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! If you learned something new today, then give
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