Stories - The Mysterious case of the Flannan Isle men

Everyone has heard of the strange case of the Mary Celeste, the ship that was found with no crew aboard and with no sign of their departure. The Lighthouse Service also has a strange story with the tale of the Flannan Isles. The Lighthouse there is one of the most isolated in Scotland and it was here that an eerie tale unfolds of three light keepers that disappeared without trace in December 1900. The lighthouse vessel the Hesperus visited the island on 26 December. When no response was received from the keepers at the station, the relief Keeper Joseph Moore was sent ashore to find out what had happened. The doors were closed and the clock had stopped. He explored the lighthouse and found that no fires were lit. The last recorded entry in the diary was the 15 December but there was no sign of the three men: James Ducat, Principal, Thomas Marshall, 2nd Assistant, Donald McArthur, Occasional Keeper. The most likely explanation for their disappearance was that they were working on the crane gantry when a very large wave rose up from a gulley on the island and swept them into the sea. We shall never know for sure but the last four lines of WW Gibson's poem sums up the mood about the men:

We seemed to stand for an endless while, though still no word was said,three men alive on Flannan Isle, who thought on three men dead.