The Vanishing Lighthousemen of Eilean Mór

The unexplained disappearance of three Scottish lighthousemen from their lonely station in the Flannan Isles, to the west of the Outer Hebrides, over Christmas 1900 may be likened to the mystery of the Mary Celeste. The cases share several motifs – the half-eaten meal, the living quarters left in good order, the utter absence of life – though the Flannans’ weird reputation has led several authors to speculate that the missing keepers may have been snatched by some supernatural power. But is there a simpler explanation? Mike Dash, a contributing editor to Fortean Times, has conducted fresh research in the archives of the Northern Lighthouse Board and the British Newspaper Library, and finds flaws in the popular retellings of this famous mystery.

THE EMPTY LIGHTHOUSE

Joseph Moore stood in the bows of the lighthouse tender Hesperus’s longboat as it bobbed in the freezing grey swell of the North Atlantic. Gingerly, the men at the oars inched him towards the 150-foot cliffs of Eilean Mór, the largest of the Flannan Isles, which loomed from the water a few hundred yards away. It took only a minute or two for the boat to come alongside one of the two small landing-places carved from the islet’s solid rock. As it did so, Moore leaped ashore and scrambled up the steep flight of hand-hewn steps that led up the cliff face to a grassy bank at the summit. While he climbed, he must have wondered what he’d find when he reached the top.

Four keepers operated the newly-opened light on Eilean Mór. Three were on duty at any given time, while the fourth took a fortnight’s leave. This day, 26 December 1900, it was Moore’s turn to relieve one of his colleagues and resume his watch. But the worrying signs were that something was badly wrong on the little island. There had been no activity at the lighthouse as the Hesperus hove into view and sounded a blast on her steam-whistle, and a rocket fired from the tender to announce her arrival had gone unanswered.

Emerging at the top of the steps, the lighthouseman could see ahead of him the ruins of an ancient chapel and, beyond that, the bulk of the new stone-built lighthouse itself. But there were no signs of life, no men advancing down the slope to greet him, even though the recent bad weather meant the relief was overdue.

Increasingly anxious now, Moore went over to the living quarters and looked inside. There was no one there. The lighthouse was equally deserted, and its lamp unlit. There was nowhere else on the island that his colleagues could conceivably be. Three lighthousemen had disappeared – and, judging from the fact that every clock on the island had wound down and stopped, they seemed to have been missing for several days.

Convinced now that some tragedy must have occurred, Moore retraced his steps to the landing-place and requested the help of the Hesperus’s second mate, McCormack, who returned to the lighthouse with Moore and another seaman to conduct a second search, More thorough this time but equally fruitless. Eventually the men gave up and rowed back to the tender to report to her master, Captain Harvie.

Knowing that his first duty was to ensure the Flannan light was relit, Harvie ordered Moore to return to Eilean Mór to take over the operation of the lamp and, if possible, ascertain the fate of the missing lighthousemen. With him went three volunteers – Allan Macdonald, the buoymaster, and seamen Campbell and Lamont. When they had been safely landed on the rock, Harvie turned the Hesperus about to Breascleat, in Lewis, the site of the nearest telegraph station, and sent an urgent telegram to his employer, the Secretary of the Northern Lighthouse Board in Edinburgh. ‘A dreadful accident,’ he began, ‘has happened at Flannans...’1

The three men who had disappeared so completely were all experienced lighthousemen, among the best employed by the Northern Lighthouse Board2. The Principal Keeper was James Ducat, 43, who came from Arbroath and had spent two decades in the lighthouse service. He was a married man and had four children. Ducat had been selected to run the Flannan light while the lighthouse was still under construction, and had spent a total of 14 months on Eilean Mór, becoming familiar with all its moods. His companions were the second assistant keeper, Thomas Marshall, who was 28 and unmarried, and an occasional keeper named Donald McArthur, 40, a married man from Breascleat. McArthur was an old soldier and was standing in for the fortunate William Ross, the first assistant keeper, who was on extended sick leave3.

The keepers had to be good, for the lighthouse on Eilean Mór was among the most exposed of all the NLB’s stations, as well as the newest. The frequently appalling weather and rough seas around the Flannans had considerably delayed construction, which had taken four years, rather than the expected two, not least because of the difficulty of landing building materials; despite frantic work throughout the summer and autumn of 1899, the 140,000 candle-power lamp, which stood 275 feet above sea level and was visible to shipping up to 24 miles away, was not lit for the first time until 1 December4. But the men who ran the Northern Lighthouse Board do not seem to have thought the Flannans actually dangerous, and with some reason. Though lighthouse-keeping is lonely, tedious and occasionally physically arduous work, it is only rarely deadly; the last disaster of comparable magnitude suffered by the NLB occurred around 1850, when a boat carrying a relief crew to the lighthouse on Little Ross was swamped and lost with all hands off Kirkcudbright5.

Yet there is some reason for believing that James Ducat, the most senior of the keepers, felt Eilean Mór could be a dangerous place. According to the recollections of his daughter Anna some nine decades later (she was eight years old at the time of her father’s disappearance), he had to be prevailed on to accept the post. ‘He said it was too dangerous, that he had a wife and four children depending on him’6.

To a landsman, Ducat’s reservations seem understandable. The Flannan Islands are a bleak place indeed to live and work: a group of barren crags rising from the waters of the north Atlantic about 17 miles north west of Gallon Head, at the westward tip of the Hebridean island of Lewis7. To the south, the nearest land is the abandoned isle of St Kilda, 40 miles away; to the west, it is the coastline of North America, More than 2,000 miles off. Consequently, the Flannans are exposed to the full fury of the frequent North Atlantic gales; because of this, the environment is a hostile one and the isles have seldom if ever supported a permanent human population. For the last several centuries, at least, they have remained deserted, and even before that, before the Highland Clearances which reduced the local population and the pressure on land, they seem to have been visited mostly during the summer months, when a few Hebridean farmers would graze sheep there or gather down and eggs from sea-birds’ nests. The ruins of a few crofter dwellings still stand on Eilean Tighe8, but Eilean Mór9, which is by some way the largest of the Flannans10 was, prior to the construction of the light, last certainly occupied in the seventh century11 by St Flannan, the Irish missionary-bishop after whom the islands are named, and for whom the ruined chapel on the island was dedicated12. In the intervening years, it seems quite likely that the Flannans also occasionally became the last resting place for seamen shipwrecked on their shores, who died of starvation or exposure13.

