The Flannan Isles Mystery

ah hello and welcome back to another brand new episode of decoding the unknown yes i'm your host simon and on this show what happens is katie wonderful script writer katie has written in an episode called the flaninals mystery i have no idea where this is i have no idea where the flannel isles are but i'm gonna cold read this script that i have in front of me a nice thick one i think this is like 14 pages which is pretty heavy although it's double spaced so i guess it doesn't matter you already know because you can see how long this episode is i'm going to read it and then afterwards jen our wonderful video editor hi everybody is going to uh add a little bit of magic to it so let's just jump into oh before we do uh make sure you hit that like button i believe by the time this goes out according to youtube there's not going to be a dislike button anymore which is incredible if you're listening to this in its podcast form you never had any of those options but you can leave a review which is always most welcome and let's just jump in and if it's a good review it's a bad review then i guess it's not welcome is it that's just one of those things but i mean if you don't like it that's okay i you know if you're making pro something that that if you're making a podcast or a youtube show that pleases everyone well it's probably not going to be very successful because you know eventually eventually you've got a loyal crew of dislikers uh let's go [Music] imagine if you will a map of the world oh brilliant so katie's going to start off by telling us where the flannels actually are so they could be like off the coast of scotland they could be in the caribbean i don't i literally no idea or go to google maps now think of where the union okay united kingdom here we go where the united kingdom is big name small place locate scotland oh wow it's off scholars legend uh locate scotland it's at the top and then look to the west you'll see some islands including a large archipelago known as the outer hebrides of the western isles archipelago is one of those words that i often have to look up because i'm like i i feel like i've looked it up a million times it's always one of those words you're like i feel like i'm pronouncing that wrong because it's written like archipelago or something complicated doesn't matter get on with the story keep zooming in and other much smaller islands start to become visible if you go west from about the middle of the larger land mass of lewis and harris and keep going for about 20 miles 32 kilometers you'll eventually spot a small cluster of tiny rocky islands katie are you just unfamiliar with how google maps works because you've got four lines describing you here's my way of describing it go to google maps type in flaniniles hit return boom the flannels have appeared and that is why google maps is superior to other forms of mapping like apple maps and also paper you'll eventually spot a small cluster of tiny rocky islands these are the flannen isles also known as the seven hunters and it's on this remote and windswept part of the planet that an enduring mystery took place at the turn of the 20th century the mystery in early december 1900 principal lighthouse keeper james duckett it's good there's a pronunciation guy because otherwise i'll pronounce it like decat like that guy from star trek second assistant thomas marshall and occasional lighthouse keeper donald macarthur started their rotation at the recently built lighthouse on the largest piece of land to make up the flaninals ely oh my god ellen moore again oh nice there's a pronunciation guide bye bad oh it ellen moore nailed it nailed it the lighthouse had only been built a year before and was located in the outer hebrides where fierce winds fog and huge storms were putting many ships in danger but did you need like three dudes to run like a lighthouse is that really nessa just turn was this 20th turn the 20th century they would they would have got electricity doesn't need to be three guys i feel like these today would be like automatic indeed i just made a video on one of my other channels i can't remember which one it was because i have so many um about nuclear lighthouses where the soviet union was just like yo we got these lighthouses in the middle of nowhere there's no way we're stringing power out there wind technology isn't really a thing yet how are we gonna do it well we'll just put nuclear batteries in them yep little mini nuclear batteries which is uh kind of mind blowing right but that's not what we're here to talk about today we're a good few decades before nuclear batteries existed for the first couple of weeks all seemed well on the island the light was reported as being visible by ships that had passed it and gone on to dock at the harbours on the larger islands of lewis and harris one day however the light went out after delays due to bad weather a boat was eventually dispatched on boxing day 1900 to ellen moore and instead of three lighthouse keepers they found no one jacket marshall and macarthur had completely vanished what had happened to these experienced lighthouse keepers over the years many theories have been touted as to what fate might have befallen these unlucky fellows so let's find out the backstory to the mystery and see what we think is the most likely explanation by the way there was a recent movie made of this story called the vanishing but i haven't seen it and i haven't looked up the ending so i expect at least one of these explanations is going to be a giant spoiler onward yeah if you've got plans to see the vanishing well we're about to ruin that for you but this isn't like spoiling the new james bond movie it's the vanishing a movie from a few years ago that i've never heard of it probably wasn't that big of a deal or maybe it was all of those it sounds like a horror movie right the vanishing and all of those horror ones always seem the same i never really see horror movies in a movie theater because they're just not as scary as when you watch it alone by yourself at home at night maybe out in the middle of nowhere like in the countryside or something that's when that's when horror movies are most terrifying as a kid lived in like mostly the middle of nowhere it's like a tiny ass village and if my parents were away i'd watch a horror movie and i'd be like oh my god this is the most terrifying thing ever sitting in the movies with a bunch of other people to watch a horror movie like well it's just not that scary it's little these people around me if the psycho killer comes in he's probably just gonna kill one of them first right there's hundreds of people here we're fine the history [Music] the inhospitable conditions of the north atlantic have bred myths and legends aplenty in the area of the outer and inner hebrides it's a wild and sparsely populated place so it's not surprising that fairy tales and mysterious legends have popped up even if they just started as things to keep the locals from getting too bored strange i.e non-christian practices have apparently been mainstays over the decades and because of the remoteness of the islands it's not hard to believe that