“ ‘It was over them that the great quarrel arose. There were many of us who were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who had no wish to have murder on our souls. It was one thing to knock the soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by while men were being killed in cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that we would not see it done. But there was no moving Prendergast and those who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there would be worse before it was done. We were given a suit of sailors’ togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk40 and one of biscuits, and a compass. Prendergast threw us over a chart, told us that we were shipwrecked mariners whose ship had foundered in Lat. 15º and Long. 25º W.,41 and then cut the painter,42 and let us go.
“ ‘And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear son. The seamen had hauled the foreyard aback during the rising, but now as we left them they brought it square again, and as there was a light wind from the north and east, the barque began to draw slowly away from us. Our boat lay rising and falling upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evans and I, who were the most educated of the party, were sitting in the sheets working out our position and planning what coast we should make for. It was a nice question, for the Cape de Verds were about five hundred miles to the north of us, and the African coast about seven hundred miles to the east.43 On the whole, as the wind was coming round to the north, we thought that Sierra Leone44 might be best, and turned our head in that direction, the barque being at that time nearly hull down45 on our starboard quarter. Suddenly, as we looked at her, we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky-line. A few seconds later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the smoke thinned away there was no sign left of the Gloria Scott. In an instant we swept the boat’s head round again, and pulled with all our strength for the place where the haze, still trailing over the water, marked the scene of this catastrophe.
“ ‘It was a long hour before we reached it, and at first we feared that we had come too late to save anyone. A splintered boat and a number of crates and fragments of spars rising and falling on the waves showed us where the vessel had foundered, but there was no sign of life, and we had turned away in despair, when we heard a cry for help, and saw at some distance a piece of wreckage with a man lying stretched across it. When we pulled him aboard the boat he proved to be a young seaman of the name of Hudson, who was so burned and exhausted that he could give us no account of what had happened until the following morning.
“ ‘It seemed that, after we had left, Prendergast and his gang had proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners: the two warders had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third mate. Prendergast then descended into the ’tween-decks and with his own hands cut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon. There only remained the first mate, who was a bold and active man. When he saw the convict approaching him with the bloody knife in his hand, he kicked off his bonds, which he had somehow contrived to loosen, and rushing down the deck he plunged into the after-hold.
“We pulled him aboard the boat.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1893
“ ‘A dozen convicts who descended with their pistols in search of him found him with a match-box in his hand seated beside an open powder-barrel, which was one of the hundred carried on board, and swearing that he would blow all hands up if he were in any way molested. An instant later the explosion occurred, though Hudson thought it was caused by the misdirected bullet of one of the convicts rather than the mate’s match.46 Be the cause what it may, it was the end of the Gloria Scott, and of the rabble who held command of her.
“ ‘Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history of this terrible business in which I was involved. Next day we were picked up by the brig Hotspur, bound for Australia, whose captain found no difficulty in believing that we were the survivors of a passenger ship which had foundered.47 The transport ship, Gloria Scott, was set down by the Admiralty as being lost at sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to her true fate. After an excellent voyage the Hotspur landed us at Sydney, where Evans and I changed our names and made our way to the diggings,48 where, among the crowds who were gathered from all nations, we had no difficulty in losing our former identities.
“ ‘The rest I need not relate. We prospered, we travelled, we came back as rich Colonials to England, and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was for ever buried. Imagine, then, my feelings when in the seaman who came to us I recognised instantly the man who had been picked off the wreck. He had tracked us down somehow, and had set himself to live upon our fears. You will understand now how it was that I strove to keep the peace with him, and you will in some measure sympathize with me in the fears which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his other victim with threats upon his tongue.’49
“Underneath that is written in a hand so shaky as to be hardly legible, ‘Beddoes writes in cipher to say that H. has told all. Sweet Lord, have mercy on our souls!’
“That was the narrative which I read that night50 to young Trevor, and I think, Watson, that under the circumstances it was a dramatic one. The good fellow was heartbroken at it, and went out to the Terai51 tea planting, where I hear that he is doing well. As to the sailor and Beddoes, neither of them was ever heard of again after that day on which the letter of warning was written. They both disappeared utterly and completely. No complaint had been lodged with the police, so that Beddoes had mistaken a threat for a deed. Hudson had been seen lurking about, and it was believed by the police that he had done away with Beddoes, and had fled. For myself, I believe that the truth was exactly the opposite. I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed to desperation, and believing himself to have been already betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Those are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection, I am sure that they are very heartily at your service.”52
1“The ‘Gloria Scott’ ” was published in the Strand Magazine in April 1893 and in Harper’s Weekly (New York) on April 15, 1893.
