by Albert Jack
Compounding the puzzle was the discovery, fifteen months later, of the body of a frogman washed up on a beach at Pilsey Island in West Sussex, just off Chichester. Officials believed it to be that of Buster Crabb but, as the corpse had had both its head and hands cut off, identification was near impossible (using the techniques available at the time). When both Crabb's ex-wife and girlfriend failed to identify the body, there was speculation about yet more shenanigans on the part of the government, brought to a halt when Sydney Knowles was summoned and identified a small scar on the frogman's left knee, thereby confirming that the body was Crabb's.
But the rumors and wild stories continued unabated. In 1961, J. S. Kerans, a British member of Parliament, submitted a proposal to have the case reinvestigated, but this was denied by the Conservative government of the day. In 1964, another MP, Marcus Lipton, made a similar move but with the same result, in the form of a rebuff from a Labour government this time. Some stories suggested that Crabb had been killed by a secret underwater Soviet weapon, while others tried to prove he had been captured and held in Moscow's infamous Lefortovo prison, even citing his prison number (147)—although the Russians strenuously denied this. Another rumor suggested that Crabb had been brainwashed and was now working voluntarily as a specialist instructor for Soviet frogmen. Other accounts maintained he had deliberately defected to the Russians and was now in charge of the Black Sea Fleet under the name of Lev Lvovich Korablov. Or that he was a secret double agent. Or that—as claimed by Joseph Zwerkin, a former Soviet spy—on being spotted in the water close to the ship, he had been shot by a Russian sniper from the deck of Ordzhonikidze.
The strange story of Buster Crabb has in trigued many people over the years. Ian Fleming partly based the character of James Bond on the many colorful tales of Crabb's covert operations. More recently Tim Binding, author of a fictional account of Crabb's life, Man Overboard (2005), claimed he was contacted by Sydney Knowles after its publication. Knowles, then living in southern Spain, apparently met Binding and told him that in 1956 Crabb had intended to defect and that MI5 had become aware of his plans. It would have been a public relations disaster if Commander Crabb—a popular and well-known English war hero, awarded an OBE and with the George Medal pinned to his chest—suddenly became a Soviet citizen. Knowles also alleged that MI5 ordered the Ordzhonikidze mission with the sole intention of killing Crabb, even going as far as providing a diving partner to carry out the job. Knowles was then ordered by MI5 to identify the body as Crabb's, despite knowing that the headless corpse wasn't that of his former colleague. The reason he gave for his long silence was that, back in 1989 when he was planning to write an expose, he had been threatened with death if he continued.
And the confusing events surrounding Crabb's disappearance were only made murkier by the British government's decision to extend the Freedom of Information Act sixty years longer than usual in the case of Buster Crabb. Hence official records will not be made available until the year 2057, one hundred years after the incident. But, based on the evidence that is currently available, this is my interpretation of events.
When the Anglo-Soviet talks were being prepared, Anthony Eden ordered MI5—responsible for overseeing domestic counterintelligence gathering and home security—to do nothing that might cause a diplomatic incident, so crucial was the Suez Canal to British interests. However, this order was not passed to MI6—responsible for overseas security and intelligence. Documents recently released prove that Nicholas Elliott at MI6 recruited Crabb to spy on the Ordzhonikidze while it was berthed in Ports mouth harbor. The diver was to gather information about the propeller size and design and check for underwater mine-laying hatches. Such information would enable British intelligence to calculate the ship's top speed as well as provide useful information for British torpedo manufacturers.
In April 1956, Buster and his MI6 controller, whose name has been deleted from the records, covertly checked in to the Sally Port Hotel in Old Portsmouth. On April 19, the pair quietly boarded a small boat and paddled into Ports mouth harbor, where the frogman made a preliminary dive near the Russian ship. He surfaced, briefed the MI6 officer, and then prepared to make a second, more extensive dive. This time, however, Crabb failed to return and was not seen again until his body, minus head and hands—presuming, for the moment, that it was his body—was washed up at Chichester. For MI6 to be taking such risks in the first place was an extraordinary development, given that the chances of a British sea battle with the Soviet Union at that time were as unlikely as one with the Portsmouth Yacht Club, and probably about as one-sided too. (Added to which, in the wake of such a diplomatic blunder, Khrushchev de lighted in announcing that, far from being a modern state-of-the-art warship, Ordzhonikidze was an outdated naval vessel and had been decommissioned. The ship was no longer part of the battle fleet but, instead, was on ceremonial duty ferrying around politicians like him.)
A top-secret memo, now in the public domain, from Rear Admiral John Inglis, director of naval intelligence, denied any official mission by Crabb, stating that if it had been a “bona fide” assignment, there would have been an “immediate and extensive rescue and recovery operation.” But, on grounds of diplomatic sensitivity, surely no rescue attempt could seriously have been considered in the waters close to the Russian ship without causing alarm. So was Crabb sacrificed to avoid a diplomatic incident? Or were the Russians already aware of Crabb's presence and did they manage to capture him?