anything might be happening the original wicker man film was set although not filmed on heberdian island so if you can remember christopher lee skipping about in a flowery dress and a long black wig as part of a pagan ritual that might not be too far off the mark wait isn't the wicker man there was an original one has christopher christopher lee died recently and he was old right so wasn't that nicholas cage one where there's that famous myth of him being like not the bees not the bees i love my eyes uh isn't that called the wicked man as well or am i just totally getting that confused for something else i i feel like i saw that film a long time ago but now i just remember the memes the ocean also provided stories of course with sea monsters water spirits and mermaids a common feature and folktales around the islands the islet of ellenmoor itself was surrounded in superstition and otherworldly beliefs a lot of it's centering on fairies come on push through it simon ah okay i'll just read it and you just know in my mind i'm like yeah yeah fairies mermaids other such nonsense or being haunted and there had long been a feeling of general weirdness around the place ah someone already uh by the way since uh when i'm recording this episode the first episode of decoding the unknown published i stacked up like eight of them so every previous recording you've heard none of these have ever been released to the public and i feel like maybe it's casual criminals but there was one episode where someone hit me up on twitter being like simon ghosts are real i've seen one and i just replied no it's not ghosts aren't real and people got upset about this i mean there's there's the definite dividing line between people who think i surreal being like simon it can't be explained oh and i i i don't know i just it's just so silly it's just so silly to me it hurts me inside is that why why do you believe this stop it oh it was rumored to be a place where bodies were cremated on pyres many centuries ago the standing stones of kalinich on the nearby isle of lewis which predates stonehenge also cast a somewhat mystical haze over the area the flanin mystical haze it's just a haze they're just some rocks that were put there in the past by a an ancient culture it's not mystery it's not it's not mystical it's not even mysterious it's just some rocks it's like stonehenge it's just some rocks they're i mean they're really big and impressive rocks and they're really big like i've seen stonehenges surprisingly big um but it's just that they're just rocks if you want to get an idea of how big stonehenge is people used to be able to go up to it so there's these old pictures of people like you know standing next to stone engine you're like oh my gosh it's much bigger than you think because normally you just see pictures without people standing there you know you know it's probably they're about the size of a person oh no no no they are large the flannels are yeah ripping on mystical hazes the philadenars have never been permanently inhabited with shepherds coming over to graze their sheep but never staying overnight the remains of a chapel that is why are your sheep commuting what are you up to the remains of a chapel tus and flanan can still be found there and there have been tales of it being abandoned shortly after it was built due to supernatural forces tormenting the monks that tried to worship there when the new lighthouse was started in 1895 it was in opposition to locals who warned of the wrath of saint flannen for disturbing his sanctuary and indeed one of the chief inspectors of the construction project died suddenly before it was finished which is perhaps not the greatest omen for the new lighthouse yeah omens were real also can you imagine all the people are like a pilot i was going to say driving ships piloting ships do you pilot sailing ships whatever the correct word for like captaining captaining a ship is can you imagine they're like no no well there's this really and this is before like gps or anything probably even before like good maps and they're like yeah why didn't you build that lighthouse uk scotland why didn't you build a lighthouse we keep crashing our boats into them oh yeah there's ghosts we didn't want to build it because of ghosts i mean like 700 men have died crashing into these islands there are bodies piling up and they'll be yeah but the ghosts the ghosts but no obviously they built the lighthouse because that's what this video is about nevertheless the flaninar's lighthouse was finished in 1899 and stood 23 meters 75 feet tall counting the sheer cliff it was standing on the lighthouse's 140 000 candle power lamp was about 84 meters or 275 feet above the sea level with a range of about 17 nautical miles which is just under 20 normal miles or about 32 kilometers yeah the fact that nautical miles are just slightly different from regular miles is kind of annoying and i'm i think i've mentioned it before i'm learning to fly like i'm getting my private pilot's license which i've wanted to do forever and you're flying this plane it's so it's in nautical miles and you're like how fast are we actually going and my pilot that it strikes us like well simon we're going at you know 80 nautical miles and i'm like how much what's that in normal speed is that that is normal for pilots i'm like you know what i mean there were two areas for construction and supply boats leave provisions or transport personnel to and from the island these were the west landing and east landing and were located basically as far from the lighthouse as you can get on the small island right on the other side that was because the lighthouse was placed at the highest point for the best visibility and the landing areas were closer to sea level and somewhat sheltered steep concrete steps came up from these landing platforms to the lighthouse because and because of how steep it was railway or tram tracks as well as cranes were also built to haul up supplies by cable there was also a steam engine next to the lighthouse that powered the stuff going up and down these cable railways this sounds like look you've already heard like i don't believe in any of this haunted stuff but i like this sounds haunted you're like look if ghosts were real this is where they come it sounds like the setting of a horror movie as this was 1899 there were no telephones or even telegraphs to connect the light out of the mainland yet in fact the only way the lighthouse keepers had to contact the outside world should an emergency happening happen was by hoisting a flag and putting some discs on poles sticking out of the lighthouse balcony okay what by putting whatever number of discs on whatever poles they could send status updates to someone on the mainland who was supposed to be keeping an eye on the lighthouse as a fail-safe safety measure at the time this someone was roderick mckenzie a game keeper living almost at the closest point to the flannels on the larger island of louis he had been given a telescope by the northern lighthouse board and was charged with checking to make sure that the light was visible and if the lighthouse keepers had hung out any alerts on