Besondere Leuchttürme: Flannan Isles - das Rätsel der verschwundenen Männer

There are places like this at the end of the world. So remote that, in most people’s minds, they lie on the borderline with the unreal – or even beyond it. Even in this day and age. Anyone who ventures there, beyond mobile coverage, is taking a step into the unknown. The Flannan Isles are one such place. A small group of volcanic rocks, battered by the ceaseless surf of the North Atlantic.

The name of a hermit

They lie around 17 nautical miles west of the island of Lewis, which forms part of the Outer Hebrides – a region that, within the UK, is already the very epitome of seclusion and solitude. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Flannans are named after a seventh-century saint, one of those ascetic hermits who sought spiritual retreat through seclusion. Nor is it surprising that they remained uninhabited – until December 1899, when three men began their duties at the newly completed lighthouse.

• ​Name: Flannan Isles Lighthouse, Western Isles, Scotland
• Location: North Atlantic
• Position: 58°17'17"N; 7°35'18"W
• Tower height: 23 m
• Fire height: 101 m
• Designation: Fl(2) W30s

Sea monster or monster wave?

Just under a year later, in December 1900, a ship passing by at night noticed that the tower’s light was not burning – the most serious dereliction of duty the keepers could be guilty of. However, the supply boat, which had been delayed by storms and only sent to check on the station days later, found it deserted. The three men – the lighthouse keeper and his two assistants – had vanished without a trace.

The mystery captured the imagination of their contemporaries. Rumours circulated that the food had still been on the table, that the men had fled to start a new life elsewhere, and that a sea monster had devoured them. A logbook did the rounds – a forgery.

However, the investigation by the lighthouse authority reached a far more sober, though no less dramatic, conclusion: a monster wave must have swept the three of them away whilst they were carrying out an inspection along the edge of the cliffs. Evidence of such destruction had been found – 34 metres above sea level.

​​Here you will find even more special lighthouses.

Just seabirds now

To this day, the disappearance of the crew of the Flannan Isles remains one of the best-known of the many tragic and mysterious stories – some better documented than others – that have taken place at lighthouses. On this wild outpost, however, it remained the only such incident. Despite its location ‘at the end of the world’, no one else ever came to any harm here. In 1971, the tower was finally automated. As has been the case for time immemorial, seabirds are once again its only permanent inhabitants.

​​Here you will find even more special lighthouses.