Or did Buster in fact defect, and was the body found at Chichester therefore that of another man? In the wake of the recent defections by middle-ranking diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, this would have been a major embarrassment, very much worthy of cover-up by the British government.
It is, after all, known that Nicholas Elliott was responsible for proposing that Crabb should carry out the underwater mission in Portsmouth on that fateful day. Elliott and Kim Philby had been friends at Cambridge when the great twentieth-century spy ring was being formed. But back in 1956, Philby was still seven years away from joining Maclean and Burgess in Moscow. It was not until Elliott confronted Philby in Beirut in 1963, after a defecting Soviet agent had named the latter as a spy, that suspicion arose and connections were made with the Crabb mystery, but somehow Elliott allowed Philby to vanish, only to later reappear in Moscow. It is not officially known what role Elliott played in the spy ring, and some believe that if he was supportive of it, he may well have arranged Crabb's defection in 1956. An alternative theory suggests that Elliott was em barrassed by his connections to Burgess and Maclean, following their defection, and that on learning of Crabb's attempt to do the same, had him murdered by MI6 agents while on his spying mission in the harbor.
Crabb's service to his country appears to have counted for very little in the end, as the government—wishing to avoid a further diplomatic incident—refused to provide his widow with any war compensation, pension, or maintenance payment. Eden's government had been fully aware Lionel “Buster” Crabb was working for the secret service. They lied, both publicly and in private, about events surrounding his dis appearance. Many aspects still remain unclear, despite the release of some official documents covering the subject. For example, the official line is that Buster Crabb checked in to the Sally Port Hotel using the name “Mr. Smith.” But this couldn't be confirmed, apparently because another secret service agent whose real name was, co -incidentally, Mr. Smith and who was also staying at the Sally Port Hotel was enraged to find his name being used and (rather conveniently for the government) tore out the relevant four pages of the hotel guest book.
Assuming Crabb wasn't a turncoat (imagine James Bond defecting!), it would appear that the British government made a mess of their diplomatic relations with the Russians, and in an attempt to whitewash the whole affair, both officially and publicly, made Commander Crabb their scapegoat, washing their hands of him completely. If this is the way Britain treats her war heroes, she doesn't deserve to have any, in my view.
&nbs
p; What was the bizarre creature spotted on the streets
of Dover, Massachusetts, thirty years ago?
Late in the evening on April 21, 1977, seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett was out driving with two friends along Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. Suddenly something caught the teenager's eye. Slowing to take a closer look, he and the two other boys assumed it must be some sort of animal crouching by the wall at the side of the road. Caught in the car's headlights, the “animal” turned to face them—at which they all froze in terror. This creature was like nothing they had ever seen before: it had a small, thin body but a huge oval head and outsize hands and feet. Trembling with fright, Bill put his foot down hard on the accelerator and they were off. The boys later described a beast with large orange eyes and no body hair at all but very rough-textured skin.
Naturally the authorities were a little skeptical of these crazy kids, but then another sighting was reported. Two hours after the first incident, fifteen-year-old John Baxter was walking home from his girlfriend's when he spotted a strange short figure wandering along the street. He claimed that he then pursued the creature into a wooded area nearby and observed the beast as it sat without moving for several minutes. While the cynics among us would suggest the lad should have stubbed out his illicit cigarette, gone back to bed, and stuck to more plausible excuses in future, others have pointed out that the description of what he had seen was nearly identical to Bill Bartlett's.
The following evening, Abigail Brabham and Will Taintor reported seeing a “thin and hairless, monkey-like creature” crouching on all fours beside the road. Their description of the creature was the same as that of the others, except in one respect: they insisted that its eyes were green rather than orange, which suggests that the youngsters hadn't collaborated with each other to concoct the whole story. Indeed, they appeared not to know each other. While many similar descriptions have been reported in other parts of the world, there have been no other sightings in Massachusetts.
It is a mystery that has never fully been explained, although, predictably, UFO fans claim the creature was some sort of alien and conspiracy theorists believe it to have been a mutant hybrid, the product of human experimentation that had escaped from a top-secret laboratory. Spiritualists regard it as a being from another realm that accidentally slipped into our own, while zoologists believe the Dover Demon to be nothing more alarming than a baby moose, without explaining the creature's clearly visible hands and feet.
The Dover Demon was only ever seen during that two-day period and no other sightings have ever been reported, which is somewhat surprising, and no evidence has ever been discovered that might identify the mysterious beast.
What drove three experienced lighthouse
keepers to abandon their post on a remote island
off the west coast of Scotland?
It was a cold and gloomy afternoon on the Isle of Lewis, and the watchman strained to see the Eilean Mor Lighthouse, located on one of the Flannan Islands, through the mist and rain. Situated on a major shipping route between Britain, Europe, and North America, the rocky Flannans had been responsible for so many shipwrecks over the centuries that the Northern Lighthouse Board had finally decided to build a lighthouse there to warn sailors of the peril.