The remoteness, the isolation, the desolation of the Flannans must have contributed to the considerable awe which the islands aroused in the men of Lewis who visited them each summer. As late as the end of the seventeenth century, the antiquarian Martin Martin, who wrote a book describing the folklore and traditions of the Hebrides, asked a man who had sailed there on many occasions ‘if he prayed at home as often and as frequently as he did in the Flannan Islands’. Martin’s informant ‘plainly confessed that he did not, adding, further, that these remote islands were places of inherent sanctity, and there was none ever yet landed in them but found himself More disposed to devotion there than anywhere else.’14 St Flannan’s residence in the islands presumably accounts in part for this reputation, but the crofters of Lewis retained – at least in the seventeenth century – a belief in several other bizarre superstitions associated with them. According to Martin, ‘there has been many small bones dug out of the ground here, resembling those of human kind More than any other. This gave ground to a tradition, which the natives have, of very low-statured people living once here, called Losbirdan, i.e., pigmies.’ In consequence, Eilean Mór was sometimes known as ‘The Isle of Pigmies’ or ‘The Isle of Little Men’. (Several secondary authorities claim there was a belief that the Flannans were inhabited by fairies or nature spirits; this speculation appears to have its origin in Martin’s story, although the antiquary does not specifically state that the Hebrideans supposed there was anything supernatural about the Flannan pigmies15).

The other principal superstitions associated with the Flannans have been also been presumed to suggest the isles were considered in some way otherworldly. Martin records that several peculiar customs were scrupulously observed by the men of Lewis who visited Eilean Mór:

The inhabitants of the adjacent lands of the Lewis, having a right to these islands, visit them once every summer, and there make a great purchase of fowls, eggs, down, feathers and quills. When they go to sea they have their boat well manned, and make towards the islands with an east wind; but if before or at the landing the wind turn westerly, they hoist up sail and steer directly home again. If any of their crew is a novice, and not versed in the customs of the place, he must be instructed perfectly in all the punctilioes observed here before landing, and to prevent inconveniences that they think may ensue upon the transgression of the least nicety observed here, every novice is always joined with another that can instruct him all the time of their fowling; so all the boat’s crew are matched in this manner... When they are got up into the island, all of them uncover their heads, and make a turn sun-ways round, thanking God for their safety.

The biggest of these islands is called Island More; it has the ruins of a chapel, dedicated to St Flannan... When they are come within about twenty paces of the altar, they all strip themselves of their upper garments at once, and their upper clothes being laid upon a stone, which stands there on purpose for that use, all the crew pray three times before they begin fowling; the first day they say the first prayer, advancing towards the chapel upon their knee; the second prayer is said as they go round the chapel; the third is said hard by or at the chapel; and this is their Morning service. Their vespers are performed with the like numbers of prayers. Another rule is that it is absolutely unlawful to kill a fowl with a stone, for that they reckon a great barbarity, and directly contrary to ancient custom. It is also unlawful to kill a fowl before they ascend by the ladder. It is absolutely unlawful to call the island of St Kilda (which lies thirty leagues southwards) by its proper Irish name, Hirt, but only the high country. They must not so much as once name the islands in which they are fowling by the ordinary name, Flannan, but only the country. There are several other things which must not be called by their common names, e.g., Visk, which in the language of the natives signifies Water, they call Burn; a Rock, which in their language is Crag, must here be called Cruey, i.e., Hard; Shore, in their language expressed by Claddach, must here be called Vah, i.e., a Cave; Sour in their language is expressed Gort, but must here be called Gair, i.e., Sharp; Slippery, which is expressed Bog, must be called Soft; and several other things to this purpose. They count it unlawful also to kill a fowl after evening prayers. There is an ancient custom by which the crew is obliged not to carry home sheep suet, let them kill ever so many sheep in these islands. One of their principal customs is not to steal or eat anything unknown to their partner, else the transgressor (they say) will certainly vomit it up, which they reckon as a just judgement.

It appears that the traditions did not survive the three centuries that separated the disappearance of the three lighthousemen in 1900 from Martin’s fieldwork in the 1690s, since none of the well-informed local newspapers which covered the tragedy made any reference to them, other than by reprinting the antiquary’s original passage without editorial comment, and they contain several recognisable motifs which are quite common in folklore: prohibitions on food, killing and naming all feature strongly in many narrative traditions. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt that the Seven Hunters were at one time regarded as a special place by the men of Lewis. Whether they were still so regarded by anyone in 1900, and whether the old traditions have any bearing on the disappearance of Ducat, Marshall and McArthur is another matter.

 THE PHYSICAL LOCATION

Eilean Mór is, as has already been noted, the largest of the 20 or so rocks and crags which comprise the Flannan Islands. It is egg-shaped, and the peak of a submarine mountain which rises almost vertically from the sea to form a series of cliffs at least 150 feet in height. Above the cliff line there is a steep grassy bank sloping from south to north, which carries the land to a height of over 200 feet at the northern end. On this side of the island the cliffs fall straight down to the Atlantic.

At the southern end of the island the rock walls are less vertiginous and relatively easy to climb. It is from this direction that the early crofters must have landed to raid the birds’ nests along the cliff-tops. Nevertheless, when the Northern Lighthouse Board decided to erect a light on Eilean Mór they first found it necessary to hack stairs into the cliff faces to make it easier to ascend.

Because the Flannans experience frequent bad weather, the NLB constructed two landing places on Eilean Mór, one on the west side of the island and the other on the east, so that whatever the prevailing wind it would be possible to find a lee and effect a landing. Consequently there are two zig-zag flights of stairs leading to the grassy bank. These were supplemented by two ‘trolley tramways’, miniature funicular railways operated from the lighthouse and powered by a small steam engine, which were used to hoist stores up the cliffs. The stores themselves were unloaded, in calm weather, direct from the Hesperus with the help of cranes mounted halfway (somewhere between 70 and 110 feet16) up each cliff face over the landings.

Of the three buildings on Eilean Mór, the oldest was the ruined chapel located just below the lighthouse at the northern end of the grassy bank. Dedicated, apparently, to St Flannan, this building is of uncertain provenance and age but was already a ruin at the end of the seventeenth century.

