Due to the rugged and inaccessible terrain in which it is located, Loch Ewe has always been an assembly point for maritime trade. Around 1610 the area at the head of Loch Ewe, today known as
Poolewe, was urbanised around an iron furnace using charcoal produced in the surrounding woodlands for fuel. English ironmasters found it more economic to ship the ore to Poolewe for smelting than to ship the processed
charcoal to
England to run furnaces there. The crofting villages which were established in the 1840s, were always quite small. Bualnaliub, nine miles (fifteen kilometres) to the north of Poolewe, had eleven houses and fifty people at the 1841 census – twenty-three of whom were from the same (McIver) family. Mellon Charles, four miles (six kilometres) to the west, had two hundred and sixteen people in forty-one houses – including seventeen houses headed by a McLennan. Ormiscaig, roughly halfway between them, had ten houses (four headed by McGregors) totalling forty-eight people. One hundred and forty years later, in 1981, the population was ten at Bualnaluib, twenty-four at Ormiscaig and one hundred and ten at Mellon Charles. At the German surrender in April 1945 Loch Ewe became the British marshalling point for many of the German
U-boats that had surrendered while at sea.
Tournaig According to the published correspondence of a local resident, the
Royal Navy established watchkeeping defences the Mellon Charles base is still in use, with two berths authorised for
nuclear-powered submarine use. The naval boom defence depot at Mellon Charles marks the start of the original protective netting which guarded the entrance to the loch. Part of the base is designated a petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) depot. This provides for the maintenance of visiting warships. ==Culture==