The island gifted to an American in a fond farewell
For the businessman who had everything, the wild and uninhabited Eilean Nam Muc was a present like no other, writes Alison Campsie
For a much-loved American fiercely proud of his Scottish roots, it was the perfect gift. James Munro, president of the Illinois-based Caterpillar Tractor Company, was gifted the wild and uninhabited island of Eilean Nam Muc off the coast of Iona in the Inner Hebrides in 1959. Mr Munro had spent more than three years in Scotland setting up the firm’s factory near Uddingston and, given his Scottish heritage, felt much at home.
When it was time to return to the United States he was able to take a little bit of Scotland with him thanks to his good friends, Hamish and Doris Dawson-bowman, who owned the isle of Erraid off Iona at the time.
They decided to gift Eilean Nam Muc, one of the 27 tiny isles off Erraid, to Mr Munro before he left, with an official handover ceremony held in Glasgow at which title deeds were exchanged and the feu duty of a penny a year agreed.
So taken was he by the gesture that Mr Munro soon had the title “laird” etched on his office door on his return to the States.
Michael Dawson-bowman, son of Hamish and Doris, said: “At the ceremony my mother handed over a casket of earth from Eilean Nam Muc for Jim to take home with him.
“Jim was very, very proud of his Scottish heritage and at every opportunity would wear his kilt and full Highland regalia.
“On his office door was both President of Caterpillar Tractor Company – and Laird of Eilean Nam Muc. He was very pleased with the gift.”
Written into the deeds was a clause that ownership of the island would revert back to Mrs Dawson-Bowman if the feu duty went unpaid for ten years. Mr Munro did step onto the island once after he took it over, but just the once, with Eilean Nam Muc then inherited by his daughter following his death.
Mr Dawson-bowman said: “We were in touch with his daughter several years ago and made a joke that the feu duty hadn’t been paid for 50 years!
“She responded by saying she had no family to pass the island on to and would be delighted to gift it back to the next generation of our family, which was extremely kind of her .”
He added that the island was “absolutely uninhabited and very inaccessible” with no landing point for boats. “You have got to jump out
“There’s been no livestock on the island so it has grown very wild. You wouldn’t be able to put a house there”
of a rubber dinghy to get onto it,” he said. “There has been no livestock on the island so it has grown very wild. You wouldn’t be able to put a house there.”
The Dawson-bowman family bought Erraid in the 1950s when it was put up for sale following the death of the Duke of Argyll.
The island was until that point occupied by the Northern Lighthouse Board and said to have inspired author Robert Louis Stevenson, who was also a member of the Stevenson lighthouse-building dynasty, to write Kidnapped.
Erraid was sold on by the Dawson-bowman family in the 1970s with the island now owned by a Dutch family and used by the Findhorn Foundation, the alternative living organisation.the community lives rent-free in the old lighthouse cottages in exchange for the maintenance of the land and buildings. Erraid is usually inhabited by between three and ten people at any one time, with residents staying for anything from one to five years
Eilean Nam Muc does still remain in the Dawson-bowman family, however, and is owned by Hannah, granddaughter of the original owners and daughter of Michael, with the family shoring up there once a year for a visit to the little island with an interesting past.