The island’s lighthouse, which still stands though it has been automated since 1971, was erected at the highest point on the island, on the north-eastern side of the grassy bank. It is about 75 feet high, circular in section and built of stone to enable it to resist the gales which blow in from the Atlantic. The station had no wireless or telegraph apparatus in 1900, but signalling devices, consisting of balls on poles projecting from the lighthouse balcony, were fitted to enable the keepers to signal any emergency to a watching station on Lewis. The keepers’ accommodation, which stands at the foot of the tower, is a single storey building surrounded by a fence. The path leads to a front door opening, via a short passage, straight into the kitchen. The building also contained bedrooms, a kitchen, a storeroom and a living area17.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Two reports, written shortly after the discovery of the disappearances by Joseph Moore and Robert Muirhead, the Superintendent in overall charge of the Flannan light, survive (though the former is presently accessible only in part18) to give us a fair idea of what steps were taken by the men on the spot to solve the mystery of the vanishing lighthousemen and what may actually have occurred on Eilean Mór.

Moore, who dated his memorandum 28 December – two days after returning to the island – began by reporting the first signs that something was wrong on Eilean Mór. The lighthouse flag, normally hoisted to welcome the Hesperus, was not flying, and there was no response to several blasts on the steamer’s horn. He continued:

Captain Harvie deemed it prudent to lower a boat and land a man if it was possible. I was the first to land, leaving Mr McCormick, the Buoymaster, and the men in the boat till I could return.

I went up to the lighthouse and on coming to the entrance gate I found it closed. I made for the entrance door leading to the kitchen and storeroom and found it also closed, and the door inside that. But the kitchen door itself was open. On entering I looked at the fireplace and saw that the fire was not lighted for some days. I entered the rooms in succession and found the beds empty, just as they left them in the early morning.

I did not take time to search further, for I naturally well knew that something serious had occurred.

I darted outside and made for the landing. I informed Mr McCormick that the place was deserted. He with some men came up so as to make sure, but unfortunately the first impression was only too true. Mr McCormick and myself proceeded to the light room, where everything was in proper order. The lamp was clean, the foundation19full, blinds on the windows, etc.

That night Moore made sure that the lamp was lighted at the proper time, and next morning he and his companions searched the whole of the small island in the hope of finding some clue as to how and why his colleagues had vanished.

At the east landing, they found everything in order and the mooring ropes properly secured in their shelter. But on descending the cliff path to the much more exposed west landing, which looked out to the North Atlantic, they found signs of storm damage. The iron railings of the trolley tramway, he wrote, ‘had started from their foundations and broken in several places’. And the box containing the mooring ropes had vanished, despite having been firmly wedged into a crevice and then anchored20. Evidently the west landing had been exposed to heavy weather at some time between the previous relief, on 7 December21 and Moore’s return on 26 December.

Robert Muirhead, who made his way to Eilean before the end of December to conduct his own investigation, confirmed these initial findings and noted further evidence of very heavy weather which had blown in from the Atlantic. In an undated report, apparently written a few weeks after the event, he noted:

On the Thursday and Friday the men made a thorough search over and round the island and I went over the ground with them on the Saturday. Everything at the East landing place was in order... and the lighthouse buildings and everything at the Station was in order. Owing to the amount of sea, I could not get down to the [west] landing place, but I got down to the crane platform about 70 feet above the sea level... The crane... was found to be unharmed, the jib lowered and secured to the rock, and the canvas covering the wire rope on the barrel securely lashed around it, and there was no evidence that the men had been doing anything at the crane. The mooring ropes, landing ropes, derrick landing ropes and crane handles, and also a wooden box in which they were kept and which was secured in a crevice in the rooks 70 feet up the tramway... were displaced and twisted. A large block of stone, weighing upwards of 20 cwt., had been dislodged from its position higher up and carried down and left on the concrete path leading from the terminus of the railway to the top of the steps. A life buoy fastened to the railing along this path, to be used in case of emergency, had disappeared, and I thought at first it had been removed for the purpose of being used but, on examining the ropes by which it was fastened, I found that they had not been touched, and as pieces of canvas were adhering to the ropes, it was evident that the force of the sea pouring through the railings had, even at this great height (110 feet above sea level), torn the life buoy off the ropes22.

From this, and his investigations at the light itself, Muirhead was able to form a working hypothesis concerning both the date and time that the three men had vanished, and their probable fate.

THE TIMING OF THE DISAPPEARANCES

Despite initial uncertainty concerning the precise date of the disappearances, the evidence provided by the station’s log-book, the state of the living quarters when the relief arrived, and reports from passing skippers make it possible to estimate the likely time to within an hour or two.

Captain Harvie’s initial supposition, which was taken up and reported by the local Highland papers, was that the tragedy probably occurred on 20 December 1900, six days before his arrival at Eilean Mór. He based this estimate on the fact that every clock on the island had wound down and stopped, and on the knowledge that a great storm battered the whole west coast on the 20th and caused considerable disruption to the north among the vessels of the Shetland fishing fleet23.

The closer investigations of Moore and Muirhead, however, soon led the likely date of the disaster to be moved back to 15 December. Certainly it could have occurred no earlier than 9am on the afternoon of that day, as an entry was made in the log at that time (see below). Nor, given the punctiliousness of the keepers, does it seem likely they would have fallen far behind in keeping up this record. A date later than 16 December therefore seems unlikely.

In fact, it would appear that the actual time of the disappearances must have been the early afternoon of Saturday 15 December. Muirhead observed that the morning’s work, including the trimming of the lamp and the filling of the oil fountains, had been completed and the men had eaten their dinner – then the midday meal – and done the washing-up24. And, since the standing orders issued to the men on the island forbade all three to be out together after dark, leaving the light burning but untended, it must have been before nightfall – which, at that latitude, and that time of year, occurs before 4pm25.

The argument that the disappearance did indeed occur before dark on 15 December is strengthened by Muirhead’s observation that Captain Holman of the steamer Archtor26 had passed Eilean Mór at midnight that evening and noticed that the light was not lit – something the missing men would surely never have allowed27.

Several secondary sources have suggested that the weather off the Hebrides that day was calm, and that the disappearance was therefore unlikely to be a consequence of bad weather28. Certainly it is true that the greatest of that winter’s storms did not strike the Flannans until 20 December, almost a week later. Nevertheless, there is no contemporary local evidence that the weather on the 15th was indeed ‘calm’, and the notion that the weather could not have been the culprit is not supported by other seamen or the local newspapers of the time. While it is certainly true that much of the extensive damage discovered to the railings at the landing site could have been inflicted by the great storm of 20 December, Holman of the Archtor reported the weather conditions just off the Flannans on the evening of 15 December as ‘clear, but stormy’29.