It had taken four long years to build. But on December 16, 1900, just a year after construction was completed, a report came that the light had gone out. Roderick MacKenzie, a gamekeeper at Uig, had been appointed as lighthouse watchman, and his duty was to alert the authorities if he was unable to see the light. He noted in his logbook that it had not been visible at all between December 8 and 11; he was so concerned, in fact, that he had enlisted the help of all the villagers to take turns watching out for the light, until it was finally seen on the afternoon of December 12.
But when another four days went by and the light failed to appear yet again, MacKenzie alerted the assistant keeper, Joseph Moore. Moore stood on the seafront at Loch Roag on the Isle of Lewis and stared west into the gloom, looking for the smallest flicker of light, but he too saw nothing. The notion that the brand-new lighthouse might have been destroyed in the recent storms seemed highly unlikely, and at least one of the three resident keepers should have been able to keep the lamp lit, so Moore summoned help.
The following day, owing to high seas, Moore was unable to launch the Board's service boat, the Hesperus, to investigate. It would be nine agonizing days before the seas calmed sufficiently for the anxious assistant keeper to leave for Eilean Mor.
Finally, at dawn on Boxing Day, the sky had cleared and the Hesperus left Breasclete harbor at first light. As it approached the lighthouse, the boat's skipper, Captain Harvie, signaled their approach with flags and flares, but there was no acknowledgment from the shore. As soon as they had docked at Eilean Mor, the assistant keeper jumped out, together with crew members Lamont and Campbell.
Hammering on the main door and calling to be let in, Moore received no reply. But it was unlocked, so, nervously, Moore made his way inside, to be greeted by complete silence and absolutely no sign of life. The clock in the main room had stopped and everything was in its place, except for one of the kitchen chairs, which lay overturned on the floor.
Moore, terrified of what he might find, was too frightened to venture upstairs until Lamont and Campbell had joined him. But the bedrooms were as neat and tidy as the kitchen and nobody (or indeed no body) was to be seen. The three lighthouse keepers, James Ducat, Donald McArthur, and Thomas Marshall, appeared to have vanished. Ducat and Marshall's oilskin waterproofs were also gone, but McArthur's hung alone in the hallway, in strangely sinister fashion.
Moore saw this as evidence that the two men had gone outside during a storm and that perhaps McArthur, breaking strict rules about leaving the lighthouse unmanned, had raced outside after them. Moore and his fellow crew members then searched every inch of the island but could find no trace of the men. Three experienced lighthouse keepers had seemingly vanished into thin air. Captain Harvie then instructed Moore, Lamont, and Campbell to remain on the island to operate the lighthouse. They were accompanied by one MacDonald, boatswain of the Hesperus, who had volunteered to join them.
With that, the Hesperus returned to Breasclete, with the lighthouse keepers’ Christmas presents and letters from their families still on board, and Harvie telegraphed news to Robert Muir head, superintendent at the Northern Lighthouse Board: “A dreadful accident has happened at Flannans. The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall, and the Occasional [McArthur in this instance], have disappeared from the Island. … The clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago. Poor fellows they must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to rescue a crane [for lifting cargo into and from boats] or something like that.” It had been twenty-eight years since the Mary Celeste (see page 138) had stirred the public's imagination, and now there was a baffling new mystery to puzzle the world.
In the seventh century A.D., Bishop Flannan, for reasons best known to himself and perhaps his God, had built a small chapel on a bleak island sixteen miles to the west of the Hebrides on the outer limits of the British Isles. The group of islands was known to mariners as the Seven Hunters, and the only inhabitants were the sheep that Hebridean shepherds would ferry over to graze on the lush grass pastures. But the shepherds themselves never stayed overnight on the islands, fearful of the “little men” believed to haunt that remote spot.
The lighthouse on Eilean Mor, the largest and most northerly of the Seven Hunters, was only the second building to be erected on the islands—over a millennium later. Designed and built by David Stevenson, of the great Stevenson engineering dynasty, the building was completed by December 1899, and Superintendent Muirhead of the Northern Lighthouse Board had selected forty-three-year-old James Ducat, a man with more than twenty years’ experience of lighthouse keeping, as the principal keeper at Eilean Mor. Thomas Marshall was to be his assistant and the men were to spend the summer of 1899 ma
king preparations to keep the light the following winter.
During that summer, Muirhead joined them for a month and all three men worked hard to secure the early lighting of the station in time for the coming winter. Muirhead later reported how impressed he was by the “manner in which they went about their work.” The lighthouse was fully operational for the first time on December 1, 1899. Muirhead's last visit to Eilean Mor before the disappearance was on December 7, 1900. Satisfied that all was well, he then returned to the Isle of Lewis. Although he was not to find out until a few weeks later, the light went out only a day after he had left the island.
When Muirhead returned to join Joseph Moore and the relief keepers on December 29, he brought the principal keeper from Tiumpan Head on Lewis to take charge at Eilean Mor and then began to investigate the disappearance of the three men. The first thing he did was to check the lighthouse journal. He was very perturbed by what he read.
In the log entry for December 12, the last day the lighthouse had appeared to be working, Thomas Marshall had written of severe winds “the like I have never seen before in twenty years.” Inspecting the exterior of the lighthouse, he found storm damage to external fittings over one hundred feet above sea level.