their poles okay i see so i guess they're going to be the light's going to be behind them so they can see how many things and also it's a telescope so i can see really far all right very old school because of the fog and bad weather in the area it was not unusual for mackenzie to not even see the light let alone the actual lighthouse for a few consecutive days so it wasn't particularly alarming if he couldn't see it from one day to the next the lighthouse was manned by a team of four men with three at the lighthouse and a fourth man living on the mainland to be rotated every three weeks or so the first year of the elimor lighthouse's operation went smoothly and without incident apart from one lighthouse keeper william ross having an accident with the cable railway he was fortunate in the supply boat was stood on the landing meaning he could be taken ashore for treatment straight away rather than being stuck on the god forsaken rock in the middle of nowhere relying on a game keeper with a telescope to spot some discs i can kind of pull some 20 miles away he'd be laughing god's sake mackenzie look at the discs they say i'm ruined there's a train on my legs i'm sure it wasn't that bad he recovered but by the time december 1900 rolled around he was once again forced to leave the island due to illness that meant that the party working at the lighthouse when the mystery event happened were principal light keeper james duckett second assistant thomas marshall and donald mcarthur who was ross's replacement and what was known as the occasional keeper basically a part-timer drafted in as and when needed the fourth member of the team who was on the mainland for this leg was assistant keeper joseph moore a photograph of darkit marshall and macarthur standing next to robert murhead who was the superintendent of lighthouses was taken on the 7th or 8th of december 1900 all wonderfully moustached with plenty of shining buttons on display this would be the last time that someone saw any of them alive living as a lighthouse keeper is one of those romanticized jobs that people say they wish they could do who says that it's like what do you want to do i want to be a lighthouse keeper because i like being alone and living in a really tall building it's like why you just have to climb up to the there's so much stairs i've climbed up lighthouses why would you want to live in that it's like there's a tv show called grand designs and uh some guys they turned a water tower into a house and it was awesome and then you're like yeah but if you want to go to bed you have to climb up the equivalent of like eight stories which is great and romantic and cool but it will become very annoying when it's your house they probably envision spending some quality time with books and cups of tea and occasionally climbing a flight of stairs to see if that massive light at the top is still working i don't believe that lighthouse keepers still exist i mean surely not it must all be automated and those lighthouses must work with like leds and computers and stuff it's like when was the last time the lighthouse it just wasn't working never have you ever replaced an led bulb actually yes i have because one of the sockets in my studio is clearly dodgy because every time i put a bulb in there it lasts about two weeks and then something happens and it just starts flickering so i just stopped putting bulbs in that socket because there's nothing wrong with the bulbs there's something wrong with the socket what were we talking about oh yes i don't think there's lighthouse keys keepers i don't think they exist anymore if there's a lighthouse keeper listening to this video write me an email i'll be very curious to hear about that the vast majority of the world's lighthouses are automated now anyway so there are barely any opportunities for eager hermits to get a foot in the door okay there we go could have just read that ahead couldn't i whistle boy in the outer bodies in the year 1900 however it was a bit of a different story with no contact with the outside world stuck on a storm-battered rock with two other men you had to keep the peace with and the sheer physical labor of keeping the landings clear and general daily maintenance it was not for the faint of heart how hard can it be what you i mean surely you're just like is the light still working jim yeah yeah it's still working bob okay should we have a cup of tea yeah let's have a cup of tea done how complicated could be a lighthouse keeper bee james duckett was a married man with four children which might go some way to explaining why didn't stuck on a desolate rock for weeks at a time ah i mean i love my children but sometimes it's like you know i go to work every day because i gotta work and sometimes you know like after particularly troubling night i'm like you know i love you guys and i'm going to miss you but i'm also quite looking forward to going to work today donald mcarthur was also married with two children but thomas marshall was a single man yeah but i'm not saying i wouldn't like to go out like after a couple of days like my wife goes to her parents with the kids or something just you know to see them and i don't go or whatever and i'll be like yeah it was it was nice for like a day and then i'm like where do you guys come back i'm bored and lonely or experienced men with decades decades of light housekeeping between them so this rotation was just standard procedure as far as they would we know that all was well at the beginning ships passing the flan and ours had confirmed that the light was visible on the 7th of december but bad weather obscured it from being observed by the man with a telescope for another few days all was still well on the 12th of december as reported by ships coming into lewis but again there came bad weather and fog and the light was not visible from the larger islands okay i have to say i was wondering for a while like wait isn't the point of a lighthouse so that is visible through bad weather but then the ships are obviously going to be a lot closer to it than the islands 20 miles away so that does make sense on december the 15th 1900 the cargo ship arc tour noted that the lighthouse was not working but due to also having managed to hit some rocks and cause itself considerable damage probably because the bloody lighthouse wasn't working reporting the light being out wasn't at the forefront of the captain's mind when they eventually limped into port really today it would be at the forefront of his mind because he'd be like who's the responsible for the bloody lighthouse it's not working and my ship's ruined who am i gonna sue i've seen contradicting reports about whether the ark tour did actually report the light being out and the report was lost or whether they never actually reported it at all but whatever the case no alarm was raised at the time and the fourth lighthouse keeper joseph moore was set to start his rotation on the 20th of december anyway due to extremely bad weather and maybe christmas who knows moore and the crew of the hesperus the boats supplied the supply the flaninar's lighthouse didn't actually leave until the 26th of december 1900 at this