prize8-1, Exercise 3: Choosing claims to test

Model answer (check the details), using two claims from the table:

Claim 1: "Wreckers lured ships onto the rocks with false lights."
Evidence to look for: court records of trials for wrecking, contemporary newspaper reports, accounts by customs officers and magistrates, and the historians who have studied the practice (Chapter 8). Where to find it: national and county archives, newspaper archives and scholarly studies. Likely result: plundering of wrecked ships is well documented, but deliberate luring with false lights is hard to prove (check). "Wreckers" needs to be separated into those who plundered and those who caused wrecks.

Claim 2: "Keepers were driven mad by loneliness."
Evidence to look for: keepers' logs, the reports of the lighthouse boards, medical and personnel records, memoirs, and oral histories (Chapter 6). Where to find it: the boards' archives, museums and published memoirs. Likely result: isolation was hard and some individuals suffered, but the three-keeper system was built to limit it, and most accounts show routine, and sometimes boredom, not madness (check).

In both cases, state what would change your mind before you look at the evidence.

Care: do not treat a good story as evidence. Check which period and which station the claim is about.