The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [126]
In practice, however, the keepers did not just stand idly by. The NLB’s remit might not have directed anything more than maintaining the lights, but the keepers themselves adapted their role to the local realities. Dispensing weather reports to fishermen, warning sailors of dangers or assisting ships that foundered were not part of their official duties, but many staff – including, tacitly, the Commissioners, would have questioned the notion that their only job was to watch and keep. Throughout the history of the NLB, there have been humbling acts of courage by individual keepers, from the rescue of twelve of the crew of the Vicksburgh by the Pentland Skerries keepers in 1884 to the stormy journey made by Robert Macauley, keeper at Fair Isle North, to help the keepers at the South light after a bombing raid during 1941. The General Order book, which mainly contained a shocked litany of keepers’ crimes, also recorded several individual examples of heroism.
Whether saving tourists and trippers who had got into trouble, extinguishing the fires that occasionally broke out in the light-rooms or giving shelter to the victims of shipwreck, the keepers did not have a history of passivity. Medals from the Royal Humane Society were presented to a number of the keepers. One typical example was the medal presented to William Davidson, principal lightkeeper at Tarbetness, for helping to save four out of five of the crew of a Norwegian schooner. As another of the rescuers reported, ‘after the vessel struck She began to break up, when the crew jumped into the Sea amongst the wreckage and floating timbers, from which they were rescued with the greatest difficulty and danger, Mr Davidson and Mr McDonald being washed off their feet several times.’ The Commissioners duly took note of Davidson’s humanity and gallantry and were ‘much gratified to know that a Lightkeeper in their Service has been judged worthy of so honourable a badge of merit’.
The unhappiest point in the keepers’ history was not caused by shipwreck or storm but the disappearance of three keepers on the Flannan Isles, an incident that became the NLB’s own unsolved Marie Celeste. The Flannan Isles are a remote cluster of rocks somewhere to the west of nowhere, populated mainly by sea birds and passing gales. Construction of a lighthouse on the largest rock began in 1896 under the supervision of David A. Stevenson. Like Dhu Heartach, the main rock was an immense sheer lump of sea-beaten reef without sheltered creeks or landing places. All building materials and provisions had to be hauled up the 150-foot cliff faces directly from the boats below with the full fetch of the Atlantic soaring straight over the summit. By 1899 the light had been finished, lit and staffed, but within a year an urgent report reached the Commissioners. The captain of the lighthouse ship the Hesperus had arrived at the light to make the regular relief on Boxing Day. As was usual, he hoisted the flag on the ship and waited for the answering signal from the light. When none came, he sounded the ship’s siren, and then fired off one of the rockets to attract the keeper’s attention. Again, there was no reaction from the lighthouse.
Later that evening, he telegrammed George Street. ‘A dreadful accident has happened at the Flannans,’ he wrote. ‘The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall and the Occasional have disappeared from the island. On our arrival there this afternoon no sign of life was to be seen on the island. Fired a rocket, but, as no response was made, managed to land Moore (the relief keeper), who went up to the station but found no keepers there. The clocks were stopped and the other signs indicated that the accident