Star of the Sea

by Joseph O'Connor

  This morning I myself was assailed while on deck by a party of humble Irishmen who had come out in a row-boat. They appeared very poor and hungry themselves. They shouted up to enquire if a passenger by the name of Pius Mulvey of Ardnagreevagh was on board and I said yes. Then they asked if we had a certain Lord Merridith on board, also. Again I was happy to confirm that we did. Was Lord Merridith safe and well, they desired to know? I said he was in the best of health, if a little understandably wearied by the journey, and I had seen him only a quarter-hour previously.

  At that a little secretive discussion was had amongst them. They said would I tell Mulvey, next time I saw him, that the committee of welcome was waiting to greet him. They very much hoped he had not forgotten them. Would I just say ‘the Hibernian lads’ had asked to be remembered to him fondly? They would be on the quayside, watching and waiting. They were preparing a whale of a time for him, they said. A time he should never forget so long as he lived. The fatted calf was being prepared for the slaughter now the prodigal himself was coming into America. As soon as he sets foot through the customs post, they would be waiting, they said.

  I am sure the poor man shall be extremely gratified; for it is always agreeable at the end of a long and difficult voyage to see a large number of friendly faces.

  1 ‘First Day’: a Quaker term for Sunday. – GGD

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  THE MURDER

  One can only speculate as to the thoughts which must have tortured Pius Mulvey on Tuesday, the seventh of December 1847; the last day he would spend on the Star of the Sea.

  Early in the morning he was seen playing shuffle-penny with Jonathan and Robert Merridith on the aft part of the upperdeck, and then teaching them the words of a nonsensical ballad. They, in their turn, appeared to be schooling him in the mysteries of some strange entertainment later identified as Winchester College Football. He was noticed on the deck, holding a ball made of rags above his head and shouting ‘Worms!’ – apparently one of that game’s important elements.

  At about ten o’clock he visited the cookhouse and asked the sommelier if it would be possible to do some sort of work and have a bottle of wine in return for it. He explained that he wished to make a small gift to Lord and Lady Kingscourt who had shown him a great kindness. The ship’s cook, a Chinaman, set him to hacking at the frozen water-butts and he was indeed given a half-bottle of burgundy for his labours, which he presented to Lady Kingscourt with a note of gratitude. She thought he was acting very strangely indeed: all smiles one moment and great fearfulness the next. ‘He seemed to be speaking at an angle,’ she later said; ‘as though burdened by some great weight of which he wished to be free.’ He kept saying Jonathan and Robert Merridith were ‘fine boys’, that Lady Kingscourt’s husband was ‘a decent man’. That it was a pity all the troubles of home had caused such ‘separations’ between people. There was no need for any of it, especially in such difficult times. We had all done things in the past which we should not have done, but ‘an eye for an eye will leave every man blind’. The more she agreed with him, the more he said it. He seemed to be attempting to convince himself about something.

  We know he had an intriguing conversation with the Captain that morning, where he wondered if it would be possible to sign as a hand on the ship and return to Liverpool. Lockwood found the question amazing. Never in all his years at sea had he had a passenger make such a request. For it to be made when America was literally a stone’s throw away struck him as bizarre to the point of absurdity, but he put it down to the anxiety often experienced by emigrants, compounded by Mulvey’s victimisation while on board. He said the ship would not be going immediately back to Liverpool but needed substantial repairs in dry dock at New York and might well remain there until after Christmas. Further he told Mulvey about a curious incident which had happened the previous morning, when a group of apparently friendly Irishmen rowed out to the Star and enquired as to his wellbeing. The news was imparted to try to reassure him; but he did not appear reassured at all. Moreover he was said to have grown very pale, and moments later to have become physically ill: a matter he put down to having eaten something bad.

  Some time that morning I went down to the lock-up to seek an interview with the prisoner Seamus Meadowes, but did not find him there. Suffering badly from fever in the damp and cold of the lock-up, he had been released into the custody of the Captain, who had warned that he would be shot if he attempted any trouble. He was lodged in the cabin of First Mate Leeson, under lock and key, where he refused to grant me the interview. He had little use for newspapers, he said; still less for those who wrote in them. Furthermore he affected to speak little English, though I knew he could speak it quite fluently if he wanted to. Indeed as I left the quarters I distinctly heard him asking his guard if he could be permitted to go above and take some air.

  I then spent about an hour in the steerage cabin, doing what very little I could to help Surgeon Mangan administer to the passengers. Many were in a state of exhausted fear and were begging him to use his influence to get them off the ship. On the way back, I saw Mulvey in the First-Class quarters. He appeared nervous when I met him in the corridor and said nothing at all as we passed. Since he often looked nervous I thought nothing of it.

  What he found in his cabin must have greatly increased his anxiety.

  We know it must have been placed there some time late that morning or in the afternoon, for a steward had been in to fetch some stored blankets at about ten o’clock and described the lazaretto in a later statement to the police as ‘completely empty; I mean there was nothing unusual about it’. The same man went in again just before four and saw the note lying unopened on the bed. Thinking it private, he did not look at it closely.

