Rockall shipwreck exhibition begins tour

An exhibition about one of the worst maritime disasters to have taken place in the Atlantic - and the role played by the people of Stornoway in looking after survivors - is on tour in the Western Isles.

Some 635 people died when SS Norge sank after hitting a reef off Rockall in June 1904. Onboard were nearly 800 passengers and crew, many of them mothers and children.

The disaster was the largest loss of life in the Atlantic Ocean before the Titanic.

Most were emigrants seeking a better life in America. Russian Jews, Norwegians, Finns, Swedes and Danes were onboard.

But with only enough lifeboats for 215, only 160 people survived. Most of the lifeboats - which were open offering no respite from the prevailing weather - drifted in the Atlantic for days before being found by chance - one close to the Faroes, around 500 miles from the sinking - and the survivors from two of the closer lifeboats were landed at number one pier in Stornoway.

One of Point and Sandwick Trust’s community consultants, Tony Robson, led the creation of the exhibition.

Titanic’s Predecessor: SS Norge – An Atlantic Catastrophe is on show the Ionad Stoodie centre in Point for two weeks.

In September it will open at Comunn Eachdraidh Nis and go to the Harris Distillery the following month.

A number of museums across Europe are interested in replicating the exhibition including in Russia, Estonia, Poland and Denmark.

The disaster remains the second worst civilian maritime disaster ever in the Atlantic, after the Titanic, and it made headline news around the world when the story broke a week after it happened.

Some of the survivors were cared for in the Lewis Hospital and others in private homes. Sadly, a number of them did not survive and were buried in Lower Sandwick cemetery.

The last place to pick up a signal from the ill-fated ship had been Lloyd’s Station at the Butt of Lewis on 27 June, the day before she sank.

With no radio communications, it was a Grimsby trawler that was first with the news, having come across the first lifeboat of survivors and taken them all the way back to its home port, a journey of five days. From that point, though, news travelled fast – by telegraph – and within 36 hours the tragedy was being reported in every newspaper in America and elsewhere.

Tony Robson obtained funding from Western Isles Development Trust and the Western Isles Lottery towards the cost of printing the informative banners, plus additional money from the local lottery to restore the lettering on the gravestone in the Sandwick cemetery.

He said he felt compelled to produce the exhibition because it was a “huge event” that was “not talked about”

He also wants to “highlight maritime history and the need for a maritime museum on Lewis” and to demonstrate that the Western Isles’maritime history is multi-faceted.

In Tony’s view, the story of the SS Norge was eclipsed by the Titanic because the Titanic had carried so many rich and well-to-do passengers, whereas the SS Norge was “full of refugees”.

He said the arrival of the lifeboat survivors in Stornoway would have been “sensational by today’s standards” and he described as “wonderful” the response from the town.

“The exhibition tells the great way Stornoway looked after them and there were huge crowds when the recovered survivors left Stornoway, going on to America. It is an epic story.”

Rockall shipwreck exhibition begins tour

5 July 2021

SS Norge survivors inside Lewis Hospital

Comhairle nan Eilean Siar Heritage Services