point the light had not been officially seen since the 12th when they eventually made it to the small islands a sense of foreboding came over the party okay it's probably the mist or maybe it's ghosts there was no flag flying oh maybe it's there's not a flag flying uh which was usual when the relief boat came there were no empty supply boxes ready to be restocked there were no men waiting to greet them obviously worried the captain of the hesperus blew the horn and fired some rockets into the year but received no reply joseph moore headed for the lighthouse noting that the main entrance gate and two doors leading into the lighthouse were closed inside he found a cold fire and neatly made beds checking the light room itself he noted in a letter to the northern lighthouse board dated the 28th of december everything was in proper order the lamp was cleaned the fountain full blinds on the windows etc so there didn't appear to be anything wrong with the light indeed it was left in good condition with all procedures having been followed it just simply wasn't on moore lit the lamp and the next day he and the crew of the hesperus continued searching the island moore wrote the following day we traversed the island from end to end but still nothing to be seen to convince us how it happened he noted that the east landing seemed all in order with no indication that anything untowards happened there the west landing however was a mess with the box for holding ropes and tackle missing and some of the isle of iron railings broken he also mentioned that marshall and duck at sea boots and waterproofs were missing from the lighthouse meaning that they had been wearing them macarthur didn't have such good kip just being an occasional lighthouse keeper but his wearing coat as it was called and creatively named was still in the lighthouse moore wrote donald mcarthur has his wearing coat left behind him which shows as far as i know that he went out in shirt sleeves he never used any other coat on previous occasions only the one i am referring to a telegram was sent to the northern lighthouse board nlb by the captain of the hesperus on the day they reached the island and found it mysteriously abandoned it's quite short so here it is in full a dreadful accident has happened at flanon's the three keepers darkit marshall and the occasional have disappeared from the island on our arrival there this afternoon no sign of life was to be seen on the island fire rockets but as no response was made managed to land more who went up to the station but found no keepers there the clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago poor fellows there must have been they must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that night coming on we could not wait to make something as to their fate oh my god reading the past is so hard why did people write so weird back then does that even make sense i'm like did i misread that it's like no no it's just the weird past writing i've left more mcdonald boy master and two semen on the island to keep the light burning until you make other arrangements we'll not return to urban until i hear from you i've repeated this work mohed in case you are not home i will remain at the telegraph office tonight until it closes if you wish to wire me as you can see everyone assumed the keepers were killed due to bad weather yeah that makes sense i mean there's lots of bad weather on the island they were all outside or two of them were wearing that waterproof stuff so it makes sense while they're outside yeah they could have got blown away or like washed away or something that seems pretty likely maybe they were down at their place where there was mess and big wave comes and takes them away i don't know the other maybe the other guy was down there as well maybe they he went out to get them in like a hurry and then he also got washed away i mean i don't wanna i don't wanna say we've already decoded the unknown but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of unknown to decode here i'm assuming there's more of a mystery or something as we'll discuss later however it's not really as clear-cut as that oh there you go again why don't you just read these ahead whistleblower and you'll know everything that kind of takes the fun of a away for me to be honest if you remember the nlb superintendent isn't nlb also that uh basketball or baseball league the nlb superintendent sounds like some guy who runs baseball robert muerhad who had taken who had his picture taken with the vanished men at the beginning of their rotation he arrived on flannens on the 29th of december to make the official report morehead saw that there were entries on the lighthouse slate dated the 15th of december keepers would make notes on the slate and then transfer them to the official log book a little while later these noted that the normal maintenance work had been carried out for the 15th coupled with the fact that the kitchen was tidied up moore had concluded that the accident had happened on the afternoon of the 15th of december checking out the landing platforms he also noted that nothing seemed amiss at the east landing including that a box used to hold ropes that was housed 110 feet or 33.5 meters above sea level had been washed away that is a massive wave i remember making a video about rogue waves you know those random rogue waves and i believe the highest ever recorded is 20 meters and that was kind of regarded as the like the maximum height that a wave could reach so how could something 33.5 meters high get washed away or maybe it was blown and then washed away or maybe it was ghosts well let's see let's see i mean i'm really leaning towards ghosts right now it's definitely he also noted that a large stone weighing over 2 200 pounds or over a ton had been dislodged from its position higher up and carried down to and left on the concrete path leading from the terminus of the tramway to the top of the steps he also saw that an emergency life boy was missing because the ropes because the ropes used to fasten it hadn't actually been untied it seemed that the boy had just been ripped off the railings by the sea moorhead's conclusion were of events was thus after a careful examination of the place the railings ropes etc and weighing all the evidence which i could secure i am of opinion that the most likely explanation of the disappearance of the men is that they had all gone down on the afternoon of saturday 15 december to the proximity of the west landing to secure the box with the mooring ropes etc and that an unexpectedly large roller had come up on the island and a large body of water going up higher than where they were and coming down upon them had swept them away with resistless force yeah it sounds like this guy decoded the unknown super quickly as well this sounds like a really obvious answer to what went on here yeah there's a massive stone but also water's really powerful it moves massive stones all the time doesn't it i have considered and discussed the possibility of the men being blown away by the wind but as the wind was westerly i'm of the opinion notwithstanding its great force that the more probable