Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

It must also be remembered that it was on their own confession that they stand indicted; they did not conceal the offence that they had committed although it would probably have been perfectly easy to do so.

The Falmouth Magistrates were perfectly right in ordering their arrest on the charge of murder. Every taking of a human life is presumed to be murder. It would be for the accused themselves to disprove their guilt or to adduce such extenuating circumstances as will ensure their escaping with slight punishment.

What is interesting to notice in this case is that we have here got beyond the boundaries of law. We have touched the lowest strata of practical ethics and have come to a question of primary morality which everybody will answer according to his own moral feeling. To dogmatize is absurd.

Another correspondent to The Times drew attention to the eerie parallels between the case and a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1837. ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ told the tale of four shipwrecked men who having earlier killed and eaten a turtle, killed one of their number, the cabin boy named Richard Parker, and drank his blood and ate his flesh:

Our chief sufferings were now those of hunger and thirst, and, when we looked forward to the means of relief in this respect, our hearts sunk within us, and we were induced to regret that we had escaped the less dreadful perils of the sea. We endeavoured, however, to encourage ourselves with the hope of being speedily picked up by some vessel, and encouraged each other to bear with fortitude the evils that might happen…

I immediately saw by the countenance of Parker that I was safe and that it was he who had been doomed to suffer… I must not dwell upon the fearful repast which immediately ensued. Such things may be imagined, but words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality. Let it suffice to say that, having in some measure appeased the raging thirst which consumed us by the blood of the victim, and having by common consent taken off the hands, feet, and head, throwing them together with the entrails into the sea, we devoured the rest of the body, piecemeal.

The following Thursday, 18 September 1884, the three defendants returned to Falmouth to surrender to their bail at the magistrates’ court. Stephens and Brooks had travelled back from Southampton on the Wednesday evening and spent the night at the Sailors’ Home.

Tom arrived early on Thursday morning on the mail express from London to Truro, and took the train along the rattling, single-track line around the curve of the hills down into Falmouth. He disembarked at the station, but no hansom cabs were waiting for business at that early hour and he had to make his slow, painful way across town on foot.

He still needed daily treatment for the wounds to his buttocks he had suffered on the day after they were rescued, and Stephens also remained in a frail physical and mental state. Tom also noted with concern that Brooks, the only one strong enough to climb on to the ship when they were rescued, now seemed the weakest of the three. He sat quiet and listless as they ate their breakfast, avoiding Tom’s eye and barely joining the conversation.

‘Cheer up, Brooks,’ Tom said. ‘We’ll see our homes again tonight and all this business will be behind us.’

Brooks gave a weak smile, then looked away.

When they had finished their breakfast, Captain Jose sent a boy for a cab to take the three of them up the hill to the Guildhall. It was almost an hour before the hearing was due to begin, but another huge crowd was already blocking the street, and the doors of the court were under siege from people desperate even for standing room in the small space allotted to the public.

A shout went up as they alighted and the crowd pressed even more closely around them as they fought their way through to the magistrates’ entrance. Hands trembling, Tom rested against the wall of the courtroom as the other two waited on a bench.

The magistrates entered the court just as the clock struck eleven and the three men took their places in the dock. When all was in readiness, the clerk to the justices signalled to the police to open the courtroom doors. There was another mêlée as people fought for a space, and many were locked out when the doors were forced shut again.

The small table in front of the dock was almost equally crowded with lawyers. Mr Tilly’s ruddy face was topped by a bird’s nest of dishevelled hair. Facing him across the table was the tall, patrician figure of William Otto Julius Danckwerts, QC. A barrister at the Inner Temple, a junior Treasury counsel and a specialist in wreck inquiries, he appeared for the prosecution with Mr G. Appleby-Jenkins, a solicitor who was also the town clerk of Penryn.

As Tom’s gaze wandered around the courtroom, he found himself the object of scrutiny from the press bench, where the reporters were filling the time before the hearing by sketching pen-pictures of the defendants. Every national and all of the local and regional papers were represented, and the proceedings were punctuated by the sound of clogs clattering down the cobbled street as the local boys recruited as runners took each verbatim instalment to the telegraph office.

Tom would not have been offended by the description of him offered by the Weekly Mercury :

A little under an average height, broad-shouldered and powerful looking. His well-shaped head and pleasant features are indicative of a genial and generous nature and, to judge from appearances, the last man in the world who would be capable of a deed of cruelty. Although not a teetotaller, he has always been of very moderate habits in the matter of drink and diet, and his friends attribute his staying power in a great degree to this fact.

Stephens is taller and of a more rugged aspect than the Captain, a fine fellow in every respect and a good specimen of the British sailor as far as physique is concerned. Both Dudley and Stephens are florid and red-haired. Brooks is a little taller and bigger than the Captain with a dark complexion and almost jet-black hair.

Tom loosened his jacket. It was a warm morning and the closely packed courtroom was already unpleasantly hot. The murmurs of conversation died away as Liddicoat called the court to order and the clerk to the justices read the charge.

Danckwerts then got to his feet. ‘Your Worships, I appear in this case to prosecute by direction of the Crown and the public prosecutor. It is my duty to lay the facts as shortly and as briefly as I can before you and it will then be for Your Worships to say whether the prisoners should be committed for trial.’

He paused and glanced towards the reporters, as if directing his remarks to them as much as to the bench. ‘While the case has excited profound sentiments of sympathy, you and I and the duties we have to discharge must not allow ourselves to be turned to the right or to the left by any feeling of pain or pity, or any other sentiment but a sincere desire to further the public justice and nothing more.

‘As you are aware, gentlemen, we are not attending here today to try the case. We do not meet here to convict or accuse the prisoners, but for the sole purpose of saying: “Is there any evidence for which these prisoners should be sent for trial by a jury of their countrymen?”’

He paused again and this time his gaze lingered on Tilly seated at the lawyers’ table. The ghost of a smile crossed Danckwerts’ face. ‘There are some cases in which the law warrants you in taking the life of a fellow creature but I venture to submit to you in the greatest confidence that this is not one of those cases. We must not omit to recognize that the law regards this as murder and it requires to be satisfied.