  Mulvey’s initial – M – was carefully inked on the envelope, in the cold careful hand of one wanting anonymity. The stark letters forming the note had been cut from a page. To many another it would have appeared impenetrable. To Pius Mulvey it can only have seemed terrifying.

  GET HIM

  RIGHT SUNE

  Els Be lybill

  It was nothing less than denial of commutation. David Merridith or Pius Mulvey: one of them would never set foot on Manhattan.

  As for the intended victim, it is possible to establish with some precision what he did on the morning and afternoon of the same day.

  Just before dawn, at a quarter after seven, he called a steward and reported that he was not feeling well. He asked for Surgeon Mangan to be sent for immediately, but by the time the physician arrived, Merridith seemed a little better. He complained only of a headache, brought on by a bad hangover and the intense cold, and sent the Surgeon back to his quarters saying he intended to sleep a while.

  At about half-past eight, he called the steward again and ordered a light breakfast to be taken in his cabin. When the man came back with the coffee and porridge, Lord Kingscourt asked him to draw him a bath. He was apparently in good spirits, though quiet.

  When he had bathed, he then asked the steward, a Brazilian named Fernão Pereira, to help him shave and dress. His eyesight had not been good of late, he mentioned, and he did not want to cut his face. He told the steward to leave the razor behind, saying he was in the habit of shaving twice daily, once in the morning and once before dining. He was ‘very insistent’ about it, the steward would later testify.

  Lord Kingscourt remained in his room until about eleven-thirty; his wife and son Jonathan both saw him as they passed. He was searching through a small attaché case in which he kept papers. He greeted them both in the normal way.

  Nobody then saw him until about one o’clock when he lunched with the Maharajah in the small dining area off the Smoking Saloon. Several post-prandial refreshments were summoned. They played a few hands of gin rummy for shillings and unusually enough Lord Kingscourt won. A conversation then ensued about variant rules for poker, billiards and other gentlemanly amusements. The ship’s Mail Agent, George Wellesley, remembered several years after the vo
yage that Merridith had bored him by attempting to explain a word-game called ‘doohulla’, which he and his sisters had devised in childhood, and had enjoyed a small glass of port wine with the company as he did so. As the conversation came to its end, Merridith ordered up a bottle of the port and returned to his cabin, saying he intended to read.

  On his way back, at about a quarter to three, he was seen on the deck outside the First-Class quarters, kicking a football with his two sons. He seemed ‘happy enough’, according to one witness, an English seaman named John Grimesley.

  His younger son, Robert, had eaten too much at luncheon and was feeling unwell, so Lord Kingscourt accompanied him back to his quarters. A conversation took place about the untidiness of the room, Robert being chided by his father for its general messiness and lack of fresh air. Little wonder that the boy had become ill, it was suggested. Also it was said that he must not take advantage of Pius Mulvey’s friendliness and have the poor man playing football all morning, when the decks were so icy as to be perilous. Poor Mulvey’s handicap was very severe and it was important to show kindliness to one in such a situation. Lord Kingscourt went to the porthole, drew back the curtain and opened it. And at that point Robert Merridith said something which would have profound consequences.

  ‘You know when you were in a funk with me the other night, Papa? About Mr Mulvey?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be angry, old thing. It’s just that we mustn’t let our imaginations run away with us, that’s all.’

  ‘Why did he say he wouldn’t fit in through the window?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘At supper. He said a great big man could never fit in through a little window like that one.’

  ‘And?’

  Robert Merridith said to his father: ‘I never said anything about the window to Mr Mulvey. So how did he know?’

  ‘Know what, Bobs?’

  ‘Well – that the person I saw had come in through my window.’

  For several minutes Lord Kingscourt evidently said nothing. Many years later his son recalled that it was the longest period of absolute silence he could ever remember spending in his father’s company. His father seemed ‘completely distracted’, he said. ‘As one in a trance or a kind of hypnotism.’ He sat down on the bunk and gazed at the floor. He seemed utterly unaware that anyone else was in the room with him. Finally the boy approached his father and nudged his arm. Lord Kingscourt looked up at his son and smiled, ‘as though he had just that moment awoken’. He ruffled his hair and told him not to be worried about anything. Everything was going to be all right now.

  ‘Do you think Mr Mulvey was playing a game?’

  ‘Yes, Bobs. I expect that’s it. Playing a game.’

  Robert Merridith returned to the deck, leaving his father alone in the cabin. What the Earl was thinking we cannot know. But by now he must have been contending with an unavoidable and shocking fact: Pius Mulvey had indeed entered his son’s room with a knife. He meant to do murder on that ship.

  After that point the picture becomes confusing. Surgeon Mangan recalled that he visited Lord Kingscourt twice in the course of the afternoon and administered very strong doses of mercury in injection form and a treatment of laudanum to help him sleep. He was apparently in terrible pain, almost cripplingly so. But several of the steerage passengers later testified that they saw him come into their quarters in the following hours. Others insisted that they observed him walking alone near the stern and looking out at the skyline of lower Manhattan Island, which was at that time a tumble of tenements and poor dwelling houses. A great fire had caught in one of the slums that day; the flames and smoke could be clearly seen from the port side of the Star. One elderly woman, a widow from near Limerick City, swore she saw Lord Kingscourt seated at his easel and painting a picture of the burning buildings. It was snowing hard by then and he was wearing no coat but she did not approach him, thinking him ‘very hag-ridden’.

