How do you imagine a lighthouse keeper’s job?
Probably like an introvert’s paradise: you’re alone on a rock in the middle of the sea,
looking out at the raging waves and keeping the light on.
But lack of people around has its downside too: no one will know if something happens
to you.
And that was exactly the case with the keepers of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse…
It was a fine and calm day on December 15, 1900.
In such weather conditions, lighthouses aren’t crucial for the safety of passing ships.
But still, it was unusual for the Archtor, a steamer passing by the Flannan Isles on
its way from Philadelphia, to notice that the lighthouse on Eilean Mor was not operational.
The ship’s captain noted it in his log and left it at that.
So it was only three days later, when the Archtor arrived to the port of Leith, that
this strangeness was reported.
A ship was immediately rigged, with a relief lighthouse keeper, Joseph Moore, to be delivered
to Eilean Mor, but weather had been bad since the day before, and it couldn’t set sail
for more than a week.
Finally, on December 26, two things happened: Hesperus (that was the name of the relief
boat) arrived at the lighthouse, and it became obvious that it had been abandoned all this
time.
The lighthouse had been manned by three people: James Ducat and Thomas Marshall, the regular
keepers, and Donald MacArthur, the occasional who was then substituting for another keeper
on sick leave.
There was a fourth too, a rotating man who was on shore at the time.
The Hesperus’ crew, however, was met with dead silence.
It seemed that none of the keepers were present — otherwise, at least one of them would’ve
been waiting for the ship on the dock.
That was an alarming sign, but not the only one.
Upon arrival, James Harvie, captain of the ship, also noticed that there was no signal
flag on the flagstaff to welcome the relief boat, and all the supply crates had been left
on the landing while they should’ve been inside.
Harvie blew the ship’s whistle.
No reaction.
A flare was fired in the air, but that had no effect either.
The sense of unease grew on the Hesperus, and Moore decided to deploy a boat and go
on shore alone to investigate.
It was ominously quiet on the island.
The lighthouse stood dark and lifeless, only seagulls keeping it company.
Moore went on to explore the territory and the building itself.
And what he found unsettled him even further.
There was no sign of the keepers, not even a trace left.
Both the main gate and the entrance door to the lighthouse were closed, the beds were
unmade, and most eerily, all the clocks stopped.
That meant the men were absent for more than a week.
Pensive and alarmed, Moore returned to the ship and took three volunteers back to the
shore for further investigation.
When
the men returned
to the Hesperus, Captain Harvie used the telegraph to send a note to the Northern Lighthouse
Board.
It said that a dreadful accident had happened at the Flannans and that all the keepers had
disappeared.
His guess was that poor souls had been swept away by the raging sea or had fallen from
a cliff.
Harvie requested an official investigation to be conducted, and on December 29, Robert
Muirhead, a Northern Lighthouse Board superintendent, arrived to do just that.
And here’s where the weirdest things started to come up.
Muirhead found the lighthouse logbook that the men kept until their disappearance — that
is, about dinner time of December 15.
On December 12, Thomas Marshall wrote that there were severe winds the likes of which
he’d never seen in twenty years.
Also, the two other men began acting in a highly unusual way.
Ducat, according to the log book, was “very quiet,” and MacArthur was crying.
“Highly unusual” in this regard was a huge understatement, though.
All three of the keepers were tough, hardened men, and MacArthur was a veteran mariner.
It was simply impossible that he could’ve been crying because of the storm, no matter
how bad it was.
The entry from December 13 said that the winds were still howling, and the sea was even more
violent than the day before.
The log implied that the three men were terrified, which was, again, very strange since they
were experienced keepers and knew they were safe inside the lighthouse.
The elements could do nothing against a sturdy stone structure built specifically to withstand
rough conditions.
But perhaps the most unsettling of this all was the fact that there were no storms on
the 12th, 13th, or 14th of December in the area.
The log said, however, that the skies finally cleared only on the morning of December 15.
And that was the last entry.
The keepers went missing on the evening of the same day.
There are so many inconsistencies in this whole story that it remains a mystery to this
day.
Not only did official investigation not find any clear evidence of what had happened in
the Eilean Mor lighthouse, but it also made the situation even more perplexing.
As soon as the news reached the mainland, wild theories from all corners of the UK started
popping to the surface.
Not the least popular of those was that the men had gone insane, which was not out of
the question considering the logbook entries.
Nobody in the area confirmed any storms, so it was either the log had been made up, or
the bad weather region had been incredibly localized.
And since the keepers had been behaving in a very strange way before disappearance, it
seemed quite plausible that they could’ve gone crazy and maybe jumped off the island
into the sea.
Other theories were much less credible and speculated on anything and everything from
supernatural activity to secret government operations, although why the government would
be interested in eliminating three lighthouse keepers at the end of the world remained unclear.
Still, there was also the official version of the events, and it made at least some sense.
You see, the western landing of the lighthouse premises was severely damaged by recent storms.
Iron railings were bent, the iron railway beside the path was torn out of concrete,
and turf had been ripped away from the top of a cliff that stood 200 ft tall!
This evidence showed that the waves and the wind had been particularly savage.
And there lay the explanation to the mysterious vanishing of the keepers.
On the 15th of December, two of the men must’ve gone out into the storm to secure the box
on the western landing which contained mooring ropes.
They had been out for some time, when the third one, left inside as the rules required,
noticed an abnormally large wave coming down on the island, and fast.
He reasoned there was no time to waste, leaped to his feet, overturning the chair he had
been sitting on, and rushed off to warn the other two of the imminent danger.
He was in a big hurry, so he didn’t stop to grab his oilskin coat on the way out.
But apparently, he was late: when he reached his fellow keepers, the wave had already come
to the island, and as they were all dangerously close to the edge, it swept them from the
landing.
Seems a plausible enough theory, but there are a couple of gaps in it.
Firstly, it doesn’t explain where the storm even came from.
The keepers disappeared in the evening of December 15, and by all accounts the weather
that day was fine, and the sea was calm.
Even the keepers’ own logbook confirmed that.
So how would a huge wave appear on that day without any warning?
And secondly, again according to the entries in the lighthouse logbook, the damage to the
western landing had been done before the men’s disappearance.
So they had witnessed the mayhem but had not, in fact, gone out into it.
Since 1900, many more theories have been born, including freak waves washing away one of
the men and the others being swept away while helping him.
Also, some theorized that a big wave might have entered a narrow gully by the western
landing and burst back with force, pushing the men who were trying to secure their equipment
over the edge.
In this theory, the third keeper was also running to help his colleagues but suffered
the same fate as them.
But whatever hypotheses, credible or nonsensical, were given, none of them have given us any
clue as to what really happened to the three bold men from Eilean Mor.
Who knows, maybe someday holds the answers?
What do you think caused the lighthouse keepers to disappear from the island?
Let me know down in the comments!
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