Roderick G MacLean

Roderick G Maclean was born in Ibrox, Glasgow in 1954, and he grew up in a family where Gaelic was spoken daily by his parents from the Isle of Skye.

Roddy and his wife Morag have been living in the Isle of Lewis for almost 40 years. In that time, he has been a lecturer at Lews Castle College, Gaelic Museums Education Officer at Museum nan Eilean, SQA National Gaelic Officer for Learners and Fluent Speakers, and Depute Headteacher at The Nicolson Institute. He was awarded a PhD in 1994 for research into language immersion courses in Israel. He now writes and directs broadcast documentaries.

When Roddy was growing up in Glasgow in the 1960s, his mother would say to him, almost without fail, each December 31, ‘David was lost on the Russian Convoys.’ Simply these words. David was a first cousin of his mother’s and was killed at 22 years of age.

The only information which the family had was that his ship, HMS Achates, had gone down in the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942. They never discovered what happened to the young man from Waternish in the Isle of Skye. Was he drowned? Was he killed by a German shell? Now, after detailed research and marvellous coincidences, David’s story can be told.

This book provides a general history of the convoys whose base was in Loch Ewe, with a particular focus on the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Achates, which was lost in the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December, 1942. It also describes the experiences of two islanders, David Macdonald from Waternish, Skye and Kenneth Maciver from Habost, Lewis who lost their lives on Convoy JW51B. The book also answers the question of what it was like to be a sailor on a Russian Convoy.