explanation is that they have been washed away as had the wind caught them it would from its direction of blown them up the island and i feel certain they would have managed to throw themselves down before they reached the summit or the brow of the island yeah it makes sense it was a big ass wave so on the face of it there doesn't seem to be much of a mystery at all the keepers went down to the west landing tidy samar subbed stuff up got hit by a wave and unfortunately were all washed away but you see there are enough questions about the weather the procedures and the men themselves that have cast to surpass the disappearance of the three light keepers firmly into the realm of the unknown so let's decode okay good i have to say i i did kind of know there was a bigger mystery here because if that was the bigger mystery i'd be like yo katie you know this channel is called decoding the unknown right not stating the bloody obvious which i which uh i don't have to do and also there's a weighty amount of script left for me to get through so let's crack on theories and sticking points first of all let's just revisit that game keeper with the telescope roderick mckenzie if the lighthouse had been dark since at least the 15th of december why didn't he let anyone know as previously mentioned it wasn't uncommon for the lighthouse and its light itself to be hidden from the mainland for a day or sometime several days at a time for example according to mackenzie he'd seen the light on the 7th of december but not again until the 12th so he wouldn't have been worried straight away also the new rotation of keepers was due to go out on the 20th of december anyway so even if he had raised concerns everyone would have assumed that there was something technically wrong with the light which they'd sought out on the 20th not that every man on the island was gone unfortunately due to poor weather conditions the relief ship did not set sail until six days later on the 26th of december by this time it was too late to help the keepers but it seems that even if they had known they were in trouble they still wouldn't have been able to safely mount a rescue much earlier mckenzie was getting antsy though and they had asked other people to see if they could have better luck at spotting the light from the flaninals in his report murder admits that even if a trained lighthouse keeper had been on the lookout and might have reported the light being out much earlier it still wouldn't have prevented the occurrence that led to the men vanishing and presumably dying no but is anyone trying to prevent that like the light the light is out we can assume that there was at least i'm assuming i don't think unreasonably that there was a big wave it came and swept them away and then the the lighthouse was wait it didn't run out of fuel though so they must have turned it off which is weird but maybe they did for some reason and then they got washed away it's like no it doesn't matter how fast you mount the rescue they've still been washed away at least in terms of saving their lives but in terms of like ships being wrecked on rocks it seems like pretty urgent to get that fixed like there was that guy on that ship he was they came into port and was like nah i didn't don't even mention it what would you ship totally destroyed because the lighthouse wasn't working the not very likely theories all right let's get into some of the theories surrounding the disappearance as stated in the beginning of the piece the area of the flaninals was home to many a superstitious and ghostly tales so let's tackle this bit head on and put simon out of his misery thank you for being so considerate katie there were rumors that when joseph moore the relief light keeper stepped onto the planet niles from the hesperus three very large black birds took flight from the rocks and disappeared spooky as that sounds there's absolutely no evidence that this happens it's surprising moore didn't mention it in his report and it seems to be one of those retroactively added sprinkles of intrigue that in reality never occurred would have been cool if it had though other supposed facts facts in quotation marks about the case added later and mixed into the history was that the lighthouse log book contained entries mentioning storms and conditions so bad that the men were crying and praying to god again these were not real moorhead looked at the logbook and the daily slate entries and they made no mention of any of the men crying or having misgivings about the weather in this report it'd be like the slate's just some super technical thing about like weather three-fifths cloudy and uh lighthouse in good working order whether is attorney for the worst had a good cry signed lighthouse keeper john all that was noted according to him at least was the routine stuff that they'd do day to day also these men were seasoned light keepers well used to being holed up while some bad storms crashed all around them there'd be no reason to suddenly start cracking sea monsters and giant birds have also been given as the perpetrators in the disappearance of the three men but come on when aren't they as usual it was the loch ness monster this is scotland after all as per usual the thought of a huge sea serpent or heck the loch ness monster why not i can't believe that's actually a theory grabbing the men off the platform is exciting but as no reliable or truly credible sightings of said monster have been seen before or since i think we can leave that one on the no pile katie we should definitely cover the loch ness monster because i made a video about it before like a short one for one of my other channels but i'd love to i'd love to write about it love to read about it more and make more fun of it because it's such obvious bullsh that'll be great there is also one very large sticking point that seems to put a hole in most of these theories it was an ironclad regulation that at least one person had to be in the lighthouse at all times so how come all three men disappeared did they do it all at once or maybe over a series of hours or even days sure you can maybe imagine a scenario where two men are outside and get into difficulty so the third rush is out to help them but as we'll discover it's not quite so obvious as all that let's look at some of the other theories before diving into that one yeah okay so if there's a regulation it's gonna be like oh my god my friends are actually dying the regulations i'm out let's go and save your friends but i guess there's a reason why that isn't a reason abduction [Music] really for what reason for what purpose nah we're gonna duck them so more ships crash ah that's gonna be a great laugh we're gonna abduct them for money i'm not sure but i don't imagine that lighthouse keepers are super rich a weird but slightly plausible idea is that of abduction no not the alien kind a teeny rock in the middle of the ocean with three life on it probably wouldn't catch a passing spaceship's attention our whole planet wouldn't catch a passing spaceship's attention if a spaceship is passing our planet there's nothing here for them we are we're like you're on a walk in the forest and there's