prize8-10, Exercise 3: A British or Scottish sea legend

Model answer (check the details), using the claim "the Flannan Isles lightkeepers were taken by a sea monster":

1. Who says it? Writers of ghost stories and some websites; no serious inquiry made the claim.
2. What exactly is claimed? That a supernatural creature or event caused the disappearance. This is an extraordinary claim.
3. What would count as evidence? Contemporary reports, the log, the inspector's findings and independent witnesses.
4. Compared with what? Ordinary explanations: a wave sweeping men from a landing, the known dangers of the west landing, and other cases of men lost to the sea.
5. Which period? December 1900, with later retellings from 1912 onward.
6. What would change my mind? Contemporary evidence that something other than the sea was responsible.

Result: the contemporary evidence supports an ordinary explanation (a large wave) and gives no support for supernatural claims. The legend is an interesting subject in itself, since it shows how a documented tragedy became a story, but it is not an account of what happened (Chapter 6).

Care: be especially careful with stories about the deaths of real people, and keep to what is documented.