We have been commemorating the centenary of that most historic day, 21st April 1923, when the SS Metagama, the huge liner which came to take 260 mostly young men and women away from their homes in Lewis.
I have been thinking and reflecting on what it must have been really like for our community of that time still struggling to come to terms with the tragic impact of the losses and effects of The Great War and HMY Iolaire.
There would, no doubt, have been a great amount of excitement and anticipation amongst the young people embarking on such a new future, and an equal amount of sadness and sense of loss amongst those they were leaving behind. There would also have been a tender understanding by the older generations of the oppertunity that might be offered by such a departure. Every emotion of migration would have been expressed. An event of such a scale would have had a huge and imediate impact on the community, the effects of which could only be long lasting. I have been thinking and reflecting on its effects on that community and indeed on my own family and relatives. Through some research a very sad and poignant story was revealed and I would now like to tell it.
SS Metagama did not just sail from Scotland to Canada. She also made return voyages across the Atlantic. On the 3rd June 1922, my great-aunt, Mary Rennick (nee) MacLeod, departed Montreal in Canada on board the SS Metagama. She was the sister of my maternal grandfather Kenneth Macleod. Mary was headed back to Scotland to visit her family, but would never return to Canada. On 31st December 1923, she passed away at 1 Dalbeg.
Mary was born on 10th June 1896 at 50 North Shawbost, the eldest daughter of Malcolm MacLeod (Calum, Dhòmhnall, 'ic Mhurchaid / Buicean) and Kennethina Murray (Ceanag, Aonghais, Choinnich, Aonghais Gobha). After war ended in 1918, Mary met an American serviceman, Private George William Rennick. The pair married on 6th May 1919 in Glasgow. The ceremony was performed at 19 Howard Street, warranted by the Sheriff Substitute of Lanarkshire, in the presence of Police Constable Roderick Smith and domestic servant Effie MacKay. George was a chauffeur in civilian life,the son of Harry Rennick (a fisherman, by then deceased) and Mary. His mother had remarried after his father died, and was by that time Mrs Cooke.
Four months after their wedding, Mary and George left Scotland on 15th September 1919 and arrived at Detroit ten days later. They lived at 1264 Belvedere Avenue, Detroit, for nearly three years. By all accounts, Mary contracted TB and wanted to return to Scotland to visit her family.
Mary applied to the authorities in Washington DC for a new passport. On the application, dated 23rd May 1922, she declared that she was going abroad temporarily and would return within two years. The photograph with the passport application, as displayed at the top of this post, shows her looking unwell. It appears that she was suffering from tuberculosis since before leaving North America.
I copy the description on her passport application:
| Age: | 22 |
| Stature: | 5 ft 2 |
| Forehead: | Low |
| Eyes: | Brown |
| Nose: | Small |
| Mouth: | Small |
| Chin: | Narrow |
| Hair: | Dark brown |
| Complexion: | Light |
| Face: | Small |
| A small scar between the nostrils. |
Mary departed Montreal for Greenock on board SS Metagama on 3rd June 1922. She then returned to Lewis, to be with her family.
All through my life I have heard of the truly sad story of this young relative of mine, whose voyage back home to Lewis could not have been sadder or unlike her peers'. Those young people who were so filled with excitement and expectation, as they gathered, in Stornoway. Then got ready to set off to board the same SS Metagama to cross the Atlantic to Canada. That day exactly one century ago. By contrast, Mary’s story was very different.
As I researched her short life, it became clear that her experience in North America was far from a happy one. That return home, on her own, to her family, would be marked by tradgedy and grief. Both Mary and a younger sister Margaret Ann (“Maggie Ann”or “Peggi Ann”) were ill with TB. Their illnesses were apparently, unconnected and contracted at different times. Then for nearly a year the sisters nursed each other at their family home, at 1 Dalbeg. At that time people referred to the extremely moving and sad scene of the two beautiful sisters caring for each other there. The family had moved from North Shawbost, early in 1922, it was evidently not to be a happy home. Maggie Ann passed away on 11th May 1923, she was twenty-one years old. Mary passed away seven months later on 31st December 1923, she was twenty-seven years old.
In the next decades, Mary and Margaret Ann’s brothers and sisters married and raised a family. In each family that followed, the first two daughters were named in remembrance of the tragic sisters who died in 1923.