Islanders have remembered the disaster which inspired the film Whisky Galore 75 years on.

Mairi MacInnes was 11 when the SS Politician set sail from Liverpool on February 3, 1941. It was bound for Jamaica with a hold full of shoes, pianos, bicycles, and 264,000 bottles of whisky.

Two days into its journey, the ship ran into a storm off Scotland's west coast and foundered on a sandbank near Eriskay.

Ms MacInnes, now in her 80s, remembers seeing islanders deprived of alcohol by wartime rationing filling rowing boats full of whisky and paddling it back to Eriskay, Barra and South Uist.

She recalled: "We all went up to the church [to see the Politician] and saw this immense ship, like a huge house.

"Then people discovered there was whisky on the boat and eventually there were boats going from all over.

"They only took whisky at first but then they discovered there were a lot of other things and it was a free for all.

"A headmaster who were there at the time heard there was a piano on the boat and a few of them decided to go out and see it.

"I don't think anybody made any profit out of the Politician but quite a few people went to prison for it, which was ridiculous during the war when it was all going to the bottom of the sea anyway."

'I had two or three bottles under the bed'

Willie MacLeod was one of many islanders to benefit from the wreck of the Politician despite being a member of an official salvage team sent out to recover goods from the ship.

The 93-year-old said: "We had a launch taking us out each day to the Politician and a lot of cargo was taken up on deck and shipped to Glasgow. The whisky was the last load that had to be taken up.

"A lot of the workers there were sampling the whisky - not a lot but it did go on - and anyone that was caught with a bottle was apprehended."

When Mr MacLeod was called away to London, he decided to take a few souvenirs from the wreck.

"I had two or three bottles of whisky under the bed and I put some in my case but a friend told me I didn't have enough so he went and filled my case up," he said.

"The customs and police were watching everyone that was going about but I got up as far as Tarbert on Harris. But then case fell off my shoulder and split.

"A taxi came along and the driver was blowing his horn for me to get off the road. I pulled a bottle of whisky from the case and asked him to run me into Stornoway.

"He said 'Oh no, I've a fare at the boat', so I took another bottle out of the case and he turned around and ran me into Stornoway."