The wild storm that battered the Isle of Skye had cleared, and as the steamer Clansman approached Portree, the dark clouds overhead broke to reveal the brilliant glow from a new moon.

On board were almost 50 Glasgow policemen, most below deck amusing themselves with a game of draughts or a tune on the bagpipes. Only a couple were allowed on deck at a time; secrecy, it transpired, was key.

“The men were fully armed and equipped with boats for crossing lochs and arms of the sea,” reported the Press Association at the time. “The excitement all over the West Highlands is unprecedented.”

It was 19 April 1882, and the recent storm was set to be replaced by an even larger maelstrom, with repercussions that would affect landowners and crofters across the Highlands and Islands and still be felt 140 years on.

Within hours, the policemen – perhaps a little too enthusiastic after a long, dreary journey – and a group of mostly women crofters desperate to protect access to land seen as vital to their humble lifestyles, would clash in what’s regarded as the last battle on British soil.

Before it was over, several would be left bleeding and injured, islanders left reeling from an invasion of strange officers brandishing batons, and the city of Glasgow left ‘stained’ by events 200 miles away.

Next year marks the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Braes, when Glasgow policemen sent to crush crofters’ resistance to being evicted from land to make way for sheep, were met with sticks and stones.

To mark the anniversary of the crofters versus police ‘battle’, an exhibition retelling the story is planned for Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre next April. An accompanying digital exhibition is also planned.

The dispute’s roots were embedded in the catastrophic defeat of the Highland clans at the battle of Culloden and the subsequent scrutiny over the Highland way of the life.

Restrictions on cultural customs and language were imposed, while the 1746 clash sparked the end of the system of clan fealty and the rise of new landlords, some with family ties to the area but with high expectations to make money.

As rents rose, crofters fell into arrears, hurt by the collapse of the lucrative kelp trade which they had used to supplement their meagre incomes.

Landlords turned their attention to more lucrative sheep grazing, clearing the land of crofters and their livestock and sparking the Highland Clearances.

A Highland Land League, inspired by the Irish Land League, was established to challenge landowners, and angry disputes flared in many areas – with Skye becoming a hotbed for action.

According to Catherine MacPhee, archivist at Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre, crofters across the island in communities such as Braes, Glendale and Kilmuir, had been involved in a series of protest acts before events spilled over.

“There was a domino effect,” she said. “There had been rent strikes taking place, evictions.

“They have seen their parents and grandparents moved from their homes. There are layers of trauma, and conditions that are so difficult for people to live in.

“There’s this framework of power, struggle, arguments, and it all comes to this boiling point that made Braes explode.”

The tipping point came when crofters at Braes, near Portree, learned their landlord, Lord MacDonald’s plans to clear grazing land on Ben Lee for sheep.

When the angry crofters retaliated by refusing to pay their rents, MacDonald sent sheriff’s officers with eviction notices – to be met by a furious band who turned them back and forced them to burn the papers.

It was an act of mainly female-led rebellion regarded as so lawless, that the sheriff of Inverness sought help from his Glasgow counterpart.

Almost 50 police officers, their arms and other equipment were piled on board the Clansman, a busy steamer that ploughed the route between Glasgow, Oban, Tobermory, Stornoway and Portree.

Their arrival at the Braes crofts at dawn on a bitterly cold April morning to arrest men branded ringleaders, incensed the crofters who responded by using whatever sticks, stones or objects they could lay their hands upon.

Before it was over, several police officers would be injured, five local men arrested and eight crofters – five of them women – were badly hurt.

One, Ann Nicolson, the mother-in-law of one of the arrested men, was said to have been “wounded on the head with a baton in such a serious manner that she is not expected to live”.

An elderly woman, Mary Nicolson, was “thrown into a ditch where she was found insensible”, and a young girl, Marion Nicolson, sustained a leg injury after being hit by a stone thrown by no less the sheriff who had accompanied the officers.

Others received baton injuries to the head, were knocked down and, in one case, left with eye injuries after being hit.

“The greater proportion of the population are deeply incensed at the invasion of their territory by policemen from a distance,” reported one newspaper at the time.

While the lack of medical help to treat the injured crofters further inflamed animosity.

“The women in Brae played a major role in events,” added Catherine. “They instigated the attack on the retreating police officers, launching whatever they could find at them.”

The incident sparked outrage across the Highlands and stretched to Glasgow where sympathisers passed a resolution supporting them and “deploring the scandal to the city occasioned by the despatch of Glasgow policemen to perform the dirty work of a factorial hydra.”

It called on the city’s Lord Provost and Magistrates to deal with the senior officer in charge of the police “in such a way as would wipe away the stain placed upon the city by his conduct.”

The headlines stung the government into action. The Napier Commission was set up by William Gladstone’s Liberal government to investigate "the conditions of the crofters and cottars in the Highlands . . . and everything concerning them".

It had broad powers to call witnesses – including those involved in the Battle of Braes – to demand documents, and to visit locations at the heart of contentious eviction rows.

While its report led to the Crofters Act in 1885, which brought security of tenure for crofters, a land court to fix fair rents and compensation for improvements they carried out, it was not the end of discontent.

Disputes continued to rage, the Skye crofters’ and other Highland MPs refused to support the Act, and there are reports of navy vessels being sent to the waters off Portree in an apparent show of strength against further trouble.

“People thought the ‘war’ was far from over,” adds Catherine. “There were still rumblings, and in 1883 there is a report of another fight in Glendale, with people running around, armed with sticks to fight police constables.”

The Crofters Act paved the way for the 1919 Land Settlement Scotland Act, which helped break up sprawling estates from wealthy landowners’ grasp, and established crofting settlements which continue to thrive today.

While for scores of communities across the country, events on Skye 140 years ago are also linked to modern right to buy powers embedded in the 2003 Land Reform Act.

The confrontation is marked with a small cairn with a plaque which reads simply: “Near this cairn on the 19th of April 1882, ended the battle fought by the people of Braes on behalf of the crofters of Gaeldom”.