THE PROBABLE CAUSE OF THE DISAPPEARANCES

Over the years, many theories have been advanced to explain the mystery of the vanishing lighthousemen. These include:

1. The men were washed away by giant waves. This is the generally accepted explanation30.
2. The men were blown off the island by high winds. This was Superintendent Muirhead’s initial supposition31.
3. One of the three keepers went mad and ran over the edge of a cliff pursued by his comrades; or murdered the other two and threw their bodies and then himself into the sea32.
4. The men were lost while attempting to aid a vessel in distress33.
5. The men were removed from the island by a passing ship for some reason34.
6. Among other, extremely tenuous, suggestions, are the theories that Ducat, Marshall and McArthur

• – were plucked from the island by giant birds35
• – unwittingly became a human sacrifice to some sort of supernatural agency36
• – were abducted by aliens37
• – were turned into giant birds by the ‘little people’ of Eilean Mór38

To deal with these explanations in increasing order of likelihood, it is first necessary to note that there is no evidence whatsoever to support any of the exotic solutions listed in (6), which are generally the product of the false assumption that the conditions at the time of the disappearance were so fine that poor weather cannot explain the mystery. Nor, though (5) is marginally more plausible, does there seem to be any reason why the keepers should have been abducted in this way. There is certainly no evidence that any of the vessels in the vicinity called at Eilean Mór on 15 December, and given the generally poor weather conditions around that time it would probably have been difficult to effect a landing in any case.

The idea that one of the three keepers went insane and killed or caused the deaths of the other two is superficially more attractive, and certainly not altogether impossible. Nevertheless, no evidence of any violence was discovered on the island, and neither Moore nor Muirhead, both of whom knew the station intimately, reported the absence of anything that could conceivably have been used as a murder weapon.

It is certainly more likely that the disappearances were the result of the men venturing out in poor weather. There is plentiful evidence that Eilean Mór was battered by strong winds and high seas coming in from the west around the time the lighthousemen vanished. The rails of the western trolley tramway were damaged, and a box of mooring ropes securely anchored 70 feet up the west cliff face had been washed away. Further still up the cliffs, a life buoy fastened to a railing 110 feet above sea level had been torn from its moorings, and a heavy stone block, weighing some 20 cwt., had been dislodged and fallen onto the concrete path below39.

Could such damage have been caused by high winds alone? It seems unlikely. Muirhead considered and discussed the possibility of the men being blown 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, as, had the wind caught them, it would, from its direction, have blown them up the Island and I feel certain that they would have managed to throw themselves down before they had reached the summit or brow of the Island [42].

After examining the ropes that had attached the missing lifebuoy to the railings, the Superintendent found further evidence to support this contention, noting: ‘As pieces of canvas were adhering to the ropes, it was evident that the force of the sea pouring through the railings had... torn the life buoy off the ropes.’40 Moore added that the iron railings on the path down to the west landing ‘had started from their foundations and broken in several places’41. This evidence implies that waves at least 110 feet high – created, presumably, by local conditions along the cliffs of Eilean Mór – had smashed into the island during the storms of December.

There can be no doubt waves of this magnitude would have been More than capable of sweeping away any men unfortunate enough to have felt even a fraction of their full force. And, since contemporary investigation produced some evidence of their existence, it would appear that the puzzle of the vanishing lighthousemen has a fairly plausible solution. Why then, one is entitled to ask, has it become such an enduring mystery of the sea?

In part, the answer to this question is that most authors who have written up the disappearances have not consulted contemporary sources or had access to the official reports of Muirhead and Moore. Nevertheless, waves of 110 feet or more do not exist in the open sea, and are very seldom created even in the most extreme of local conditions, so it has always seemed permissible to doubt that such monstrous walls of water actually exist off the coast of Scotland. And if they do, it has always been difficult to imagine what could have driven the missing keepers out in such appalling weather conditions. Experienced lighthousemen, who know their primary duty is to keep their lamps burning, rarely go outside at all in heavy weather, certainly not all together. And then there are the various anomalies associated with the story – details so strange they seem to defy a reductionist solution to the mystery.

ANOMALIES ASSOCIATED WITH THE VANISHING LIGHTHOUSEMEN

Accounts of the disappearances on Eilean Mór typically draw attention to one or more of four anomalies that have become associated with the case, each of which appears to suggest that the solution to the puzzle is not as straightforward as it at first appears. Before considering the ‘giant wave’ theory in more detail, it is necessary to consider each of these mysteries in turn.

The mysterious logbook entries

Of all the strange circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the three light-keepers, perhaps the most peculiar is the reputed existence of odd and even mystical entries in the station’s log.

Vincent Gaddis42, who based his account on a 1920s American pulp magazine article ‘derived from English sources’43, states that the mysterious logbook entries were written in Thomas Marshall’s hand and read as follows:

Dec. 12: Gale, north by north-west. Sea lashed to fury. Stormbound 9pm. Never seen such a storm. Everything shipshape. Ducat irritable. 12pm. Storm still raging. Wind steady. Stormbound. Cannot go out. Ship passed sounding foghorn. Could see lights of cabins. Ducat quiet. McArthur crying.

Dec. 13: Storm continued through night. Wind shifted west by north. Ducat quiet. McArthur praying. 12 noon. Grey daylight. Me, Ducat, and McArthur prayed.

Dec. 15: 1pm. Storm ended. Sea calm. God is over all.

Several writers who repeat or précis these entries, including Gaddis and Michael Harrison, assert – not unnaturally – that they are extremely strange. Gaddis observes that ‘the men could hardly have been swept away by [the] storm, if there had been one, for according to the log the storm had passed when the last entry was made. The storm was over and peace had come.’ He adds:

Ducat, usually very good-natured, had just returned from his leave on shore. Why should he be irritable?... McArthur, a hardened, veteran seaman44 who had weathered the sea’s worst blows, well known as a lusty, fearless brawler on land, crying! What could have been the mysterious, extraordinary situation that would make strong McArthur weep?

And Harrison, always inclined to the sensational, labels the log ‘disturbing’ and puts himself in the position of the three light-keepers:

Whatever was happening, or whatever ghastly doom seemed to be threatening [on 14 December], now included the log-keeper, Marshall, in its menace. For on the following day, this was the solitary, brief and sinister entry: ‘Grey daylight. Me, Ducat and McArthur prayed.’

