Mystery of the lighthouse keepers who vanished
JUST before noon on Boxing Day 1900, the Hesperus landed on Eilean Mor, on the wild fringes of the Outer Hebrides. The crew on the relief vessel were worried. Eleven days before, they had received a report that the island’s lighthouse had ‘gone dark’, despite the presence of three keepers.
There had been no communication from the men since – and passing ships reported the light had remained out.
As the Atlantic tossed and turned the tiny boat into the island’s small harbour, the crew’s sense of foreboding increased. No flag flew from the mast on the pier and there was no one to greet them. A distress flare set off by the ship’s captain, Jim Harvie, went unacknowledged.
The relief keeper, a man named Joseph Moore, rowed to shore and started the rocky climb to the lighthouse. As he wended his way up the stark and barren hill, Moore felt a chill creep down his spine. The lighthouse loomed ahead of him, in complete darkness. The only sound he could hear was the crashing of the waves onto the island’s treacherous cliffs. He appeared to be completely alone.
Inside the lighthouse, he discovered a chilling scene. The beds were unmade and the clock had stopped. Ashes lay in the grate. A chair had been overturned and a pair of oilskins was still on its hook, suggesting one of the three men had gone outside without dressing for the wild winter weather. He climbed up the steps to the light itself and found it shrouded in darkness, the oil in the lamp waiting to be lit.
The three Eilean Mor lighthouse keepers, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald McArthur, had vanished. The only living thing on the island was a starving canary. The men were never seen again.
The trio had arrived on Eilean Mor three weeks earlier in good spirits. It is the largest of the Flannan Isles, a chain of islands sometimes referred to as the Seven Hunters – a bleak and remote place often wreathed in mist that has never known full-time human inhabitants. The lighthouse had been completed just a year earlier, built after a number of terrible shipwrecks in the surrounding seas made its presence a necessity against the ever present danger of the hazardous rocks.
The men were accompanied by Robert Muirhead, the Superintendent of Lighthouses, who was there to carry out a routine check of the lighthouse and make sure all was in working order. He discussed issues with the mist surrounding the island with Ducat, then left.
Ducat, a 43-year-old with more than 20 years’ experience of lighthouse-keeping, was a native of Arbroath, on the East Coast. He had a wife and four children and was considered a steady pair of hands.
Marshall was unmarried and, like Ducat, a full-time keeper who had served in the Navy.
McArthur, meanwhile, was married with two children and a former soldier. Known as the ‘Occasional’, his day-to-day job was as a crofter on Lewis, but he was often drafted in by the Lighthouse Board to cover illness and leave.
How well the three men knew each other is unclear, but with McArthur a part-timer, there would have been a certain sense of hierarchy among the trio.
The keepers worked on a rotating watch of 14 days and food and supplies were brought to them as weather permitted. The lighthouse log was kept up to date until December 15. The final entry read: ‘Storm ended, sea calm. God is over all.’
In the days running up to the men’s disappearance, however, some strange entries had been made. One said, ‘James Ducat irritable’; another, ‘Donald McArthur crying’. Muirhead, who later saw the logs, remarked that it seemed irrational behaviour for both men. He was also stumped by the final entry: ‘God is over all.’ Having known all three men personally, he was sceptical that any of them were particularly God-fearing souls.
On the night of that final entry, a steamer on passage from Philadelphia to Leith named the Archtor noted the light was not working. Three days later, when it docked at Oban, it reported the information, which made its way to the National Lighthouse Board.
THE Hesperus – carrying supplies and relief keeper Moore – had been due to arrive on Eilean Mor on December 20, but was delayed until Boxing Day due to rough seas and dangerous weather.
In the days after the discovery of the abandoned lighthouse, the crew of the Hesperus made thorough searches of every corner of the island, hoping for some clue as to what had happened to the keepers.
At the West Landing – one of the tiny harbours – they discovered considerable damage, with part of an iron rail wrenched out of the concrete and a rock estimated to weigh a ton dislodged. They found the turf on top of a 200ft cliff had been ripped away from the edge. They also noted the set of oilskins that had been left in the lighthouse belonged to McArthur, suggesting it was he who had rushed out in a hurry.
Arriving back on Lewis, Captain Harvie sent a telegraph to the National Lighthouse Board: ‘A dreadful accident has happened at the Flannans. The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall and the Occasional, have disappeared from the island.
