Cooper?Ī second entry has all three men praying in the eye of the monstrous storm, and a third and final entry, supposedly written on the 15th, states that the storm had passed and all was now calm. He continued that Ducat was unusually quiet when the storm hit and MacArthur – a big, burly man not known to have much of a sensitive side – was weeping. In the first entry, Marshall is supposed to have written that a great storm the likes of which he had never seen before had hit the island.

More doubt was cast on the official investigation with the emergence of a logbook supposedly containing several baffling entries between the 12th and 15th of December. Some people even thought that the men had been kidnapped by foreign spies. One theory had the men leave the island by boat to escape debts, while another had them spirited away by the skeletal crew of a ghost ship. Theories more suited to the Middle Ages were soon doing the rounds, such as the men being gobbled up by a giant sea serpent or whisked away by a huge seabird. were kept, and which was secured in a crevice in the rock about 110 ft (34 m) above sea level, and that an extra large sea had rushed up the face of the rock, had gone above them, and coming down with immense force, had swept them completely away.'īut as far as the public was concerned, Muirhead’s report wasn’t the end of the story. 'From evidence which I was able to procure,' Muirhead concluded in his official report, 'I was satisfied that the men had been on duty up till dinner time on Saturday the 15th of December, that they had gone down to secure a box in which the mooring ropes, landing ropes etc. Read more about: Mysteries Has Nessie been found? The true history of the Loch Ness monster When they did not return, Muirhead surmised that MacArthur must have ventured out to try to find them. After going over the wreckage on the western landing, Muirhead speculated that Marshall and Ducat must have headed out into the storm to try to secure the equipment stored there. Examining the oilskin that had been left behind, he concluded it belonged to William MacArthur. Muirhead knew all three of the missing men well. They scoured the islands for the three missing men but found nothing.Īrriving on the island on December 29, the board’s superintendent, Robert Muirhead, began an investigation into the keepers’ disappearance. Harvie had left Moore and three sailors behind to tend to the light and continue the search. So, what had happened? 'Poor fellows, they must been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that,' was Harvie’s conclusion in a telegram to the Northern Lighthouse Board after the Hesperus returned to port. Turf had also been ripped up from the tops of the cliffs two hundred feet above sea level. Iron railings on the side of a path had been bent and twisted out of shape, part of a railway track had been torn from its concrete moorings and a huge rock weighing more than a ton had been displaced.

A supply box had been smashed open and its contents strewn across the ground despite being over a hundred feet above sea level. Here, there was plenty of evidence that the island had recently been hit by a massive storm. Read more about: Adventurers Vanishing act: 6 of history's most mysterious disappearancesĪfter a thorough search of the lighthouse complex turned up nothing but a set of oilskins - suggesting one of the keepers had ventured out in just his shirtsleeves - the men turned their attention to the landing platform on the west side of the island. Harvie sent another two sailors to shore and they and Moore began looking for signs of life.

Returning to the eastern landing, Moore reported his findings to the captain of the Hesperus. A canary in a cage was the only sign of life. Reaching the lighthouse compound and entering the living quarters, Moore noticed that the clock on the kitchen wall had stopped, the table was set for a meal that had never been eaten and a chair had been toppled over. Three giant black birds perched on the cliffs above him cast their beady eyes on his progress. Disembarking from the Hesperus, relief lighthouse keeper Joseph Moore set off up the one hundred and sixty steep steps to the lighthouse. Arriving at the island on Boxing Day, the ship’s captain, Jim Harvie, sounded his horn and sent up a flare, hoping to alert the three lighthouse keepers, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and William MacArthur. The Board dispatched the lighthouse relief tender ship Hesperus to investigate.

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Famous lighthouse keeper