an ant hill that's it you look at the ads or you're like ants and then you move on because that's how you know that's how aliens would view us because they've got a spaceship we've got i mean we've got spaceships but they're kind of a joke we're talking spies or pirates here maybe a shipload of squash buckling scurvy dogs or a stealthy boat of sinister agents rocked up one night and forced the keepers to leave the island against their will i guess it's within the realms of possibility however remember that they were on an island in the atlantic specifically to prevent ships from getting wrecked so rocking up would be right there was a high probability of hitting something there's not so much chance that a boat would be able to get near enough to the island without knowing the area and if the light was working as it should have been before the 15th the keepers would have spotted them hours before if it did seem like there were near wells approaching they could have barricaded themselves in the lighthouse or something also while they might know a bit about the weather conditions around the hebrew coast your average light keeper probably wasn't going to be the key to helping you with an invasion or make much of a hostage as we've already established it took 11 days from the men disappearing for anyone to realize they're gone in the times before quick communication they'd be pretty useless as hostages so let's move on if this is reminding you of that other famous maritime disappearance of the people on the mary celeste well you're correct both cases were also reintroduced into the public consciousness years after when people wrote fictionalized accounts of the events with the mary celeste it was sir arthur conan doyle writing a first-hand account of a survivor of the similarly named marie celeste elements from this made-up story entered the collective memory to the extent that people still refer to the real ship as marie celeste instead of mary celeste the same thing happens with the missing light keepers on the flannens in 1912 a poem written by wilfrid wilson gibson boringly called flannen isle described the event from the point of view of the men on the relief vessel getting to the island on the 26th of december he describes the three large black birds and also that they were und there was an untouched meal on the table guys this was the way this was maybe before the mary celeste though was the conan door one was written but it's the same boring tropes he also mentions how all previous light keepers there had been a sticky end or gone mad none of these things were true but the detail about the meal being on the table especially stuck in people's minds another eerie but explainable fact to the story is that when the men from the hesperus entered the lighthouse it was noted that all the clocks had stopped this is not a chilling pointed to the time of their deaths however just a sad indicator that they've been gone for a while as the clocks needed regular winding to work yeah i almost commented earlier in today's video when i was like um that the uh the clocks had stopped which well that's a bit weird did the water come in there it's like no no they were just old clocks they need winding like every few days because they're old if they'd all wound down it meant that the men had been gone for at least a week or they need winding at least every week [Music] so what other things could have happened to cause three men to vanish well let's just go back a bit and despite my poo pooing of it reference the poem again gibson wrote and how the rock had been the death of many a likely lad how six had come to a sudden end and three had gone stark mad this is a working theory in some quarters that one or more of the men had basically cracked from the pressure of so of living so far from their real homes in such claustrophobic and demanding conditions and had either killed the other two men or had tried to kill himself had been restrained but unfortunately everyone had ended up falling to their death so is this credible well yeah i mean sure there's no bodies or anything so it's really hard to prove maybe it happened it doesn't seem like the most likely explanation but i'll give this one a bit of credit maybe they looked into it maybe we'll find out more oh yeah sure being a lighthouse keeper isn't for everyone yes there were two other people living with you but what if they were the world's loudest chewers or had some sort of gastrointestinal troubles if you fart again john i'm gonna murder you and throw you off a cliff little bit of an intense reaction petty issues can become major flash points when you're living in close proximity for extended periods of time and it's not like people were being psychologically vetted for roles like this in fact donald mcarthur the occasional lighthouse keeper who was there as a replacement was an ex-soldier and had a reputation as being somewhat of a hothead add to that that he had come almost directly from another shift somewhere else and you've got someone who'd been working without a break in bleak conditions for a couple of months straight yeah that does sound pretty tough but also there's a lot there's a big difference between like ah work is really hard to let's murder these two guys because well it won't make absolutely any difference and then kill myself i mean sometimes work is hard and i go home and it's not like i'm not murderous i'm just like oh let's have a beer add into that the rumor although it's quite a strong one that he was a drinker and the drink was not allowed on the premises of the lighthouse and you've got an individual who would be irritable to say the very least well uh i have to say maybe if there's the lighthouse keepers in the middle of nowhere they should be allowed a few beers at the end of the day because i don't know probably helps you unwind doesn't it like what are you doing well we're stuck on this island and uh the food's terrible and there's no beer it's like that simpsons episode where uh he goes to the shining hotel or whatever is that simpson's episode where there's no beer and he goes crazy no tv and beer and there was definitely no tv this was like the early 20th century sounds pretty rough to be honest but not rough enough to become murderous so did he just snap and kill one or both of the other two and then in a fit of remorse throw himself over the cliffs or maybe they were all arguing or struggling way too near to the edge and they all fell to their dooms it could also be possible that one or more of the keepers was affected by mercury keith mcclaskey who researched this mystery thoroughly and wrote a book called the lighthouse also posits that the mercury that the lenses floated in could have adversely affected one of the one or more of the keepers and led them to behave in a strange way wait there's lenses floating in mercury in the lighthouse is that how they used to do it that's weird okay this could have then escalated into a situation outside where strong winds could have blown them all over that is it's a bit of a stretch though isn't it it's like having a fight or an argument inside it's like hey you know we should have this