Memorial for vanished lighthouse keepers

A MEMORIAL was unveiled yesterday to commemorate three lighthouse keepers who disappeared in one of the world’s greatest and most enduring mysteries.

They went missing from the Flannan Isles – 20 miles off the west coast of the Isle of Lewis – in 1900.

It was on Boxing Day more than a century ago that it was discovered that the three Flannan Isles keepers James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur had vanished. The mystery has never been solved.

Now a statue will be based on the shoreline of Breasclete on neighbouring Lewis with an exhibition also launched at the village community centre in memory of the men.

Designer James Crawford has crafted a sculpture of a bronze wave sweeping over a sandstone lighthouse sitting on a boulder.

The exhibition will detail the events leading up to the disappearance of the three men.

Kenny MacLennan, chairman of the Breasclete Community Association, said: ‘It’s long overdue. Something should be put in place to mark the tragedy, more so because one of the keepers was a fellow villager.’

The Flannan lighthouse, standing more than 215ft above sea level, was completed in 1899, a year before the tragedy.

Passing ships noted it was lit on the night of December 14, but out the following evening. A subsequent search by a landing party on December 26 found an untouched meal on the table, a toppled chair and two sets of oilskins missing. The third was hanging on its usual hook.

Upstairs, a canary was starving on its perch and the lighthouse log and work notes for two days were on a slate. The clocks had stopped and signs indicated the men had been missing for a week.

There was no trace of the keepers and it was assumed they had been swept away by a freak wave.