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Wednesday, 12/Mar/2008
Islay in 1948
After some not so good news from my mother today I need some distraction. As mentioned before one of the best way for me is to blog, to write about Islay or to view things from Islay. Today my particular thanks needs to go to Ian Anderson Maclean and his late father Duncan. Duncan filmed Islay on 8mm around 1948, Ian has now made some of the footage of Port Wemyss available on YouTube:
DirectPortWemyss,Islay,Scotland-circa1948
While I've seen quite a few old pictures of Islay I think these are the first moving pictures from Islay 60 years ago I've seen. I don't know for certain, but I guess this must be a fairly unique documentation of daily activities on Islay back then.
The contrast between the horse drawn carts and the motor cars and coaches is quite interesting. While Roll-on/roll-off ferries were first developed in the 19th century it took much longer for the first one to be used on the Islay route. Getting a car to Islay in 1948 was quite difficult...
In the notes to the video Ian writes he's planning to upload further videos, I'm certainly going to watch out for them. The original 8mm film was 1.5 hrs long, I hope we're going to see much more of it.
PS: Thank you very much for your kind comments and e-mails with good wishes for my mother, I'll relay them to her when I next speak with her. Really appreciated. We don't fully know yet what today's news mean, so I'm going to hold back a bit for now and will try to keep it off the blog for a few days in my mothers and my own interest. I'll get back to you individually as soon as I find the strength and time.
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