1918 in Scotland
Events from the year 1918 in Scotland.
Incumbents
Law officers
Judiciary
- Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Strathclyde
- Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Dickson
- Chairman of the Scottish Land Court – Lord Kennedy until 12 February; vacant until 2 May; then Lord St Vigeans
Events
- 12 January – Admiralty M-class destroyers and run aground and are wrecked off South Ronaldsay in a severe storm with only one survivor.
- 31 January – "Battle of May Island": In a confused series of collisions as a large Royal Navy fleet steams down the Firth of Forth this evening, submarines and are sunk, three other submarines and a light cruiser are damaged and 104 men are killed.
- 5 February – World War I: Imperial German Navy submarine SM UB-77 torpedoes troopship off Islay with 210 men, mostly United States troops, lost.
- 11 February – American Dreadnought battleship USS Texas joins the British Grand Fleet in Scapa Flow.
- May – English industrialist William Lever, Baron Leverhulme, buys the Isle of Lewis.
- 15 May – World War I: Imperial German Navy submarine SM U-90 shells the Royal Navy wireless station on Hirta in St Kilda.
- 29 June – Airship R27, built by William Beardmore and Company at Inchinnan, is commissioned.
- 22 August – is launched by John Brown & Company at their Clydebank shipyard. The last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy, she will be in commission from 1920 to 1941.
- 6 October – troopship is wrecked after a collision off Islay with 351 United States troops and 80 crew lost.
- 5 November – Clydebuilt former Cunarder HMS Campania sinks in an accident in the Firth of Forth.
- 11 November – World War I is ended by Armistice at Compiègne, with Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss as British representative. The War has seen Scottish losses of around 102,500 men born in Scotland from 680,000 serving in the British armed forces; there is no parish in Scotland without a loss.
- 21 November – Education Act. Local education authorities replace school boards.
- 25–27 November – the surrendered German High Seas Fleet steams from a rendezvous in the Firth of Forth to internment in Scapa Flow.
- The Scottish county of Elginshire is officially renamed as the County of Moray.
- A farm at Arabella in Easter Ross is set aside as smallholdings for returning servicemen.
Births
- 1 January – Albert McQuarrie, Conservative politician and building contractor
- 3 February – Moira Dunbar, glaciologist
- 1 February – Muriel Spark, novelist
- 8 March – Eileen Herlie, actress
- 1 May – James Copeland, actor
- 11 May – Sheila Burnford, writer on Canada
- 28 May – Jackie Husband, international footballer
- 6 June – Tom Scott, poet
- 28 June – William Whitelaw, Conservative politician
- 30 June – Isobel Barnett, née Marshall, broadcasting personality
- 20 July – Fiona Gore, née Colquhoun, powerboat racer
- 21 July – Maurice Lindsay, broadcaster, writer and poet
- 18 September – Captain Douglas Ford, Royal Scots officer, posthumously awarded the George Cross
- 28 September – Ida Schuster, actress
- 19 November – W. S. Graham, poet
Deaths
- 13 January – Aeneas Chisholm, Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen
- 15 January – Mark Sheridan, music hall performer, probable suicide
- 6 February – John F. McIntosh, steam locomotive engineer
- 12 February – Neil Kennedy, Lord Kennedy, chairman of the Scottish Land Court
- 19 February – Grace Cadell, pioneer physician, surgeon, novelist and militant suffragette
- 26 April – Cecil Coles, composer, killed in action
- 8 June – Robert Farquharson, physician and Liberal politician
- 21 June – Captain Ian Henderson Royal Air Force World War I flying ace, killed in military aviation accident
- 30 June – Peter Drummond, steam locomotive engineer
- 25 September – Henry Dyer, engineer, notable for engineering education in Japan
- 9 November – Peter Lumsden, British Indian Army general
- 26 November – George Coats, 1st Baron Glentanar, cotton manufacturer
- 1 December – Peter Hume Brown, historian and professor
- John Rennie, naval architect
- James Robert Rhind, architect
The arts
- Ewart Alan Mackintosh's poetry War, The Liberator, and Other Pieces is published posthumously.