Eilean Chathastail ( Eng: ''Castle Island'') is one of the
Small Isles
The Small Isles ('' gd, Na h-Eileanan Tarsainn'') are a small archipelago of islands in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. They lie south of Skye and north of Mull and Ardnamurchan – the most westerly point of main ...
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
.
Geography
EiggLandsat.jpg, Satellite view of
Eigg
Eigg (; gd, Eige; sco, Eigg) is one of the Small Isles in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. It lies to the south of the Isle of Skye and to the north of the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Eigg is long from north to south, and east to west. With an ar ...
(
Landsat
The Landsat program is the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. It is a joint NASA / USGS program. On 23 July 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched. This was eventually renamed to La ...
image viewed using
NASA World Wind
NASA WorldWind is an open-source (released under the NOSA license and the Apache 2.0 license) virtual globe. According to the website (https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/), "WorldWind is an open source virtual globe API. WorldWind allow ...
software). Eilean Chathastail is the island in the bottom right of the picture
Eigg_1892_map.jpg, Map of Eigg 1892, with Eilean Chathastail to its Southeast
Eilean Chathastail protects the only harbour on Eigg at
Galmisdale
Galmisdale is the main port of the island of Eigg, one of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides. It is in the Scottish council area of Highland
Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous ...
. It is roughly in length and lies only off the south-east coast of the island of
Eigg
Eigg (; gd, Eige; sco, Eigg) is one of the Small Isles in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. It lies to the south of the Isle of Skye and to the north of the Ardnamurchan peninsula. Eigg is long from north to south, and east to west. With an ar ...
. Eigg lighthouse was built on the island in 1906 by brothers David A. and
Charles Alexander Stevenson
Charles Alexander Stevenson MICE MIEE FRSE (23 December 1855, – 9 May 1950) was a Scottish lighthouse engineer who built twenty-three lighthouses in and around Scotland.
Life
He was born at 8 Forth Street in the east part of Edinburgh's New ...
.
History
In July 1884 the geologist and writer
Hugh Miller
Hugh Miller (10 October 1802 – 23/24 December 1856) was a self-taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist and an evangelical Christian.
Life and work
Miller was born in Cromarty, the first of three children of Harriet Wright ('' ...
arrived at the Eilean Chathastail anchorage on board the yacht ''Betsey''. He had just begun his journey at Tobermory and he produced a diary of his travels in the
Hebrides
The Hebrides (; gd, Innse Gall, ; non, Suðreyjar, "southern isles") are an archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebr ...
for the newspaper ''Witness'', of which he was the editor. His contributions were later collated and published as ''The Cruise of the Betsey'' in 1856.
He wrote that: "We passed the Isle of Muck, with its one low hill; saw the pyramidal mountains of Rum looming tall in the offing; and then, running along the Isle of Eigg, with its colossal Scuir rising between us and the sky, as if it were a piece of Babylonian wall, or the great wall of China, only vastly larger, set down on the ridge of a mountain, we entered the channel which separates the isle from one of its dependencies, Eilean Chathastail, and cast anchor in the tideway."
Robert Lawrie Thomson, a former laird of Eigg, is buried at the southern end of Eilean Chathastail. This is marked by a burial enclosure on Maol an Eilean, the island's highest point.
See also
*
List of islands of Scotland
This is a list of islands of Scotland, the mainland of which is part of the island of Great Britain. Also included are various other related tables and lists. The definition of an offshore island used in this list is "land that is surrounded by ...
Notes
References
* Bray, Elizabeth (1996) ''The Discovery of the Hebrides: Voyages to the Western Isles 1745-1883''. Edinburgh. Birlinn.