Northern Lighthouse Board
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53
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17
EPISODES
13
PODCASTS
Search complete. 53 mentions across 17 episodes found for "Northern Lighthouse Board".
Nov 10, 2026
speaker_0NARRATOR
You are standing on the deck of the Hesperus, a steam tender operated by the Northern Lighthouse Board, on the morning of December 26th, 1900.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The ship is rolling beneath your feet in a heavy Atlantic swell, pitching forward and settling back with each wave that passes under the hull.
speaker_0NARRATOR
and the rhythm of it has become so familiar over the past several hours that you have almost stopped noticing it.
6 MINS LATER
speaker_0NARRATOR
The light that was supposed to be there, the white flashing beam that was supposed to sweep the Atlantic every 30 seconds, warning ships of the rocks and the shallows, and the islands themselves, was not there.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The sea was dark where it should have been lit.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The report had reached the Northern Lighthouse board on December 18th by telegram.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Three days it had taken for the news to travel from the arch store to the board's offices.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Three days during which the light remained dark and ships passed through the area without its guidance and then the weather had closed in.
Amanda JoyHOST
Their days were governed by a rigid schedule, set not by whim, but by duty and necessity.
Amanda JoyHOST
The northern lighthouse board demanded that the lights be maintained without interruption.
Amanda JoyHOST
Even in storm, even in grief, someone must always be on watch.
Amanda JoyHOST
The routine was unforgiving.
Amanda JoyHOST
No light pierced the fog.
Amanda JoyHOST
No signal warned off the jagged rocks below.
Amanda JoyHOST
The crew recorded the anomaly in their logs, and when they docked three days later, the report was passed along to the northern lighthouse board.
Amanda JoyHOST
It was the first whisper that something was wrong.
Dominique OrtizHOST
And this is where the historical record gets a little messy.
Dominique OrtizHOST
An older Northern Lighthouse board account says the report eventually reached the board on December 18th.
Dominique OrtizHOST
More recent accounts from the Northern Lighthouse Board and the National Records of Scotland say it wasn't communicated to the commissioners before the disappearance was discovered.
Dominique OrtizHOST
I'm not going to pretend we have a clean answer when the official sources themselves don't completely agree.
Dominique OrtizHOST
What we can say is this.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Ships bound around the north of Scotland passed close by, and in darkness or storm, the islands were invisible until it was too late.
speaker_2NARRATOR
By the late 19th century, the Northern Lighthouse Board decided Eileen Moore needed a light.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Building it was brutal work.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Construction began in the mid 1890s, under the direction of the Stevenson family of engineers, the same dynasty that had lit much of Scotland's coastline.
MattHOST
Joseph Moore wrote a report about what he found.
MattHOST
And the Northern Lighthouse Board has preserved that report.
MattHOST
Moore described finding the gate and outside doors closed.
MattHOST
He went into the kitchen.
CarlosHOST
The evidence suggested that powerful seas had struck the exposed shoreline.
CarlosHOST
Northern Lighthouse Board Superintendent Robert Muirhead investigated and concluded that the men had probably been swept away by an exceptionally large wave.
CarlosHOST
It was possible, no doubt, but no bodies were ever recovered.
CarlosHOST
But the mystery didn't even end there.
Amanda JoyHOST
Their days were governed by a rigid schedule, set not by whim, but by duty and necessity.
Amanda JoyHOST
The Northern Lighthouse Board demanded that the lights be maintained without interruption.
Amanda JoyHOST
Even in storm, even in grief, someone must always be on watch.
Amanda JoyHOST
The routine was unforgiving.
Amanda JoyHOST
No light pierced the fog.
Amanda JoyHOST
No signal warned off the jagged rocks below.
Amanda JoyHOST
The crew recorded the anomaly in their logs, and when they docked three days later, the report was passed along to the northern lighthouse board.
Amanda JoyHOST
It was the first whisper that something was wrong.
Eve S. EvansHOST
Then the arch tour ran aground in the Firth of Forth on the way in and the message got held up.
Eve S. EvansHOST
By the time the Northern Lighthouse Board heard about it and got a vessel out to investigate, eleven days had passed.
speaker_0ADVERTISER
Three men.
speaker_0ADVERTISER
Gone.
Eve S. EvansHOST
Signs of a wave that had come up harder than normal waves come.
Eve S. EvansHOST
No bodies, no clothing on the rocks, nothing with a name on it.
Eve S. EvansHOST
Harvey telegraphed the Northern Lighthouse board that afternoon.
Eve S. EvansHOST
A dreadful accident has happened at Flannans.
Monty MaderHOST
Aylan Moore is the largest of the Flannan Islands, seven rocks in the Atlantic, 20 miles west of Lewis.
Monty MaderHOST
And the Northern Lighthouse Board first lit its lighthouse there on the 7th of December, 1899.
Monty MaderHOST
Three keepers were on the rock a year later.
Monty MaderHOST
James Ducat, the principal, 43, with a wife and four children.
AshleyHOST
Perhaps one keeper noticed something amiss with the external equipment prompting him to exit the lighthouse and given the camaraderie among lighthouse keepers it's conceivable the others would follow to assist only to be overwhelmed by unexpected weather.
AshleyHOST
Britain's Northern Lighthouse Board conducted an official inquiry, concluding that in all likelihood, the Keepers had likely swept away out to sea during a storm and drowned.
AshleyHOST
However, the lack of concrete evidence fueled a great deal of morbid speculation among the general public.
AshleyHOST
Superintendent Robert Meerhead, who claimed to have known the Keepers personally, visited the lighthouse in the aftermath of their disappearance.
7 more episodes mention Northern Lighthouse Board.
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