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The enduring Flannan Isle mystery
[Marc Calhoun/Creative Commons]
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ON Boxing Day 1900, the lighthouse tender Hesperus arrived at the Flannan Isles — the site of one of Britain’s most remote lighthouses.
The Hesperus had attempted to set sail six days before — but the severity of the Outer Hebrides weather put paid to that. A steamer on a passage from Philadelphia to Leith had logged that the lamp appeared not to have been lit in poor weather conditions, and lighthouse authorities had been sent to investigate.
What they found would form the basis of a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. The station’s flag had disappeared, and there was no sign at all of the three resident lighthouse keepers. Had they perished, or escaped to a new life?
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