It was all but the last entry, and with that last mysterious entry – ‘God is over all’ – made on 15 December, the log closed, and the three terrified, praying men vanished for ever from this world46.

It is probably best to state, first, that it remains possible to read the entries as unusual but explicable descriptions of nothing more sinister than the effects of depression on three isolated men. However, the supposed log book entries are mysterious in several ways beside their potentially supernatural overtones. There is at least one error – the log for 12 December in which the entry for 12pm follows one for 9pm – which would be incredible in a typically precise nautical log, and suggests either a clumsy hoax or, at best, careless copying which might put the accuracy of the rest of the information in doubt. It is also odd that the log is said to have been kept exclusively by Thomas Marshall, who as Second Assistant Keeper was both the youngest and – since McArthur was doing duty for William Ross, the First Assistant, technically the most junior of the three men on Eilean Mór47. (The standard nautical practice is for each officer of the watch to make his own entries in the log.)

Moreover, the whole tone of the supposed document is quite peculiar. It is, for example, difficult to believe that Marshall would have made insubordinate notes about his superior, Ducat, in an official log. His suggestion that the Principal Keeper had been ‘irritable’ would be read not only by the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouse Board – who might conceivably require him to justify his comments – but presumably also by Ducat himself, who might certainly object to their being presented to the Board in Edinburgh. Marshall’s supposed musings actually read like entries in a diary, though no authority has ever suggested they are anything other than a dry official log.

Indeed, the whole point of log books is that they are places for noting simple facts: dates, times, weather conditions, the height of waves and so on. They are certainly not intended to record the times prayers were said, or mere impressions, such as ‘sea lashed to fury’, much less something as unimportant – indeed irrelevant – as the passing moods of men. It would hardly be peculiar, during a routine and tedious turn of duty, for a lighthouseman to be ‘quiet’, so why would Marshall think to note the fact? Sensationalist writers have hinted that the notes were made because the men were increasingly aware of looming, supernatural disaster. I believe they point, rather, to the entries being a fabrication. Ducat’s and Macarthur’s moods of 12 and 13 December are significant only because of what happened to them on the 15th. To me that implies all three entries were written after 15 December 1900.

Such criticisms are, admittedly, mere conjecture. But firm evidence of fraud does exist – once one returns to original sources not readily accessible to a lazy hoaxer. Both the records of the Northern Lighthouse Board and contemporary press reports make it clear that Flannan station’s log book was kept only up to 13 December, with subsequent entries being noted, in chalk, on a slate for later transfer to the book; the notion of a log extending as late as 15 December is a fallacy. Even if we are charitable, and count the entries on the slate as part of the log proper, it is explicitly stated that the lighthousemen’s last notes (a simple record of the weather conditions) were written at 9am on the morning of 15 December48. The contemporary record is clear that no entry was made as late as 1pm. This must imply that the supposed log whose entries are quoted so frequently in the Fortean secondary literature is a hoax.

The half-eaten meal and the over-turned chair

Several secondary sources report that the three lightkeepers’ final meal was found half-eaten in the living quarters when Moore and his companions searched the building on 26 December. For example, the generally sober Oban Times of 5 January 1901 reported (on no known authority):

The blinds were drawn. The keepers’ beds were unmade, just as they had risen from them, and their half-finished breakfast was on the table49.

It is sometimes said that the final meal was of ‘salted mutton and boiled potatoes’50.

This unsettling detail not only suggests that the fate which overtook the missing men was sudden and overwhelming; it also greatly heightens the sense of mystery surrounding the disappearances on the Flannan Isles because it consciously echoes the case of the most notorious of derelicts, the Mary Celeste, which was found abandoned in the North Atlantic on 4 December 1872, several days after the last entry was made in her log book, no trace being found of her 10 passengers and crew. Retellings of this famous case often report that hot food, and cups of still-warm tea or coffee were found on the cabin table, and the stove in the galley was lit.

In fact, it is definitely established that the living quarters on Eilean Mór were clean and tidy, just as there is no doubt that no final meal or hot drinks were found aboard the Mary Celeste51. This fact was commented on by Robert Muirhead, who wrote

The pots and pans had been cleaned and the kitchen tidied up, which showed that the man who acted as cook had completed his work52.

Nor is there anything in the reports of Moore and Muirhead to support the contention that the beds were left unmade53.

The suggestion that one of the lighthouse chairs was found tipped over, which features heavily in an epic poem about the disaster written by WW Gibson54 is likewise unsubstantiated, and appears to originate in a suggestion by the Oban Times that the chairs around the kitchen table were ‘pushed aside, as if [the men] had hurriedly risen and gone out’55. Neither Moore nor Muirhead mentions making any such discovery. Nevertheless, the idea that at least one of the missing men left the lighthouse in a hurry is not at all improbable, as will be seen.

Missing oilskins and unused outdoor clothing

Each of the men stationed on Eilean Mór had a set of wet-weather clothing for use near the landings in high seas or other poor conditions56. Ducat, the Principal Keeper, had sea boots and a waterproof, while Marshall had sea boots and oilskins57. The third man on the island, McArthur the occasional, was not so well provided. In his report on the disaster, Joseph Moore noted that he owned no oilskins, only an old coat known to his companions as his ‘wearing coat’58.

When Moore and his companions searched the lighthouse on 26 December, they discovered that Ducat’s waterproof and Marshall’s oilskins were missing. McArthur’s ‘wearing coat’, however, was still on its peg, ‘which shows,’ Moore noted, ‘as far as I know that he went out in his shirtsleeves’59. It does not seem likely that the Occasional would have done this willingly in weather bad enough to have caused his companions to don their waterproofs, and this suggests that, whatever happened to the three missing men, it must have happened to Ducat and Marshall first, and that McArthur ran out of the lighthouse to aid them without waiting to don his coat.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Oban Times, in its flawed report of 5 January 1901 which also contained two other significant errors (see above), also claimed that ‘an oilskin’ (which would have had to be Marshall’s) was found ‘fixed to the wreckage’ of the crane above the west landing60. I have found no corroboration for this statement.

