Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

‘Much against their own wishes, Home Office officials were persuaded to drop the prosecution. The home secretary, R. A. Cross, made his decision on the thirteenth of July, and the parliamentary under-secretary of state then wrote to the Board of Trade.’

He referred to the papers on his lap. ‘“With reference to the Italian seaman who was killed and partially eaten on board a boat containing some of the survivors of the wrecked vessel Euxine , I am directed to acquaint you that, after careful consideration of all the circumstances, the Secretary of State does not consider that this is a case in which it would be advisable to institute proceedings against these men.”

‘The defendants were released and allowed to return to sea, only after they had signed pledges not to seek legal redress from Edward Bates.’ He paused again, studying Tom closely. ‘I tell you all this, precisely because it is my belief that the Home Office has long been waiting for another opportunity to set the full weight of the law against the custom of the sea. Your own case has provided them with that opportunity, and by a cruel twist of fate, Samuel Plimsoll has, albeit unwittingly, been the instrument by which the home secretary, Sir William Harcourt, has been empowered to order your prosecution.’

Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt was fifty-seven. Elected as Liberal MP for Oxford in 1868, he was Gladstone’s solicitor general from 1873 to 1874 and had been home secretary since 1880. He was an extremely intelligent and erudite man — a former professor of international law at Cambridge and such a prolific correspondent with The Times under the pseudonym ‘Historicus’ that his collected letters had been published in 1863 — but he was far from unworldly.

One contemporary, Augustine Birrell, described him as ‘a good, old-fashioned parliamentary bruiser’. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, less circumspect, compared him to a ‘big salmon… lurking under his stone, and ready for occasional plunges which will not always be free from a sinister intention’.

Harcourt’s tenure as home secretary had threatened to be over almost before it had begun, for he lost his seat at Oxford by fifty-four votes in the general election of May 1880. He began at once to cast around for another safe seat.

Samuel Plimsoll knew that his trusted friend Joseph Chamberlain was now installed as president of the Board of Trade, and he was concerned about the demands his own parliamentary duties were placing upon him at a time when his wife Eliza was in failing health. He was accordingly persuaded to stand down as MP for Derby in favour of Harcourt. In return he extracted a promise from the home secretary that he would champion Plimsoll’s lifetime campaigns on behalf of seamen.

The electors of Derby showed some reservations about the move and Plimsoll wrote to Harcourt: ‘There is greater reluctance than I expected. The nonconformists and radicals are sore but I am hopeful of success. If we succeed you had better appoint me your election agent. I am qualified and should of course act gratuitously.’

On 18 May 1880, Plimsoll stood on the balcony of the Midland Hotel in Derby and introduced Harcourt to the crowd as ‘a gentleman who I hope will be your future member. Do not believe that I am abandoning the [seamen’s] cause. I believe that by standing aside now and giving the post of honour to a stronger man, I am really helping the cause much more effectively than it has ever been in my power to advance it.’

Harcourt was returned unopposed a week later. A Punch cartoon showed Harcourt as ‘A man overboard rescued by the Sailor’s Friend’ — Plimsoll, in seaman’s uniform.

Eliza Plimsoll wrote to Harcourt:

Thank you much for your good opinion of my dear husband. Those who know him best think most highly of him, and I am sure he will rejoice to have given up his seat, if by doing so he has secured for the sailors a more powerful friend than he was himself. A truer one they could not have… I hope you will long continue Member for Derby as my husband has done, as the representative of the ‘Working Men’.

Far from being a powerful friend to the sailors, however, the only time that Harcourt interested himself in nautical matters during his term as home secretary was when instigating the prosecution of Dudley, Brooks and Stephens for the murder of Richard Parker.

Douglas held up his hand as Tom started to speak. ‘Captain Dudley, we are men of the sea and we know what a harsh mistress she can be. You and I and many others will feel that you have committed no wrong, but that is not the way it will appear to the gentlemen in Whitehall.’ He held Tom’s gaze. ‘I most strongly urge you to avail yourself to the full of the legal advice being offered to you. It is my belief you will have full need of it.’ He got to his feet. ‘I bid you goodbye and good fortune.’

For some time after Douglas had left Tom sat in silence. When he raised his head, he found Tilly’s eyes upon him. ‘Very well, Mr Tilly, I am convinced. I shall be grateful for all the legal advice you can offer me.’

The lawyer broke into a broad smile.

Tom received one more visitor that morning, a florid-faced West Countryman by the name of John Burton, proprietor of a noted Falmouth attraction, the Old Curiosity Shop. Its contents were not dissimilar to those described by Dickens in the book of the same name:

…one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town… suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour, here and there; fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters; rusty weapons of various kinds; distorted Figures in china, and wood, and iron, and ivory; tapestry, and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams.

A West Country P. T. Barnum, Burton had even made an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Eddystone lighthouse and have it re-erected in Falmouth as an attraction.

After a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, who ‘spent upwards of an hour at Mr Burton’s Old Curiosity Shop’ in March 1882, the proprietor, an economical man, had his original Gothic script notepaper overprinted in strident block capitals. From then on, it was always

ROYAL

“Burton’s / Curiousity Shop, Falmouth.”

The notepaper also proudly proclaimed visits from the home secretary, Sir William Harcourt, in April 1882, and Sir Garnet Wolseley in May of that year, and boasted of Burton’s ‘Direct Communications with Buyers in Constantinople, Nagasaki, Zanzibar, Shanghai, Trincomalee, Rangoon, Akyab, Moulmain, Poonah, Singapore’, and a host of other exotic ports.

After some thought, Tom accepted Burton’s offer to stand bail and help to raise money for the costs of the three men’s defence in return for access to those papers and artefacts from the Mignonette that had not been impounded by Sergeant Laverty.

Tilly was hovering outside the door when Burton had left. Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘What a curious coincidence, Mr Tilly, that I should be visited in the space of two hours first by a gentleman urging me to avail myself of every offer of legal assistance and then by a man promising me the means to pay for it.’ He smiled. ‘I thank you for it.’

On the Thursday morning, 12 September 1884, Superintendent Bourne had marshalled every available policeman around the borough lock-up and the Guildhall, but another huge crowd had gathered and the three men were mobbed as they were led across town. They were taken into court through the magistrates’ entrance at the back and sat on a bench at the side of the courtroom, waiting for the proceedings to begin.

The eight magistrates took their seats before the doors were opened to admit the public just after eleven o’clock. The crowd had jammed the street outside and the court was at once overrun with men and women fighting for seats and even pushing out those who had already occupied them. Within minutes every seat was filled and large numbers of people crowded the aisles at the sides and back of the room.