The Gloup Disaster, 20 July 1881

A summer gale rose with no warning over the haaf grounds north-east of Yell. Ten open six-oared sixerns from Gloup and the surrounding villages were caught miles offshore. Fifty-eight men drowned in a single night — fathers, sons and brothers from the same crofting townships. The granite memorial on the cliff above Gloup lists every name and every boat. The disaster was one of the events that drove the Crofters Holdings Act of 1886 and the slow death of the open-boat haaf fishery.