The secret language

Martin Martin’s 1695 account of the peculiar customs practised by the men of Lewis on their annual visit to the Flannan Isles has been used by several writers to imply that there was something unearthly about Eilean Mór – and that it was home to some preternatural power which might have had a hand in the disappearance of the three lighthousemen. John Michell, undoubtedly the best-read of the secondary authorities, recounted the superstitions and comments in his The Flying Saucer Vision, remarking:

‘Evidently the islands were thought of as a kind of other world, haunted by supernatural creatures and the spirits of the dead... Probably the Flannan Islands were the islands of the dead, the place to which people were ferried and never returned. This would explain their extreme holiness and their baleful character. It might also shed some light on [what] happened there early this century...’

Certainly the weirdest and most unusual of the Lewis-men’s customs was their use of alternate words to describe the physical features and conditions on the island. It will be recalled that Martin wrote:

They must not so much as once name the islands in which they are fowling by the ordinary name, Flannan, but only the country. There are several other things which must not be called by their common names, e.g., Visk, which in the language of the natives signifies Water, they call Burn; a Rock, which in their language is Crag, must here be called Cruey, i.e., Hard; Shore, in their language expressed by Claddach, must here be called Vah, i.e., a Cave; Sour in their language is expressed Gort, but must here be called Gair, i.e., Sharp; Slippery, which is expressed Bog, must be called Soft; and several other things to this purpose.’62

Michell comments of this passage:

Most extraordinary of all, the men had to speak in a different dialect to that which they used at home. Certain things were called by different names, as if the memory of a long vanished language was being perpetuated. Words never used elsewhere were kept for the annual visit to the Flannan Islands63.

Sadly, this is to misinterpret Martin Martin. The alternates he lists are everyday Gaelic words – simple synonyms for the forbidden phrases, not words in some extinct tongue. ‘Burn’, for example, is plainly bùrn, meaning water – a word that has entered common English usage since Martin’s day, and is used nowadays to mean a Scottish stream. The antiquary’s ‘Cruey’ is cruaidh, cruel or hard in Gaelic, and ‘ Vah’ is presumably uamh, which does indeed mean cave. ‘Gair’ can be identified as geur, sharp, and so on.

The reasons that the men of Lewis had for insisting on the use of these synonyms are certainly mysterious, and likely to remain so, but they are not a ‘memory of a long vanished language’. Nor is there any reason to suppose that they were kept solely for use during the annual visit to the Flannans; on the contrary, they could have been heard all over the Highlands in Martin’s day, which is why his famous passage, read carefully, presumes that the synonyms will be familiar to at least some of his readers.

Furthermore, it is important to stress that the Flannans were not the only islands in which the peculiar prohibitions were practised. Martin specifically mentions that St Kilda, 40 miles to the south, could never be called ‘by its proper Irish name, Hirt, but only the high country’64. It would therefore be difficult to argue, from the antiquarian evidence at least, that Eilean Mór and its sisters were considered to be uniquely strange and forbidding by the Hebridean islanders.

In short, there is no reason to suppose that the prohibition on the use of certain Gaelic words in the Flannan Isles was connected to the ‘fairies’ or ‘pygmies’ supposed to dwell there, or to the disappearance of Ducat, Marshall and McArthur.

Table of unsubstantiated statements regarding the Vanishing Lighthousemen of Eilean Mor

Statement	Source	Comments
One of the cranes was carried away by the severe weather	Scotsman, 28 Dec 1900	Contradicted by the official reports of Muir-head and Moore
A last meal was left half-eaten on the table	Oban Times, 5 Jan 1901	Not supported by the investigators' reports
A chair was pushed back as if its occupant had risen in a hurry	Oban Times, 5 Jan 1901	Not supported by the investigators' reports
An oilskin was found trapped in the wreckage of the west crane	Oban Times, 5 Jan 1901	Possible, but this fact is mentioned nowhere else, and if the men were indeed swept away it seems unlikely one could have lost his oilskin in this way
Peculiar entries were found in the station logbook	True Strange Stories, Aug 1929	Inconsistent with both nautical practice and the papers preserved by the Northern Light­ house Board
The Flannan Isles had a strange reputation and were reputed to be the home of fairies or nature spirits	John Michell & others	There is insufficient contemporary or secondary evidence to prove this contention without further research
Many burials took place on Eilean Mor, which was known as an 'isle of the dead'	Michell, Harrison	There is insufficient evidence to prove this contention, which may have been based on the supposed discovery of numerous (small but apparently human) bones on the island prior to the late 17th century. No cemetery is marked by the Ordnance Survey
When Moore opened the door of the lighthouse, three huge birds of an unknown species flew out to sea from the top of the light	Carey Miller	There is no contemporary evidence to support this statement, which sounds like the romantic embellishment of a later writer

 

CONCLUSION: A LIKELY SCENARIO

If, as appears probable, the four anomalies normally associated with the mystery of the vanishing lighthousemen actually had no bearing on their disappearance, two questions remain: could waves capable of sending water up to 110 feet up a cliff face have battered Eilean Mór that December, and, if they did, could they account for the apparently simultaneous disappearance of all three of the missing lighthousemen?

The answer to the first question appears to be a definite ‘yes’. After examining the remains of the missing life buoy, Superintendent Muirhead was convinced that “the force of the sea pouring through the railings had, even at this great height (110 feet), torn the lifebuoy off the ropes”65, and his conclusions were supported by the remarkable research of another lighthouseman, Walter Aldebert, who served as Principal Keeper on Eilean Mór between 1953 and 1957.

Aldebert, who was well aware of the story of the vanishing lighthousemen, observed that in stormy weather “even the lamphouse, 300 feet up, can be splashed with spray”66. Convinced that giant waves could account for the disappearance of his predecessors, he repeatedly took a camera out in appalling weather conditions to record the height of the largest waves striking the island, exposing 30 reels of film in total67. On one occasion, crouching on the shoulder of the island some 200 feet above sea level, he himself was nearly washed off the cliff:

A coil of rope, lying on top, and too solid to be shifted by the wind, was washed off. The water lay a foot deep after the wave receded…

My pictures do not show the highest waves, but they give some idea of their immensity. Perhaps these poor fellows, being fairly new to the Flannans, did not realize the extreme danger68.

Is it possible, though, that all three lighthousemen could have been caught simultaneously by such a wave. And why would McArthur have braved the storm in his shirtsleeves? Aldebert had a theory to explain this too:

While I was at Flannan… I would often sit there, putting myself in the place of the Principal. A storm is raging, and Mr Ducat is worried about his landing ropes. Nobody goes out of a lighthouse in bad weather, but if he loses his ropes relief may be impossible, and he must save them if he can.

