Bonnie Prince Charlie first set foot on Scottish soil on Eriskay in 1745, at the sandy beach now called Coilleag a’ Phrionnsa, the Prince’s Strand. In 1941 the SS Politician ran aground off the island with 264,000 bottles of whisky aboard, and night after night men from across the Hebrides raided the wreck — the story behind Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whisky Galore. The island pub, Am Politician, is named after the ship. Islanders built St Michael’s Church between 1899 and 1903; its altar rests on the bow of a lifeboat washed ashore from the aircraft carrier Hermes. A causeway links the island to South Uist, and CalMac ferries cross to Barra. Eriskay ponies, a small, hardy breed native to the island, are now critically rare, with fewer than 300 breeding females left worldwide.