fight outside i mean that seems reasonable outside by the edge of a cliff that seems less reasonable it's theories like this that can never be proven one way or the other like i said but there are instances even in the more recent past where people isolated in lighthouses have committed murders so it's not something that we could strike off completely i mean it just seems less likely than being swept away by the weather doesn't it and just because the lighthouse some murders have occurred in lighthouses it's like well yeah some murders have occurred everywhere there's murders all the time it doesn't mean that necessarily lighthouse keepers are murderers it also seems to be the general consensus that if anyone was going to go on a killing rampage it would have been macarthur as no bodies were ever found though any evidence of foul play has long since vanished too [Music] according to archie mccachum who later worked on the uh who later worked on the lighthouse the men disappeared in the line of duty trying to help save a ship in trouble he suggested that a ship was spotted from the lighthouse and all the keepers rushed out and in the process of throwing ropes to aid the stricken vessel were themselves washed away yeah but is there any record of a stricken vessel the wreck of a norwegian ship was apparently found just read the script fuckboy the wreck of a norwegian vessel was apparently found not long after the disappearance but it does beg the question as to why all three men left the lighthouse when protocol dictated that one should remain inside at all times especially when the light would be crucial in a situation such as this well again the same argument can be made well they saw their mates in trouble so they went out to help screw the law and how long does it take to put a coat on surely macarthur would have had time to throw it over his shoulders knowing that they were heading down to the landing in bad conditions if they did perish in the line of duty it was all for naught as if they did manage to save a ship it would have been it would have reported the incident once it made it to port the weather by far the most popular theory in the disappearance of duckett marshall and macarthur is that the two men is that two men were working on the west landing when a freak wave yes knocked both of them out into the sea this makes perfect sense the third man in the lighthouse generally agreed to be macarthur as his coat was left on the peg inside rushed out to help and ended up meeting the same fate this just seems like the most obvious easy answer this is what the superintendent robert moorhead deduced must have happened in his report to the northern lighthouse board but there are some very big questions about this version of events the first issue is the report itself it's the only one there is so that's all the information anyone had to work with the matter was also considered closed shortly after with no fatal accident report having been carried out which would normally have been done in such circumstances the log books were never taken into evidence or just disappeared along the way leaving very little official documentation about anything relating to the disappearances this doesn't sound like a conspiracy or tried to hide anything it was just like there was an accident people were lazy they lost the records some people have suspected that this was a cover-up of some kind but covering up what or why i have no idea so let's talk about that wave now the box that held some ropes on the west landing was according to moorhead around 110 feet or 30 meters above sea level if a wave had reached that high up the island it would have been one of the largest ever anywhere in the world yeah i mean i think that was what i was saying about those rogue waves right the largest one ever recorded was like 20 meters i have a feeling maybe they would get up to 30 but it was like unbelievably rare if not just impossible i guess it could have been lower and the spray was scattered higher making the concrete steps fatally slippery but seriously a hundred foot waves do not come along every day and if we are to believe that say one man got swept away the other man had to hot foot it back at least 160 slippery concrete slaps in their steps and then run all the way across the island to his boots and heavy coat to alert the third light keeper this would have taken a considerable amount of time the third man apparently dropped everything and just sprinted out with his colleague back down at the landing where what another freak wave occurred at exactly the same time they got there this is not sounding likely to me ah i have to say during this whole thing i guess i'm totally wrong was that the lighthouse person who stayed in the lighthouse was able to see the the west landing spartan could see his friends in trouble or hear them or something but yeah that does seem unlikely so why would he head down there if he didn't know they were in trouble maybe they were like we'll be back in 10 minutes if we don't come back come get us but then that would be breaking the rules i'm more like he'd break that rule if he saw his friends drowning but he wouldn't do it if it was just like ah they've been a while they'd be like well i'm just gonna have to wait because that's the rules maybe they attempted a rescue operation by throwing down ropes and just slipped in themselves or something honestly one monster wave hitting the island i can cope with but the chances of too enormous wave hitting the island twice in a short period of time a tiny the log book did not mention that there was a huge storm in the area either and while there was a storm potentially large enough to have caused the damage at the west landing it did not happen until two days later on the 17th of december also none of the bodies ever washed up although given the long time it was between them disappearing and the relief boat coming they may have floated out to sea i have a theory i have a theory the guy in the lighthouse right the one who's remaining he's watching because his mates have gone down to that uh landing area and a 30 meter wave you're gonna notice that is absolutely massive so he's hanging out in the lighthouse and he sees this 30 meter wave coming towards the island smashes the island the two guys are washed out to see those guys are gone he's like oh i gotta get down there he looks out there's no more waves coming you know no 30 meter waves he goes down there and he climbs right down and he's like ah my friends are gone and then a smaller but still large wave comes along and sweeps him out to see as well mystery solved simon you big brain maybe allegedly theory there are other things that come across as weird about the whole situation assuming it went down on the west landing as moorhead reported number one why was anybody on the west landing at all according to the notes they'd made that day all the usual lamp preparations etc had been done so nothing urgent needed doing it was december in scotland the sun sets at 4 pm that time of year god that's early winter sucks so lighthouses do all their chores during the day and rest up and do indoor stuff in the evening