‘The clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago. Poor fellows, they must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that.’
The press had a field day, concocting bizarre stories that the men had been devoured by a sea serpent or that the ghost of St Flannan had had a hand in their demise. There were even theories they had been taken away by the Secret Service or a ghost ship.
On December 29, Muirhead, who had accompanied the keepers to Eliean Mor less than a month before, arrived on the island to carry out his own investigation. He expostulated in a report submitted on January 8 the following year that the three men had been washed away.
‘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, December 15, 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.
‘I have considered and discussed the possibility of the men being blown away by the wind, but, as the wind was westerly, I am of the opinion, notwithstanding its great force, that the more probable explanation is that they have been washed away.’
Now this most baffling of Scots mysteries is headed for the big screen. Filming is expected to start next year for Keepers, based on those extraordinary days running up to the three men’s disappearance.
Starring Scottish actors Gerard Butler and Peter Mullan and directed by Kristoffer Nyholm – most famous as the director of dark Danish TV crime drama The Killing – the script was written by British screenwriter Joe Bone, who was struck by the idea while looking at a lighthouse on his native Isle of Man.
He said: ‘I was watching the revolving beam and thinking, “What on Earth goes on inside a lighthouse?”.
‘So I went home and Googled lighthouse stories and came across the Flannan Isle lighthouse mystery and thought that could make a really good film.’
The mystery of Eilean Mor has captured the imagination of many over the years. An episode of Doctor Who entitled Horror of Fang Rock was loosely based on the tragedy (unsurprisingly, it examines the alien abduction theory), while the late composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies wrote an opera about it. The band Genesis wrote a song entitled The Mystery of Flannan Isle Lighthouse while recording their first album. Even the Chewin’ the Fat TV series satirised the light-
house keepers in its famous ‘Gonnae no dae that’ sketch.
Yet the true fate of the three keepers remains contentious.
In 2014, historian Keith McCloskey claimed to have solved the mystery, having spent years investigating it, and came to a far juicier conclusion than Muirhead.
He said: ‘I believe all three did plunge from the 130ft cliff but their deaths were the result of a physical confrontation between Ducat, the principal lighthouse keeper, and McArthur, a part-timer, who would have been treated as a dogsbody.
‘Poor Thomas Marshall attempted to come between them and it cost him his life too. In fact, it may even have been his physical intervention that caused all three to lose their footing and fall from the sheer cliff.
‘Once they were in the sea, there was no saving them and, given the nature of the location, it is unlikely their bodies would be recovered.’
It’s a tantalising theory. Could a fall out between two of the men really have caused their deaths?
McCloskey, who has interviewed descendants of the men, suggests McArthur had a wicked temper while Ducat was domineering, and suggests that the confrontation started while the pair were inside the lighthouse, when Ducat ordered McArthur out into wild weather to perform some menial task.
He said: ‘I think McArthur told him to get lost. I think McArthur defied Ducat and he and Marshall put on their oilskins, leaving McArthur in the lighthouse. Ducat intended to “deal with” McArthur Riddle: Lighthouse keepers Thomas Marshall, Donald McArthur and James Ducat with superintendent Robert Muirhead before their disappearance on the Flannan Isles, above when they returned, but he was not the sort of character to take anything lying down. He just snapped. His temper broke and he followed Ducat and Marshall outside.’
One keeper on Eilean Mor, Walter Aldebert, who worked on the island between 1953 and 1957, suggested that two of the men had gone out in wild weather and one had been washed into the sea, prompting the second to go back to the lighthouse for help, only for the other two to suffer the same fate.
AMORE recent theory was posited by Christopher Nicholson. In his book Rock Lighthouses of Britain: The End of an Era, he suggests a geological explanation for the men’s disappearance thanks to the narrow gullies, or geos, around the island’s coastline.
During a storm, water can rush into a geo and burst out with huge force, causing enormous waves. He suggests that McArthur, while still in the lighthouse, saw the waves approaching and ran down to warn his colleagues without putting on his oilskins. It was too late, however, and all three were swept away.
Whether the movie will choose any of the competing theories, or come up with its own explanation for the disappearance of the three men, is yet to be seen.
But without bodies, or evidence, the truth of what happened to the lighthouse keepers of Flannan Isle is likely to remain shrouded in mystery for a long time to come.