Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
head was still trying to piece together what had happened to the three missing light-
keepers.
The keytoholding the Flannans Isles station together lay with Joseph Moore. Moore
had originally been scheduled as the relief to replace Thomas Marshall for his break
off the rock. He was born on 28 March 1871 and was twenty-eight years old when he
entered the service of the NLBoard on 28 August 1899. Moore, of course, was the first
onto Eilean Mor and had found the three men missing. As the details of the tragedy
unfolded, with a search (organised by Muirhead) being made over the whole of Eilean
Mor,theeventhaddeeplyunsettledMoore.AsMoorewalkedintothelighthousebuild-
ing on 26 December 1900, he had probably already surmised that neither Ducat, Mar-
shall nor Macarthur were present. It must have felt eerie in that late winter afternoon
walking through the darkened rooms which had been empty for eleven days to find no
trace ofhis colleagues, particularly as he was alone at this point with the other men still
waiting at the east landing in the boat lowered from the
Hesperus
. Had Moore arrived
at the west landing it would have given him an inkling that all was not well.
After landing from the boat he would have had to walk up the steps which turned
back on themselves leading to the crane platform which lay slightly down from the
steps. As he walked towards the crane platform more or less directly in front of him, it
wouldhavebeenimmediatelyobviousthattherailssurroundingthecranehadbeentorn
outandwashedaway.Afterpassingthecraneplatformarea,thestepsthenturnedback-
wards again on themselves leading to the top of the cliff edge and again Moore would
have passed further damage in the form of buckled rails and torn turf at the top by the
cliffedge.Anotherpossiblereasonforhisagitatedstate(
see
Muirhead'scomments,be-
low) would have been the fact that he was intimately acquainted with the Eilean Mor
Lighthouse. The station with which he was very familiar must have taken on a sinis-
ter aspect, with the almost certain likelihood that deaths had occurred there. When he
joined the service of the NLB on 28 August 1899, he was immediately posted to the
Flannan Isles (on 2 September) as an assistant lighthouse keeper and was on the roster
for Eilean Mor at the time of the disappearances, having served over one and a half
years on Eilean Mor by December 1900. In his official report, dated 8 January 1901,
Muirhead acknowledged Moore's nervous condition:
I may state that, as Moore was naturally very much upset by the unfortunate occur-
rence, and appeared very nervous, I left A. Lamont, seaman, on the Island to go to the
lightroom and keep Moore company when on watch for a week or two. If this nervous-
ness does not leave Moore, he will require to be transferred, but I am reluctant to re-
commend this, as I would desire to have one man at least who knows the work of the
Station.
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