GRUINARD island, also known as Anthrax Island, is a little spot of land off the northwest coast of the Scottish Highlands and has a notorious history, most recently extended by the inferno that engulfed it on Saturday evening.
The island was made reference to as far back as the 16th century, when a clergyman named Donald Munro wrote that it was land controlled by Clan McKenzie, “full of woods” and “guid for fostering of thieves and rebellis”. That air of danger would haunt the island for centuries to come.
In the twentieth century, the island would become famous for being the site of experiments carried out by Government scientists in 1942 where they looked to develop technology in biological warfare.
The British Government gathered a fifty-man team to investigate the feasibility of using anthrax against their enemies in World War Two. Realising that the site of their experiments would long become toxic, a remote island would be required. After surveying Gruinard island, it was requisitioned by the Government from its owners and the experiments began.
Credit: Donna Hopton
With the island obtained, all they needed was a test subject. As such, a flock of sheep was penned on the island and would play victim to the British Government’s scheme.
To expose the sheep to anthrax, bombs were filled with the fatal substance and deployed close to the flock which was contained by wooden fences.
When used on people, anthrax can take effect by ingestion, skin contact or inahalation, the last of which is the most deadly means and is deadly in around 95% of cases, regardless of treatment. If inhaled the bacteria can cause internal bleeding, blood poisoning and even meningitis.
While it usually takes around seven days to kill a person, the poor sheep on Gruinard island started to die after just three. Such was the effect on the island, a subsequent report found that if used in the war, German cities would be left uninhabitable “for generations”.
And following unsuccessful attempts to decontaminate the island, the anthrax spores persisted and forced authorities to quarantine Gruinard for 48 years.
It wasn’t until 1986 that efforts would be made again by the Government to repair the island’s status. An English company was paid half a million pounds to decontaminate Gruinard. In doing so, they soaked the 520 acre island in 280 tonnes of formaldehyde that had been diluted in 2000 tonnes of seawater while also removing topsoil in sealed containers.
In a bid to see if the massive regeneration effort worked, sheep were brought back to the island for the first time in half a century. The flock was put out to graze upon the recommendation of an independent watch dog set up by the Ministry of Defence to see if they would survive. They did.
Four years later on April 24, 1990, Michael Neubert, the then junior Defence Minister, declared Gruinard safe by making the half-mile trip from the mainland and removing the island’s red warning sign.
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From then, the island carried on peacefully until Saturday evening when it erupted in flame, just thirteen days after a documentary on its history was broadcast on BBC Scotland.
The fire has captured the attention of social media and produced some incredible images of the flames which lit up the night sky.
Despite the mesmeric photos, it seems the spectre of Gruinard’s dark history has continued to haunt it.
Credit: Donna Hopton
Speaking to STV news, mother and daughter Nessie and Kate Gearing said that they could hear the birds on the island “screaming” in distress as they watched on from the shore.
Kate said: “It was horrible. I’ve never seen anybody on the island, nobody ever goes to it, nobody wants to go on it.”
With its dark and dangerous history, it is of little wonder that the locals leave it be.
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