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landing at Eilean Mohr no one was to be seen. The tower and the residences of the
keepers were searched, but none of the men could be found. A rocket was fired, but
there was no response, and the painful conviction was forced home: that the lighthouse
keepers had been swept off the island and drowned.
Alltheclocksinthebuildingwerestopped,fromwhichitisconsideredpossiblethat
the disaster occurred at least a week ago - presumably on Thursday last, the 20th - the
day of the terrible gale which did so much damage all over Scotland, and wrecked part
of the Shetland fishing fleet. How the disaster occurred to the lighthouse men is only
asyetmatterofconjecture.Whenthefirstintimation ofitarrivedinEdinburghitcould
onlybeguessedthattheyhadbeenblownoverthecliffs,asnothingwassaidaboutany
damage to the lighthouse itself. What they were doing outside in such a gale could not
be conjectured. The names of the men missing are James Ducat, principal keeper, who
is married and has a family of four; Thomas Marshall, unmarried; and an occasional
keeper,DonaldMc'Arthur[sic],whoismarried,andhadtemporarilytakentheplaceof
one of the regular keepers who is ill on shore. The relief keeper whose name is More,
andthreeofthecrewofthe
Hesperus
wereleftontheislandtoattendtothelight,while
the vessel returned to anchorage for the night to Loch Roag. Yesterday the
Hesperus
again made for the Flannans, but a telegram which was received in Edinburgh in the
courseofthedaystatedthattheseawastooroughforlandingtobeeffectedateitherof
the stages. Captain Harvey, however, got into signal communication with the men on
the island, and learned that one of the cranes already referred to on the cliff had been
destroyed; andit isnowthought that the unfortunate men may have ventured outofthe
lighthouse in the gale; in order to try and save the crane, and been washed away. So-
methingmoremaybeknownofthecircumstancesofthedisasterwhenCaptainHarvey
is able to land on the island, and another attempt will be made to do so today. It seems
that at Breasclete on the mainland, there is a lookout station, from which the Flannan
lighthouse can be seen. The signalman there, seeing no adverse signal from the light-
house, apprehended nothing wrong, though he did not see the light for these last few
nightspast.Thatheattributedtothethicknessoftheatmosphere.This,itseems,isquite
an unprecedented calamity in the history of the Northern Lighthouse Commission. The
last disaster was nearly fifty years ago; when an attending boat, running between Kirk-
cudbright and the Little Ross lighthouse, was lost with all hands.
Telegraphing last night, our Stornoway correspondent states that during the day in-
formation of the disaster was received there, though nothing definite beyond the fact
thatthethreelighthousekeepershadlosttheirliveswasknown.Thepeopleofthatpart
of the Lewis which is nearest to the Flannan Islands, he adds, were alarmed when for