  There was a dangerously charged atmosphere on the Star that night. Food supplies were almost completely exhausted; melted snow was by now the only source of drinkable water. By now it was absolutely believed by everyone in steerage that the vessel was to be sent back to Ireland within the next few days. Many in First-Class believed it, too. It was also widely rumoured that some of the passengers were planning to jump the ship and try to swim the four hundred yards across the harbour. Most had sold every last possession to pay for the voyage. Many could literally see their loved ones waiting on the dock. Having come so far, and at such a heavy cost, they did not mean to go back.

  For their own part, the sailors were deeply uneasy. To be thrust into the role of jailer suited very few of them indeed; neither did they want to be nursemaids to sick passengers, not having any training to do so. Indeed it was whispered that a number of the men themselves were about to desert, fearful of catching fever from the worsening conditions on board, and resentful of being asked to police hungry passengers for whose continuing imprisonment they saw no reason. One sailor told me that if passengers tried to escape he would do nothing to stop them but would instead wish them luck. Another, a Scotsman, said that if ordered to use firearms on passengers he would refuse, and would throw his weapon overboard. I asked what he would do if his orders were issued at gunpoint. (There was a rumour that the New York police might give such an order.) ‘I will shoot any son-of-a-bitch who points a gun at me,’ he replied. ‘Yank or Limey, he will get himself a bullet.’

  At seven o’clock I saw Merridith in the Dining Saloon. He was neatly dressed, as ever, and looked quite strong. The cold was quite savage on the ship that night; nearly everyone in the saloon was wearing an overcoat, but Merridith, a stickler for etiquette, was not. We did not exchange much conversation, but anything he did say I remember as being very clear. As usual he made a few quips at my own expense but that was nothing out of the ordinary.

  I dined that night at the Captain’s table, with Wellesley the Mail Agent, the Chief Engineer, the Maharajah, Reverend Deedes and Mrs Marion Derrington. Mangan the surgeon was completely exhausted, now violently unwell himself with an infection of the stomach, and he conveyed his apologies through his capable sister. The Merridiths sat by themselves at a table for two. They did not say much but no argument was had. Lord Kingscourt appeared to eat a hearty enough supper, though even in First-Class we were now down to dried cod and biscuit; and he bade good-night to our company as he left the saloon. A conversation about literature was taking place at the time. He contributed a few remarks, nothing of consequence. And I remember that he shook my hand just before he left – a thing he had never done before; except, perhaps, the first time I had met him, back in London six years beforehand. ‘Keep up the good work, old thing,’ he said. ‘It is not in the material, but the way it is composed.’

  Returned to his cabin he made a few drawings: rather neat little studies of aristocratic houses; a sketch of a peasant-boy of the Connemara hills, in which observers have seen some quality of himself. Others have been struck by the resemblance to his sons; particularly, it is said, to Jonathan. To draw from memory must have been difficult that night. And yet the image is not without peace. The boy is clearly poor; but he is clearly not dying. Nobody is dying. His parents might be at home. If it is a depiction of one of his tenants – and many say it is – it must have been done from distant memory indeed.

  At about quarter after ten he ordered a glass of hot milk but was told by the duty steward that there was no milk left on board. He requested a glass of hot water or mulled cider instead. He also asked the steward if it would be possible to borrow a bible, from the Captain, perhaps, or the Surgeon. The steward went to Lockwood’s cabin but the Captain was not there and no bible was on his shelf. So the man went to the quarters of Reverend Deedes and there he was given what was necessary. Bringing it to Lord Kingscourt, he received a handsome tip. He was told not to remain on guard outside the door. Apparently Merridith joked that he could not sleep if under guard (‘nor spring an old leak with an
other fellow in the room’), both matters which had blighted his navy days. The man said he would rather stand guard, for security. Lord Kingscourt picked up his razor and opened the blade. ‘Lay on, Macduff,’ he said, and he smiled. ‘Not a man on this ship is the match of a Merridith.’

  A sailor on deck duty noticed him open the porthole at about half-past ten. It being such a cold night, the man thought it odd. The light was lowered but not extinguished. He placed his shoes outside the cabin door to be polished. Took off his evening suit and hung it carefully in the wardrobe. And he put on the moth-eaten ancient garments he must have brought from Ireland: a peasant’s canvas britches and a bawneen ‘bratt’: a farmer’s smock, as worn in Connemara.

  He read and underlined the following verses; from the Gospel of Mark, chapter twelve:

  1 And he began to speak unto them by parables. ‘A lord planted a vineyard and let it out to tenant men, and went into a far country. 2 And at the season he sent to the tenant men a servant, that he might receive of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. 4 And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones and sent him away. 5 And again he sent another; and him they killed; beating some and killing some. 6 Having one beloved son, he sent to them his son. And he said, “I know they will reverence my son.” 7 But the tenant men said among themselves: “This is the heir; come; let us kill him; and the inheritance of the vineyard shall be ours.” ’