After diner the wind starts to drop. Leaving the cook to wash up, he and the other man69 put on their sea boots and coats and make their way to the west side, as there is no hand-rail by the railway. They come to the safety path which has a hand rail, reaching the path which runs at right angles to the stairway and, seeing the path dry, they continue towards the crane where the box for stowing the landing ropes is situated.

Suddenly a wave much bigger than the previous one comes in and sweeps one of the men back into the sea.

Aldebert hypothesized that the survivor – there is no means of saying who it was – then ran back up the 45 degree track leading to the lighthouse to summon the help of McArthur:

The cook, who has just sat down after clearing the dinner, knocks his chair from under him and rushes out – without his coat. Grabbing a heaving line, the two men make their way back to the west side, hoping to throw the line to their unfortunate comrade. Then comes another huge wave, sweeping both men into the sea70.

I find this a plausible solution, which neatly explains the mystery of how McArthur came to leave the lighthouse without his ‘wearing coat’, and fits all the other known facts of the case. There is no need to assume that every one of Aldebert’s details is correct — McArthur might or might not have knocked over a chair in his haste, for example. Similarly, Anna Ducat remembered that, six months before the tragedy, the keepers were fined five shillings by the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouse Board because tackle at the west landing had been damaged during an earlier storm. She believed that her father and Thomas Marshall went out not to save their mooring ropes, but to inspect what damage had been done by the bad weather and make the repairs necessary to avoid another fine71.

A few minor puzzles remain. If McArthur was in a terrible hurry, for example, it may seem odd that Moore found the gate, the front door and an inside door leading to the kitchen all closed72. But it is not impossible that all were blown shut by the high winds of the 15 th or 20 th. And the coincidence of two big waves in succession plucking three men — two of them forewarned — from Eilean Mór remains striking. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely we will, at this late stage, arrive at a more workable solution than the one proposed by a man with long experience of the Flannan Isles, who risked his life to secure the evidence he required to back it up.

_________________________

A NOTE ON SOURCES

Although in many respects the evidence available for a study of the Flannan Islands lighthouse disaster is rather good – comprising as it does contemporary primary material in the archives of the relevant marine authority and reliable contemporary local newspaper reports – certain frustrations have attended my research into the matter.

The first has been a lack of time, relatively, to pursue every lead that emerged during the writing of this paper. For this deficiency I can only apologise and express the twin hopes that the material I have assembled will prove adequate as a preliminary study, and that in the longer term it will be possible for some researcher to devote more time to a fuller assessment.

An additional problem has been the inaccessibility of primary material in the archives of the Northern Lighthouse Board in Edinburgh. When I commenced my research, these archives remained in the Board’s headquarters, and were not open directly to researchers. Happily Brenda Purvis, administrative officer, and Lorna Grieve, information officer, were able to send me transcripts of some of the papers from the archives, together with a fact sheet; these would appear to have been prepared at an earlier date to meet a fairly regular demand for information from researchers and children working on school projects. Unfortunately, however, attempts on my part to pursue some even more valuable archival material – including the contentious log book and Walter Aldebert’s important unofficial report and photographs – drew a blank. Some of the material may actually have been lost, as Ms Purvis noted [private communication 11 November 1996, author’s files] that ‘with regard to the Station Log and other details, some were not returned from the courts after the inquiry’.

Thankfully, a small portion of the surviving but unexcerpted material was made available, around 1960, to a journalist named Frank Walker who included quotations from it in an typescript article that was included among the papers that were sent to me. As the remainder of this article is quite accurate, I have felt able to accept these (frustratingly brief) quotations as correct.

During the course of my research, the NLB decided to transfer the bulk of its archives to the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh, where they are notionally more readily available to researchers. Unfortunately, as is the way in such matters, the papers were inaccessible, awaiting cataloguing, at the time of writing. More recent research, by Paul Chambers, has indicated that the logbook and Aldebert report are not among the materials sent to the SRA.

Another source of information that would almost certainly come to light with a little more research is the report of the Crown enquiry into the disaster. This is supposed [Document 10] to have been made in July 1901, but a search of all the local newspapers, plus The Times, The Scotsman and the Inverness Courier for that month has failed to turn up any contemporary reports of it, and there was no copy in the material supplied to me by the NLB. I doubt, however, that any of its conclusions would differ significantly from those of Superintendent Muirhead.

So far as the secondary sources go, I regret that I have not been able to track down a copy of Ernest Fallon’s piece in True Strange Stories of August 1929, the pulp magazine referred to by Vincent Gaddis, which might have helped me to pin down the obscure origin of rumours of strange entries in the station log, nor had the time to make a sufficiently general search among the Fortean literature and produce a worthwhile preliminary bibliography. It is, however, worth noting that by far the most worthwhile secondary source available to me was an article published by The Times on the 90th anniversary of the discovery of the disaster [Document 11], which was based on an interview with the surviving daughter of James Ducat, one of the three dead men. Otherwise, Gaddis’s account in Invisible Horizons (New York, 1965) is at least referenced, mentioning accounts in Edward Rowe Snow’s Mysteries and Adventures Along the Atlantic Coast and the popular works of Harold T Wilkins and Frank Edwards. Some original, if rather mystical, suggestions were made by John Michell in chapter 6 of his The Flying Saucer Vision (London 1967), and I also had to hand an account in my battered old copy of the children’s book Baffling Mysteries (London, 1976), by Carey Miller, a typically sensationalist passage in chapter 11 of Michael Harrison’s Vanishings (London 1981), and a short article, ‘The Flannan Isles’ by Mark Fraser, which appeared in the privately-printed magazine Haunted Scotland (issue 7, 1997). Otherwise, accounts of the mystery were relatively hard to come by – even an encyclopaedia such as the Orbis partwork The Unexplained (London, 1980-83) mentions the case only in a photo caption – and all appear to have been based on retellings of earlier accounts, without benefit of even the few original details available from the NLB and the contemporary press.

I would like to thank the Northern Lighthouse Board and Mark Fraser, Richard Furlong, Fiona Jerome, Joe McNally and Ronnie Scott for their help during the preparation of this paper.

1 Documents 1-3, 9.

2 Document 9.

3 Documents 1, 6, 7. Moore’s rank is given as third assistant keeper, making him the most junior of the four keepers on the Flannan Isles [Document 9].

