Private Roy Muncaster - R.I.P.

While on Islay last week, I made my way to Kilnaughton Military Cemetery, a mile west of Port Ellen. It's a small cemetery, with around a dozen tombstones. Many tourists pass by the cemetery without even knowing it's there, when they drive the hilly single track to the Mull of Oa. For, it is on the Mull that you'll find the American Monument: a sixty-foot-tall stone tower that commemorates the Otranto disaster off the shore of Kilchoman in 1918 and the sinking of the Troopship Tuscania by the UB-77 earlier that year. (For more on the Otranto, see the October 11, 2019 post.)

The Kilnaughton Military Cemetery lies above the beach, northeast of the burial ground that surrounds the fifteenth-century ruin of the chapel of St Nechtan. The only American still interred in the military cemetery is Roy Muncaster, a Private in the US Army, who perished when Tuscania was torpedoed. Before joining the Army, Muncaster had been a forest ranger in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State, where the 5,910-foot-high Muncaster Mountain, fifty miles west of my home in Seattle, is named for him. With the lone exception of Muncaster, all the American victims of the Otranto and Tuscania disasters were returned to the States or buried in the American Military Cemetery in Surrey. Muncaster’s parents wanted him to remain where he died, here on beautiful Islay.

Book Launch and More

The details for the launch of my next book, Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: Skye and the Small Isles, have been finalised. It will be held at the Portree Library on Thursday, August 20, at 6 pm. If you are on Skye at the time, I hope you can make it. The book tells the stories of three decades of journeys to Skye and its neighbours, including the Small Isles, Raasay, Rona, and the islands of Gavin Maxwell. An outline map of the contents can be found below.

On another note, I am happy to have been asked to supply an article for the first issue of the Islands Book Trust's relaunch of Scottish Islands Explorer. Once a publication date is known, I will pass it on.

Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: Skye & The Small Isles

I am happy to announce that Volume 2 of the Thirty Years of Adventures Series, Skye & the Small Isles, is to be published by the Islands Book Trust this summer. It will be the same format as Volume 1 (The Outer Hebrides) and will include a large selection of colour photos. A launch event in August is being planned, possibly in the Portree area. I will post an announcement once the details have been firmed up.

Scottish Islands Explorer - Start of Another Era

I've learned that Scottish Islands Explorer will live on, as the Islands Book Trust has acquired the rights to publish the magazine. It has yet to be decided, but it will probably be an annual or bi-annual publication. 

To quote from the latest Islands Book Trust Newsletter:

We became aware in late September 2025 that Scottish Islands Explorer, a high-quality magazine published six times a year carrying articles and wonderful photographs of Scottish islands, was ceasing production. The magazine has gone through several changes in ownership and location over the last quarter of a century, starting in Fair Isle (Shetland) and latterly run from Lewis under the auspices of Intermedia Services (Stornoway) Ltd. There have been close links between previous owners of SIE and IBT for many years. 

Following discussion with the previous owner, IBT has therefore decided to step into the breach by acquiring the right to continue publishing Scottish Islands Explorer, albeit in a radically different version from the previous format and business model. This is because we believe there is considerable synergy between the aims of SIE and those of IBT, and the interests of previous SIE subscribers and members of IBT. Like many others, we would be sad to see it cease altogether.

I am delighted that the magazine, which has meant so much to me over the past 20 years, will live on thanks to the Book Trust. Please consider joining the Trust - for more information on how to do so see the following link.

https://islandsbooktrust.org/pages/membership