2In “The Sussex Vampire,” Holmes peruses the “V” volume of his “good old index” and reads: “ ‘Voyage of the Gloria Scott.’ That was a bad business. I have some recollection that you made a record of it, Watson, though I was unable to congratulate you upon the result.” Why this was indexed under “V” is a subject beyond the scope of this tale.
3A bewildering array of scholarly arguments assigns Sherlock Holmes to study in numerous educational institutions. The principal points considered by the dozens of scholars are the following:
•The bull terrier that bit Holmes’s ankle and whether the dog would have been permitted in the college.
•The setting of “The Three Students” and Holmes’s familiarity with the setting.
•The setting of “The Missing Three-Quarter” and Holmes’s lack of familiarity with the setting.
•Reginald Musgrave’s (“The Musgrave Ritual”) blue-blooded background and the choice of university he would be likely to make.
•Which school the author of the theory attended.
Most agree that Holmes attended one of the great universities, either Oxford or Cambridge, although a few suggest that he attended both and several scholars propose a supplemental course at London University. The intricacies of the arguments, depending heavily on the culture of each of the schools, are well beyond the scope of this work. However, notwithstanding his partiality, Nicholas Utechin, long editor of the Sherlock Holmes Journal
published by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, has produced a fine work entitled Sherlock Holmes at Oxford, which affords an excellent summary of the arguments.
4Those who argue that Holmes’s university was Oxford include in their evidence the fact that there was an excellent school of boxing there, according to E. B. Mitchell, The Badminton Library’s authority on boxing and sparring in 1889. See also “The Yellow Face,” note 4.
5Trevor’s bull terrier “has been a subject more disputed by scholars in the Sherlockian world than any other—animal, vegetable, or mineral,” writes Nicholas Utechin, in Sherlock Holmes at Oxford. Ronald Knox states flatly that a dog would not have been allowed past the college gates of either Oxford or Cambridge. Dorothy L. Sayers goes on to “prove” that Holmes attended Cambridge, because Oxford did not permit students to live “off-campus” during their first two years of college. But citing a letter from Charles L. Dodgson, a former Christ Church College man, who achieved literary fame as Lewis Carroll, Utechin demonstrates conclusively that dogs were permitted at Oxford colleges, undercutting Sayers’s reasoning.
6To render powerless. According to E. Cobham Brewer, the allusion is to the stocks, in which vagrants and other petty offenders were confined by the ankles.
7An inferior magistrate appointed in England to keep the peace within the county for which he is appointed. As late as Victorian times, the J.P. received no compensation. “But being chosen from the limited class of country gentlemen in counties,” remarks the Encyclopœdia Britannica (9th Ed.), “they are sometimes exposed to the suspicion of the general public, particularly when they have to administer laws which are considered to confer special privileges on their own class. Further, as they do not generally possess a professional knowledge of the law, their decisions are occasionally inconsiderate and ill-informed.” As a result, in London and other populous areas, paid justices were appointed, and critics advocated abolition of the old “citizen-judge” system. Public outcry also brought about the appointment of tradesmen, Nonconformist ministers, and working-men to the post, to rectify the perceived imbalance of political views. In modern England, the J.P. has only minor responsibilities and may not, except in very limited circumstances, impose a sentence of more than six months’ imprisonment.
8Neither “Donnithorpe” nor “Langmere” is to be found on the map, but N. P. Metcalfe suggests (in “Oxford or Cambridge or Both?”) that Fordham, later mentioned as the name of the doctor, “is also the name of a village near Downham Market in the fen country” and therefore may be helpful in identifying the true site of Squire Trevor’s home. David L. Hammer, in The Game Is Afoot, identifies “Donnithorpe” with Coltishall, a village near Norwich, and further identifies Heggatt Hall as the Trevor home. However, Bernard Davies, in “Vacations and Stations,” demonstrates that Hammer’s identification is impossible and in one stroke identifies Rollesby Hall, in the town of Rollesby, as the Trevor home, the date as 1874, and Holmes’s university as Oxford.
9Generally, in England, broads are areas of fresh water, formed by the widening of a river, or a marshy territory with plentiful waterways. Here, the “Broads” is a reference to the Norfolk Broads, an area of large, marshy wetlands covering 5,000 acres. In the Victorian era, the Broads were a popular holiday destination for middle- and upper-class vacationers interested in fishing and sailing; today, it is both a recreational centre and a protected wildlife preserve.
10Holmes’s fishing interests are apparent again in “Shoscombe Old Place.”
11Diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial infection, usually afflicts young children, creating a membrane in the throat which can lead to suffocation or related heart damage. In the late 1800s, epidemics were frequent, often spread by adulterated milk, and mortality rates were high. Crucial to containment of the disease were the efforts to regulate milk production and sale and the researches of German physician Emil von Behring, who helped develop the use of antitoxins to treat both diphtheria and tetanus (the diphtheria experiments he conducted from 1893 to 1895 led to his being awarded the first Nobel Prize for medicine in 1901); and Hungarian-American pediatrician Bela Schick, who in 1913 developed a skin test—the appropriately named “Schick test”—that could determine whether or not a child was susceptible to the disease. Diphtheria is also treatable today with penicillin, which was not discovered until 1928 by Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming.
