  Mystery
This week: Mystery at Eilean Mor Edited by: fyn  
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Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.~~Charles Dickens
Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.~~Charles Simic
"Darkness reigns at the foot of the lighthouse"~~Japanese Proverb
"It is the one orderly product our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths; it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden the best evidence we can give of our dignity."~~ E. M. Forster |
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Ever since a trip to Scotland fifteen years ago, I have been entranced by the Mystery of the Missing lighhouse keepers of Eilean Mor. The Outer Hebrides island chain off the western coast of Scotland is one of the most remote locations in the world, bedrock formed of ancient metamorphic rock. The Flannan Isles, also known as the Seven Hunters, are seven uninhabited islands on the western-most edge of the chain; and in December 1900, the largest of these -- Eilean Mor (Gaelic for "Big Island") -- became the site of an unsolved mystery when three lighthouse keepers vanished without any apparent explanation.
A desolate and forbidding place, it is known for horrendous storms and huge waves crashing on the island which rises some 288 feet above the sea. So many ships had been lost there that in 1895, a lighthouse was finally built on Eilean Mor - an undertaking of considerable logistical difficulty as the building materials had to be hauled up a 150 foot cliff (45 meters.) It took four years to build the lighthouse. Once construction was finished, three lighthouse keepers were installed: head keeper James Ducat, first assistant Thomas Marshall, and second assistant Donald McArthur. All three men were seasoned veterans of the storms; Ducat had over twenty years experience of lighthouse keeping, while Marshall and McArthur were both seasoned seamen.
The keepers worked on a rotating watch of fourteen days and food and supplies were brought to them as weather permitted. Much of the year, there was a garden that the men maintained as well as some live stock which the men also cared for; something of a variance in the keeper's normal routines. In mid-December, one of the three was due to return to the mainland for a break, to be replaced by a keeper named Joseph Moore.
The lighthouse had been operating for little over a year when on December 14, 1900, a tremendous storm waylaid the Scottish coast, battering the Eilean Mor lighthouse and surrounding countryside. The very next evening, December 15, Captain Holman, skipper of the SS Archer sailing nearby, noted that the Eilean Mor lighthouse had gone dark and reported this to the nearest shore station by Morse code.
Stormy weather began churning the seas again the very next day. It wasn't until one day after Christmas that the weather calmed sufficiently to allow the SS Hesperes to land Joseph Moore on the island for his replacement shift. The keeper who he was slated to replace was supposed to be waiting for him on the island's east landing. But no one waited at the jetty which Moore noted had been terribly damaged by the storms.
Panicked, Moore ran to the lighthouse. The gate to the fence area surrounding the lighthouse was neatly latched. The outside door was closed as well, although the inside door, always kept closed, was standing ajar. Inside he found the ashes of a fire, long cold. The typically noisy clock in the kitchen was silent, having run down. On the kitchen table sat a half eaten meal of salted mutton and potatoes. The chair by the plate had been upended as if its occupant had stood in a massive hurry. Missing was a toolbox, and two sets of oilskins and boots belonging to James Ducat and Thomas Marshall.
The logbook only compounded the mystery.
The final entries in the log were mysterious and puzzling:
Dec 12th: Gale north by northwest. Sea lashed to fury. Never seen such a storm. Waves very high. Tearing at lighthouse. Everything shipshape. James Ducat irritable. (Later): Storm still raging, wind steady. Stormbound. Cannot go out. Ship passing sounding foghorn. Could see lights of cabins. Ducat quiet. McArthur crying.
Dec 13th: Storm continued through night. Wind shifted west by north. Ducat quiet. McArthur praying. (Later:) Noon, grey daylight. Me, Ducat and McArthur prayed.
On December 14th there was no entry and on December 15th there was only this single last line: "Storm ended, sea calm, God is over all."
No other signs of the missing men were ever found. An island, some twenty miles distant from Eilean Mor had no sign of a storm during those same, or following days, and yet, typically suffered the same weather at any given time as those at Eilean Mor.
When Moore and the Hesperes crew explored the island, they found that even more damage had been sustained by the windward side of the island. The jetty was twisted; the ropes and jibs of the platform used to hoist supplies scattered about; the iron staircase on the side of the cliff was twisted and misshapen. A rock purported to weigh at least half a ton had been dislodged. Mooring buoys were tangled and pulled from their moorings.
An official investigation launched into the disappearance of the lighthouse keepers concluded that the men might have taken advantage of the break in the weather to explore the damage on the western side of the island. There they may have been swept away by a giant wave. But that conclusion doesn't explain the signs of hurried leave-taking found in the men's living quarters.Nor does it explain why would, if the weather be calm, would two sets of oilskins been worn and not the third?
Various interpretations were offered. Perhaps one of the men had been driven mad by the inclement weather and had turned on his colleagues, before hurling himself in the ocean. Perhaps mold had grown in the men's food, poisoning it with a hallucinogenic substance. This still doesn't jive with the logbook. It doesn't fit with the lamps ready to be lit, with all else being exactly as it should be with the exception of the hurried departure in the kitchen.
Local inhabitants offer another explanation.
Eilean Mor was once a Viking outpost, and a ghostly Viking longboat was said to haunt the local seas. Indeed, the crew of the Fairwin - one of the vessels sent out to investigate why the lighthouse had gone out on December 15 - reported seeing a ghostly longboat on that night, crewed by warriors with faces the color of bone: Three men in oilskin raingear were rowing that boat. Could the lighthouse keepers have run afoul of ancient ghosts? But then again, only two oilskin coats were missing.
Whatever the truth, the mysterious disappearance of the Eilean Mor lighthouse keepers remains one of Scotland's most enduring mysteries.
Standing on the shore of Eilean Mor, looking out over a cold and choppy sea, one can easily imagine it on a storm tossed night, the fog horns of passing ships eching across the island and the ever present wind crying as waves dash upon the cliffs. |
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| I don't have feedback as my last Mystery newsletter was eons ago, but i wonder...did the newsletter this week spark your muse? Can you see the island as a setting for a mystery? What do you think happened? |
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Mystery: October 05, 2011 Issue [#4648]
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