Unexplored | City Jackdaw

On this day in 1900: a real-life mystery. Any theories?

It is well known, I think, that people like to read ghost stories around the Christmas season, but how about a real-life December mystery?

The Flannan Isles are located thirty kilometres west of the Outer Hebrides, in the Atlantic Ocean. Celtic monks lived on those desolate islands in isolation, until they were abandoned for a thousand years. There are the remains of a chapel there, said to have been built by the Irish monk St.Flannan. In 1895 a lighthouse was built there, to warn off ships, passing in those treacherous waters.

In 1900, a three man crew of James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald MacArthur arrived for a two week posting, just in time for the hostile winter to set in.

I am not sure who is who in this photograph, but at least one of those three men is present in it, maybe the other two are, also.