there's no way that a seasoned lighthouse keeper like james duckett would start some big maintenance project on some slippery concrete steps at 2 or 3 p.m knowing that he only had an hour or so of decent daylight left basically there was no reason for anyone to be outside in bad weather at that time unless something urgent came up that they did need to take care of it could have been something we don't know what it is though number two moorhead stated in the report that replied that the prevailing winds were westerly if that was the case then then why were they on the exposed west landing there were two landings available on the island and the other was on the more sheltered east side which had no reported damage if they were expecting the relief boat on the 20th it could have just been that they used the east landing therefore again there was no need to clear anything from the west landing especially five days before the relief boat was due i i just again i was just assuming maybe there's some stuff stored down there from the previous relief boat something they needed i mean there's obviously a reason they went down there and i'm sure it was dull it wasn't like some mysterious they had to go down there for some reason number three as i previously stated it's a long way from the landing to the lighthouse macarthur would not have been able to see what was going down at the landing so it's unlikely he would have bolted outside without putting a coat on also he had to stay in the lighthouse as per procedure so he probably wouldn't have it left have left it and less notified by one of the other keepers and again it's such a long way from the landing to the lighthouse that he might as well have put a coat on seeing as how much time would have already have passed the outer and inner doors being closed when the relief boat finally made it may not mean anything as is possible that they could have been banged shut by the wind at some later point okay you totally agree with that last statement and also maybe he was rushing down there maybe the wave hadn't even hit yet because it was still light maybe so he could have seen this giant 30 meter wave coming and being like oh my god i gotta get down there now to tell my friends that it's coming in the meantime it hits they get washed out i see he goes down blah blah blah pans out like i said i think it's a good theory it's been mentioned that one of the keepers had previously been fined for losing supplies in a storm and that maybe they were securing some ropes on the west landing to avoid being fined again again no one was coming for at least five more days and i'm no expert in lighthouse keeping tasks but i think there'd be enough time left during another day to do that rather than suddenly deciding to do it in the middle of bad weather with the light fading if that is the reason the men were outside it's a terribly sad outcome for a seemingly unplanned reckless bit of behavior the ropes were still there after all with the storage box being smashed to pieces number five the author keith mccloskey has done research into recreating the weather at the time the disappearance and the conclusions were that the weather was getting increasingly bad on the day of the 15th of descent as the day of the 15th of december wore on making it even less likely that the men had thought nipping down to the west landing would be a good idea also as previously mentioned from what we know of the log book and the reconstructed weather patterns there was a big storm that could have caused the damage to the west landing but it happened on the 17th of december two days after the keepers vanished so what might have washed them away two days before their deaths a rogue wave i made a video about rogue waves they're real things people didn't think they were for a long time which is probably why none of the initial reports would think about this they thought that people just didn't think they were real but now we know they're real because we have i don't know satellites or whatever detecting them i don't remember the specifics it seems that there could be another culprit where is concerned and that's the wind maybe darket and marshall were outside doing something by the lighthouse and just got blown over the cliff macarthur maybe did see them and rushed out to help falling victim to the same treacherous gusts it is a fact that winds around the flannels and the lighthouse itself can easily be strong enough to knock people down and even lift them off their feet oh my god that is windy so for my money this seems to be the most likely explanation for how the three disappeared even if moorhead thought it unlikely sad though it is it's probably that the force of nature just caught them out yeah agreed that's even more likely than my rogue wave theory they just got blown literally blown away that's sad and also not mysterious aftermath joseph moore who was due to relieve one of the keepers and was the first man on the island after the disappearance was badly affected by the whole affair moorhead said in his report if this nervous nervousness does not leave more he will require to be transferred but i'm reluctant to recommend this as i would desire to have one man at least who knows the work of the station so poor joseph moore had to keep working in the place where three of his friends and colleagues had just vanished and presumably died he was plagued by the tragedy and felt a huge psychological burden for the rest of his life also remember the actor the ship that may or may not have reported the light being out it disappeared in the north atlantic in 1912 presumably sinking with all hands lost in 1904 a new light keeper on the island called john mclachlan fell from the lighthouse tower while cleaning the glass making a total of four keeper deaths in four years william ross was supposed to be on rotation at that time but was replaced by donald mcarthur dropped dead the year following the disappearances in another hebridean lighthouse the fact that the bodies of duckett marshall and macarthur were never found adds the mystery and general spooky feeling around the islands and nowadays we can only speculate as to what really happened as for the lighthouse at alamour itself it was automated in 1971 meaning that nobody has to stay on the island ever again i bet it's super spooky out there cause i bet there's all that old they didn't like take it all away in the landings and stuff i bet it's creepy i'd kind of like to go anyway this has been an episode of decoding the unknown thank you so much for watching it or listening to it depending on how you consume this show it's available on youtube also as a podcast if you prefer to get it that way whatever you like really if you're watching on youtube please like please subscribe if you're listening as a podcast make sure that you uh leave me a review make sure you're subscribed all of that good stuff and i'll be back with another episode real soon thanks [Music]

Channel: Decoding the Unknown

Views: 541,675

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Id: 2OkFN0Kw9YE

Length: 51min 32sec (3092 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2022