‘Strange Affair at a Lighthouse – Three Keepers Disappear’

Newspaper report from 1900 on the mysterious disappearance of the crew at the Flannan Isles Lighthouse

On 26 December 1900, the relief crew for the Flannan Isles Lighthouse (located in the Outer Hebrides, 20 miles west of Lewis), arrived at the lighthouse station only to find that the three keepers had vanished.

The beds were unmade, the clock had stopped and an overturned chair in the kitchen were some of the details that were logged by the relief crew in an effort to work out what had happened.

But as with the unfinished story of the ‘Marie Celeste’, it seems that the unexplained fate of the three keepers (Thomas Marshall, James Ducat and Donald Macarthur) will remain yet another of the sea’s enduring mysteries…

Northants Evening Telegraph – Thursday 27 December 1900

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http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000412/19001227/039/0003