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In 1845, just as in Ireland so also in the Highlands, the potato crop was struck by blight. The damage, though widespread, was not complete, and everyone relaxed until in 1846 blight struck again, and the whole potato crop was left rotting in the fields. All the consequences of famine then quickly followed. Scurvy and typhus, diseases of malnutrition, killed hundreds. The famine-stricken population, weakened and listless, fell victim to cholera outbreaks, and only help from outside could relieve the situation.
Private charity might provide some help, and so might the state, but, in the first instance, the sufferers looked to the chiefs for protection as generations of experience had taught them to do. Some landowners responded with admirable sense of obligation. MacLeod of Dunvegan bought in food for his people, some eight thousand of them, and permanently damaged the fortunes of his family by so doing. MacLean of Ardgour provided food, and introduced new crops into the area - peas, cabbages and carrots - to replace the potatoes. Sir James Matheson on Lewis spent £329,000 on improving his lands, hoping to provide a more secure future for his people.
Others did nothing. Gordon of Cluny, owner of the Uists and Barra, was later reported as 'most negligent'. On Skye on the estates of Baillie of Dochfour, 'fertile land (was) lying waste - peoplewas seen a starving.' In Knoydart, around Arisaig, Lord Cranstoun showed total indifference to the situation, leaving attempts at relief to a tenant, MacDonald of Glenaladale, and to the parish priest, Father MacIntosh.
One who particularly disgraced himself was Lord MacDonald, who was publicly denounced by the depot officer at Portree. MacDonald had bought meal, which had been made available for relief purposes, in Liverpool, but re-sold it at a profit instead of bringing it home.
The government was reluctant to act. These were years when the economics of laissez-faire prevailed, and politicians felt unclean if they had to interfere with the workings of the market, where supply and demand should dictate the terms of trade, and where any action by the state was seen as a distortion of natural processes. The scale of the disaster was so great however that the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Charles Trevelyan, already in charge of relief measures in Ireland, had his powers extended to Scotland as well. Using the resources of the Admiralty, depots for food distribution were established at Portree and Tobermory, supervised by an official whose name was improbably apt - Sir Edward Pine Coffin. A Central Board of Management to co-ordinate charitable efforts was established in February 1847, and from its offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh, supplies were despatched to the affected areas. A ration was fixed of 11/2lb. of meal per day for a man; 12oz. for a woman and 8oz. for a child. Donations in cash and in kind came from America and Canada, and by mid 1847 the crisis had passed, and the depots were closed.
The harvest showed great promise, but gales caused widespread damage, and potato blight struck again. The Board began all over again, but showing a new approach. Its members had been criticised as being too concerned for the suffering, and not alert enough to the need to keep everyone up to scratch. So now the victims had to make some gesture towards earning their rations. They were to work an eight-hour-day for six days a week in return for their meals. Meal supplies would be reduced as a punishment for any 'idleness', because, as Trevelyan put it, 'dependence on charity is not to be made an agreeable mode of life'. At the prices of the time the meal on offer to a man, his wife and six children cost three shillings and two pence per week - sixteen pence. The lowest working wage of the time was thirty pence. There seemed very little risk that Trevelyan's fears would be realised.