prize8-6, Exercise 1: The Flannan Isles

Model answer (check the details):

Documented (from the Board's reports, the log and the relief keeper's account): three keepers, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur, were missing when the relief ship Hesperus reached the island on 26 December 1900; the light had been seen unlit some days earlier; the station was in order apart from damage by waves at the west landing; a Board inspector examined the station and concluded that the men had most probably been swept away by a wave; no bodies were found.

Added later: the stories of an uneaten meal and stopped clocks, log entries about the men weeping or praying, and a sense of unexplained mystery. Several of these details do not appear in the original reports, and the log entries are not in the surviving log (check). A poem of 1912 and later fiction, opera and film strengthened the legend.

What each kind of source adds:
- The Board's reports and inquiry: the official finding and the physical evidence.
- The log book: the last recorded entries and the weather.
- Newspapers of the time: the public reaction, with possible errors.
- Poems and later fiction: the cultural afterlife, not evidence of what happened.

Care: three men died, and their families were affected. Describe the case as a loss and not as a puzzle.