Esther Longfellow, in “The Distaff Side of Baker Street,” speculates that Holmes had a liaison with this daughter and that her premature death permanently blighted his relationships with women, but there is no evidence for such a claim.
12The consumption of port by Holmes is mentioned only three times in the Canon, the other times occurring in “The Creeping Man” (when Holmes and Watson sit in the Chequers Inn and enjoy a bottle) and in The Sign of Four (when Holmes, Watson, and Athelney Jones fortify themselves with a bumper of port before the river chase). Port, a fortified wine, was very popular in England throughout the nineteenth century and on into the 1920s. Port proved to be less affected by the phylloxera plague that destroyed so many European wines, and as early as the 1887 vintage, in honour of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, great ports were thought to have returned to form. The events of “The ‘Gloria Scott’ ” are generally placed in the early part of the 1870s, and Trevor may well have served one of the fine 1870 vintage, the last of the pre-phylloxera ports. Michael Broadbent tasted a Warre’s 1870 in March 1985 and called it “quite good” (The New Great Vintage Wine Book).
13In law, “poaching” is the shooting, trapping, or taking of game or fish from private property or from a place where such practices are specially reserved or forbidden. Until the twentieth century most poaching was subsistence poaching—that is, the taking of game or fish by impoverished peasants to augment a scanty diet. With the introduction of gamekeepers and other security measures in the seventeenth century, subsistence poaching necessarily became a more specialized activity; during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gangs of organized poachers often engaged in fierce battles against gamekeepers, and mantraps and spring guns were hidden in the underbrush to catch intruders. As a justice of the peace, Trevor senior would be bound to put down the practice within his jurisdiction.
14Presumably the descendant of Sir Edward Hoby (1560–1617), a figure at the Court of James I and later a member of Parliament and justice of the peace. He had one child, an illegitimate son, Peregrine. The name is “Holly” in the American editions.
15Holmes was later to write “a curious little work” (mentioned in The Sign of Four) concerning the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with “lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers.” “That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective—especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals,” Holmes remarked. Clearly, Holmes considered this sort of observation one of his more prized skills, commenting as he did in “The Copper Beeches”: “Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!” Archibald Hart contends that Holmes’s monograph was fraudulently reprinted by one Gilbert Forbes as “Some Observations on Occupational Markings” in 1946.
16Finger bowls, used to hold water to rinse the fingers.
17From a Hindi word, dungri; a coarse cloth, generally worn by sailors. Dungaree is roughly equivalent to what today is called “denim.” (The word “denim,” incidentally, is thought to come from the Frnech serge de Nimes, after the cotton fabric produced in the southern French town of Nimes; “jeans” from Genoa, Italy, where a similar type of cloth was worn, again, by sailors.)
18The name Hudson appears repeatedly in the Canon. There is Morse Hudson of “The Six Napoleons,” an art dealer in the Kennington Road, the “Hudson” referred to in “The Five Orange Pips,” who was apparent
ly in America in March 1869, and of course Mrs. Hudson. While many have attempted to trace a relationship among the Hudsons, there is no convincing evidence.
19A cask with a rimmed cover used on board ship for keeping salt meats.
20A two-year service on a freight-carrying vessel running on no regular line or timetable, with a maximum speed of eight knots.
21William S. Baring-Gould believes that these “London rooms” are not those in Montague Street that Holmes mentions in “The Musgrave Ritual.”
22Holmes seems to have a strange perception of English geography, perhaps in the same manner as the New Yorker who perceives everything outside of the city limits as “out West.” “[N]o normal Briton refers to Norfolk [a mere 120 miles from London on its northeast] as ‘the North,’ ” writes Paul H. Gore-Booth (Lord Gore-Booth), in “The Journeys of Sherlock Holmes.” Compare Holmes’s description in “The Priory School” of Dr. Huxtable’s railway ticket as “a return ticket from Mackleton [located in Derbyshire, about 130 miles to the northwest of London], in the north of England” (emphasis added).
23A cerebrovascular accident.
24Why would Victor Trevor give the original papers—his last remembrance of “the dad”—to Holmes to keep, rather than retain them to reread the messages of love they contain? Perhaps Victor, too, concluded that they were filled with lies and unworthy of rereading.
25Holmes was later to write “a trifling monograph” on the subject of secret writings, in which he analyzed 160 separate ciphers (“The Dancing Men”), although this message, with its childlike coding, would not likely find its way into Holmes’s treatise.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 70
