Eilean Mor Lighthouse Keepers’ Disappearance
The Flannan Isles are located to the northwest of the coast of Scotland. It’s honestly just a tiny cluster of jagged rocks out beyond the Outer Hebrides, very remote and isolated. On the tallest point of this outcrop of rocks, Eilean Mòr, is where they placed the lighthouse. The setting of this story is just as important as the story. It’s important to know that these men were alone. The lighthouse could be seen from the shore of the Isle of Lewis--the largest chunk of land closest to the Flannans--in Breasclete and there was a man stationed there meant to report any problems with the lighthouse to the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB). If the man, who was stationed there at the time of the December 1900 disappearances of the three lighthouse keepers (Thomas Marshall, James Ducat, and Donald MacArthur), noticed anything out of the ordinary, he didn’t report it.
The lighthouse had only been in operation for a year at the time that tragedy struck. At midnight the night of December 15, 1900, the American ship SS Archtor, that was en route to Leith (a city actually on the eastern shore of the mainland of Scotland, which required the boat to sail up and over the country) from the city of Philadelphia, noticed that the lighthouse was not lit. The captain, Francis Arthur Holman, reported it to the port authorities in Leith but it wasn’t passed on to the NLB. Joseph Moore, on the Hesperus was meant to replace one of the keepers on the island on the 20th but the weather was quite bad and he was unable to make it out there until the 26th, Boxing Day. By this time, the light had been dark for 11 days. The captain of the Hesperus, a man named Jim Harvie, set off a distress flare when they arrived at the island and none of the lighthouse keepers were there to greet the ship. Additionally, they noticed that there was no flag on the flagstaff and that the keepers had not left their empty provision boxes on the landing stage for restocking. This was highly unusual and raised a lot of red flags, so Moore went to shore alone to survey the scene. Reports of what he found conflict a little. It is said that he found the gate and front door to be closed and a clock stopped. Additionally, the beds may have been made up or they might not have, but they are said to seem to “not have been slept in,” while a chair was said to be overturned and one oilskin (a type of rain coat) was left inside meaning possibly one of the men went out without his protective gear. Now, this next part seems to be more myth than reality. According to Keith McCloskey, author of The Lighthouse: The Mystery of the Eilean Mor Lighthouse Keepers, looking at the reports of Moore and Robert Muirhead (a superintendent for the NLB), there is no truth to the myth that there was a half-eaten meal left out on the table (likely an adage from the tale of the Mary Celeste, which was actually discovered 28 years before this incident in 1872). Instead, Moore found that “the kitchen utensils were all very clean, which is a sign that it must be after dinner sometime that they left.” Then we come to the dramatic logs that were said to partially be in the logbook and partially on slates, that were supposed to have later been transferred to the logbook. If they are authentic, they read as follows:
Dec. 12th Gale, north by north-west. Sea lashed to fury. Stormbound
9 p.m. Never seen such a storm. Everything shipshape. Ducat irritable.
12 p.m. Storm still raging. Wind steady. Stormbound. Cannot go out. Ship passed sounding foghorn. Could see lights of cabin. Ducat quiet. Macarthur crying.
Dec. 13th Storm continued through night. Wind shifted west by north. Ducat quiet. Macarthur praying. 12 noon. Grey daylight. Me, Ducat and Macarthur prayed.
Dec. 15th 1 p.m. Storm ended. Sea calm. God is over all.
It’s hard to say where this came from, but if you’re interested in reading more, you should check out McCloskey’s book. Muirhead arrived on December 29, 1900, and nowhere in any of his notes does he bring up these logs, which, if they existed, would likely not have been glossed over by someone investigating the disappearance. Officially, it was concluded that the three men went to secure some of their equipment at the west landing (noted to be 110 feet above sea level) and that a large wave swept them out to sea.
It is worth noting that nothing else untoward or mysterious has happened since this incident, so it is unlikely that the area itself is so inhospitable and dangerous that operations were shut down. Currently, the lighthouse is still in use but it is fully automated and no longer needs manual operation. The reason this mystery has endured, over a century later, is precisely because it is a mystery. Life and duties on the isle were pretty heavily documented and the logs left behind were cryptic and disturbing if authentic. Additionally, it is noted that the bodies of the three men lost were never found. Supposedly, bodies that were swept out to sea were often pushed back in against the craggy cliff sides and made recoverable. Though the rogue wave, which would have needed to be over 100 feet (with the tallest wave on record to date being 100 feet high in 1958) to reach the spot the men supposedly dispatched to to secure equipment, is the most mundane and accepted explanation, it still leaves questions that are impossible to answer even to this day.
And maybe that’s really why it still lingers. There is a possible explanation but it just seems unremarkable, uninteresting, and, more than anything, sad. We don’t want to think that they died in a storm while performing their normal duties. We want to think that there was something remarkable about them, that something out of the ordinary happened that day that was just insurmountable and all encompassing. That’s why cases like the Mary Celeste, Dyatlov Pass, and even the death of Kurt Cobain still remain “unsolved” to this day.