4 Documents 3, 9.

5 Document 5.

6 Document 11.

7 They are also known as ‘The Seven Hunters’ [Document 3]. In fact a large scale Ordnance Survey map indicates that there are at least 20 islets and rocks in the group, and it is difficult to discern which seven among them might be considered sufficiently larger than their neighbours to make this name an obvious and a valid one. John Michell, who draws attention to this anomaly in his The Flying Saucer Vision (London: Abacus 1974 p.126), points out that the number seven is generally held to be a magical and significant one. ‘A group of seven islands,’ he writes, ‘often stands in fairy stories for the islands of paradise, islands such as the seven islands of Wak, which Hasan, the hero of the Arabian Nights Story, visited in search of his swan-maiden bride.’

8 The name means ‘Isle of Houses’.

9 This name, which is Gaelic for ‘ Big Island’ (and not ‘The Isle of the Dead’ as some secondary sources have erroneously and sensationally translated it) is among the most common place names in the Highlands.

10 Though still very small. It is approximately 800 yards long by 500 wide, and surrounded on all sides by cliffs between 150 and 200 feet high [Documents 3, 11].

11 And not the seventeenth century, as several secondary sources incorrectly have it.

12 He used it as a retreat or hermitage.

13 Michell, op.cit. p.129, recounts the legend of John Morisone, a seaman who was marooned on Eilean Mor in the seventeenth century, but survived: ‘During his stay, he allowed his fire to go out, and had no means of relighting it. He was in despair, for without a fire he seemed certain to perish, when suddenly he was confronted by a man. Without explaining who he was, the man told John Morisone to look for fire on the altar of the chapel. On the altar a flame was burning, and John Morisone was able to light a fire from it and preserve himself until he was relieved.’

14 Quoted in Document 3. The original work, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, was published in 1695, the passages on the Flannans appearing in a chapter devoted to the ‘Inferior Islands’ in the vicinity of Lewis.

15 Several secondary authorities claim there was a belief that the Flannans were inhabited by fairies or nature spirits; this speculation appears to have its origin in Martin’s story, though the antiquary does not specifically state that the Hebrideans supposed there was anything supernatural about the Flannan pygmies (below). Cf. Carey Miller, Baffling Mysteries (London: Pan 1976) pp.19-25; Michael Harrison, Vanishings (London: NEL 1981) pp.119-23.

16 These conflicting heights are given in Documents 6 and 9. Document 9, the Superintendent’s report on the disaster, which gives the height of the crane above the normal high-water mark as 70 feet, is to be preferred.

17 Documents 3, 9.

18 See the section on sources at the end of the paper for an elucidation of this point.

19 A reservoir of oil fuel.

20 Report cited in Document 10.

21 Ibid.

22 Document 9.

23 Documents 2, 3, 5.

24 Document 9.

25 Document 5.

26 Not , as Vincent Gaddis has it, the SS Archer (Gaddis, op.cit. p.182).

27 Documents 4, 9.

28 e.g., Gaddis op.cit. pp.181-2; Harrison, op.cit. pp.121-2.

29 Document 4.

30 Documents 3, 9–11.

31 Documents 2, 3, 9.

32 Document 10.

33 Document 5.

34 Ibid.

35 Document 11.

36 Michell, op.cit. p.131 hypothesises: ‘In the light of what we can deduce of the ways of worship and sacrifice of the past, the disappearance of the Flannan Island lighthouse keepers may be seen as an extraordinary repetition of an ancient sacrificial ceremony. The men were taken over from the Long Island near Callernish and ferried over to the island of the dead, Eilean Mór, where they were installed in a tower, similar to those once used for human sacrifice... In the same way as a magic ritual, if properly carried out, may have a predictable result, the sequence of events involved in taking the lighthouse keepers to the Flannan Islands tower resulted in their disappearance. The ritual of human sacrifice to the little gods of the western islands was re-enacted.’

37 Mark Fraser, ‘The Flannan Isles’, Haunted Scotland 7 (1997).

38 This suggestion was made by the children’s mystery writer Cary Miller in Baffling Mysteries: a Collection of Weird Problems and Unsolved Riddles (London, 1976), who writes (pp.24-5): ‘The local people, who knew more about the history of the Flannans than did the investigators, have a different theory which continues to be passed down from generation to generation. They say that an unseen force on the island of Eilean Mor would not tolerate intruders and got rid of them. They say that when Joseph Moore flung open the door of the lighthouse and called out the names of his friends, three enormous black birds the like of which have never been seen before launched themselves from the top of the tower and flew out to sea.’ It seems hardly worth pointing out that this ‘theory’, which is unreferenced and based on who knows what source, fails to account for the fact that none of the dozens of light-keepers who succeeded Ducat, Marshall and McArthur as custodians of the Flannan light also disappeared, and that Moore’s original report makes no mention of any such weird occurrence.

39 Document 9.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Gaddis, op.cit. pp.177–83.

43 In a note, Gaddis (ibid p.248) cites an article by Ernest Fallon in True Strange Stories of August 1929. He appears to have been the first author to draw attention to the existence of this piece. I regret I have not been able to obtain a copy of the original article.

44 This is not true; he was a former army man. Document 5.

45 Gaddis, op.cit. p.181.

46 Harrison, op.cit. p.122.

47 Document 9.

48 Documents 1, 9.

49 Document 7.

50 Document 11.

51 Charles Fay, citing contemporary testimony before the Vice-Admiralty Court in Gibraltar , lists ‘food on the cabin table’ and ‘warm galley stove’ among 16 ‘Common errors and misperceptions’ in an appendix to his scrupulously-researched work The Story of the Mary Celeste (New York 1988) p.187.

52 Document 9.

53 Documents 9,10.

54 See Document 11.

55 Document 7.

56 Document 9.

57 Ibid.

58 Document 10.

59 Document 11.

60 Document 7.

61 Michell op.cit. p.127

62 Cited in Document 3.

63 Michell, op.cit. p.127.

64 Document 3. In fact, St Kilda is a much better candidate than the Flannans for the role of an isle of the dead held in awe by generations of Hebrideans. Its Old Irish name, Hirta, means ‘dangerous’ or ‘death–like’. Haswell–Smith, op.cit. p.261.

65 Document 9.

66 Document 10.

67 The processed film was submitted, with a report, to the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouse Board. Unfortunately no trace of them can be found in the NLB records now at the Scottish Record Office.

68 Document 10.

69 ie Marshall.

70 Document 10.

71 Document 11.

72 Document 10.

 

Link to the Calendar of Sources on which the paper is based