Flannan Isles Lighthouse

All right.

So we're going to talk about the Flannan Isle lighthouse disappearances.

Hmm.

These are never good.

If you could stand on the shore of the Outer Hebrides, staring across a spray-filled sea to a lone stone tower that has long stood alone in the Atlantic, you'd have a picture in mind of isolation and endurance.

The Flannan Isles Lighthouse sits on Eilean Mòr, the tallest island in the chain, and its steel lantern had been keeping watch over shipping lanes for only fourteen years before tragedy struck in December nineteen hundred.

That winter, a relief crew arrived to find not just an unmanned lighthouse, but a scene that would become one of Britain's most enduring maritime mysteries.

The station was manned by a rotating trio of keepers, each assigned to an eight-week shift that began with the last light of evening and ended with sunrise on the following day.

The reason? No one knows, and it is a mystery that has endured to this day.

This is the story of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keeper Disappearance.

Hello and welcome to History Dispatches.

My name is Matt.

For the light, they have to cook all their own meals, make sure the fuel is good.

And so it was a hard job.

The Flannan Isles Lighthouse, they conducted exchanges every two weeks.

So every two weeks, usually you'd have one or two people swap out.