of the shot.
It is often considered bad luck to change the name of a boat but that’s what happened again, for the 4th time. She was re-named Iolaire by the RN and in 1918 was owned by Vivian Newton following the death of Sir Charles. She was based at Stornoway leading anti-submarine patrols but at Hogmanay 1918 was deployed as a passenger vessel to carry hundreds of young men from the Isle of Lewis, serving in the RN in Devonport and Portsmouth, home.
“The wind was coming from the south, astern of Iolaire, and freshened as she neared Stornoway harbour. McLean testified that he sighted Arnish Point lighthouse, at the harbour mouth, about half a point (slightly more than 5.6 degrees) off her port bow. The yacht overtook a fishing vessel, Spider, off the mouth of Loch Grimshader, south of Stornoway. Spider was also heading for Stornoway, and now followed Iolaire. Spider‘s skipper, James MacDonald, testified that Iolaire‘s course was too far to starboard, bringing her too close to land on the east side of the harbour mouth. In his statement, MacDonald declared “I noticed that the vessel did not alter her course… but kept straight on in the direction of the Beasts of Holm. I remarked to one of the crew that the vessel would not clear the headland at Holm…”“ (Wikipedia)
James MacDonald was correct. At 1.50 am Iolaire struck a group of rocks called the Beasts of Holm and eventually sank. She was only twenty yards from the shore but in heavy seas some 200 men perished and only 80 survived. In 2019 Iolaire’s wreck became a protected war grave.
