This painting shows the steam ship Metagama. On Saturday 21 April 1923, the SS Metagama sailed from Stornoway to Canada, with 300 young Lewis emigrants on board, all but 20 of them young men, with an average age of 22 (Wikipedia). This journey was part of a wave of mass emigration from the islands. After the highland clearances, the loss of many young men in the British imperial wars and the first world war, this emigration in the 1920s left a lasting trauma on the isles.
You can see this painting in the office of the Stornoway Historical Society. Malcolm Macdonald, the director of the Society, found the painting in a container of construction debris at the harbour. When the harbour office was renovated, the painting was simply thrown away. Now it hangs on Malcolm's wall.
Information on the SS Metagama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Metagama, 20.09.2025
This photo is part of the visual geography project "Cracks and Holes" which maps places and their stories on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.