Brutal emigrant voyage of 250 years ago remembered

Descendants were taken to where the emigrant boat The Hector was moored 250 years ago

An ill-fated journey made by Scots to Canada has been marked at the loch where their ship left 250 years ago.

Eighteen people, most of them children, died on The Hector after the boat with almost 200 emigrants on board departed Loch Broom in Wester Ross.

Small pox and other illnesses affected the passengers, who included families from the Highlands and also Greenock.

Descendants of some of the survivors gathered at Loch Broom last week to remember the journey of July 1773.

Many of the emigrants were seeking to escape poverty and start new lives on land in Pictou, Nova Scotia.

Sarah MacKenzie said leaving Scotland was hard decision for some of the families

The families assembled in a burial ground at Clachan on Loch Broom for an emotional service before boarding rowing boats to be taken to where The Hector was moored.

Sarah MacKenzie, a trustee of Clachan Lochbroom Heritage Trust, said: "It was an open air service and it was raining.

"It was reported later that you could not tell if it was the rain or tears running down the emigrants faces."

Archaeologist Cathy Dagg said the emigrants had different reasons for making the journey to Canada, which at the time was part of the British Empire.

But she said for many of the Highlanders it was with the hope of a better life than on estates that had been forfeited to the Crown after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

The estates had been owned by lairds loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie, whose Jacobite army was defeated at Culloden, and the running of them had been taken over the British government.

Cathy Dagg said conditions on The Hector were harsh

Ms Dagg said conditions on The Hector were harsh.

She said: "The boat was tiny, people were crammed in with children and babies. I don't know what the sanitary conditions were like but I suspect it was just buckets to be emptied."

The Hector's arrival at Pictou was delayed by a head wind and the boat remained out at sea with the tough conditions on board worsening.

Ms Dagg said: "People were seasick, people were ill, and the children caught small pox.

"I think they would have turned back if had been their choice."

Thirty-two people, 20 from Nova Scotia, four from Ontario and the rest from the US, attended last week's commemorative events, which included a boat trip to where The Hector moored in Loch Broom.

At the site of the mooring, the bagpipes were played and descendants dropped flowers into the water.

Carla MacKay's ancestors travelled on The Hector

Carla MacKay, a descendant of families on The Hector, said: "It feels a lot of the time when you travel that you are a visitor.

"I don't feel like a visitor here. It feels like home. It feels right."