Classic Scottish Murder Stories (20 page)

After the tug had gone back, and they were well out to sea, too late to return them to shore, seven unwelcome young figures came up blinking from various hiding-places in the bowels of the ship, just in time before the carpenter battened down the hatches for the voyage. It is not clear whether the great adventure was a joint enterprise or merely an ill-omened coincidence. At least two of the boys knew each other. Seven were too many. Seven extra mouths to feed, and seven useless appendages, too young and weak to work hard for their board. By marine custom and common law you tossed your stowaways a crust and a bone, regularly, and you kept them alive. Seven made up a crew of their own and the very sight of them was an irritant to the bearded ones.

All the stowaways had emerged from the poorest parts of Greenock. Some of them had mothers. Bernard Reilly, aged 22, the eldest, had secreted himself with the express intention of emigrating to Canada in order to find employment. James Bryson, 16, seems to have had what we would now call ‘problems', although he was to give evidence very clearly. He was dirty in his person and habits and averse to work. David Brand was also 16. Peter Currie, 12, was in a favoured position, because his father, back home, was friendly with the mate. There remain three really young boys, all aged 11: Hugh McGinnes, Hugh McEwan and John Paul who were already friends. Hugh McEwan was weakly, a consumptive, and spat blood. ‘Please, sir,' said one of the 11-year-olds, interrogated by the frowning captain, upon discovery, ‘we want to be sailors.'

The boys were thin, undernourished, to start with, and nearly all were dressed in one set of ragged cast-offs, quite unsuited to the hail, frost, snow and continuous rain of the north Atlantic crossing. Some of them were barefooted. No effort was made to provide or improvise other clothing or footwear: the boys slipped and stumbled on their raw, frozen feet. John Paul got hold of some canvas to make trousers, but
he had no way of cutting and sewing them, and it was confiscated.

The
Arran,
as confirmed by the ship's cook, was amply provisioned for its calculated four month return voyage, and the captain at first authorised a fair measure of rations for the stowaways: 5lbs of beef per day, and 14oz of coffee, 7oz of tea and 5lbs of sugar per week. This robust diet shows that the captain began with good intentions. The first thing that went wrong was that the boys succumbed to seasickness, and the mate began to grumble as he saw them vomiting up the chunks of precious beef. He ordered the steward to stop all supply of the beef to them, saying that he was going to give them the ground of their stomachs before they got any more meat. From now on, only the notorious ship biscuits were to be issued to them. That meant one a day, each, if they were in luck. The cook secretly passed them scraps because they were nearing starvation level.

Weakened, the boys, especially the little ones, could scarcely perform their allotted tasks and the mate came after them with a rope's end to give them a walloping. James Bryson, the unfortunate one, further incensed the mate by his dirty habits. One day, when it was fine, the hatches were opened up, and the oakum and coils of rope where the boys slept were found to be ‘smeared with filth'. Presumably there was a makeshift latrine. The mate's wrath was concentrated on Bryson and that is how he came to be ‘scrubbed and flogged' – a remedial Victorian treatment reminiscent of the ‘mopping' accorded to ‘lunatics' after a weekend chained to their cribs.

Bryson remembered that the flogging with the lead-line came first. David Brand, who was forced to do some of the scrubbing, remembered that the scrubbing came first. Bryson said, ‘The mate flogged me for about three minutes. When I was screaming, the master of the vessel came forward. I was then made to lie down on the deck. Several bucketsful of water were thrown on me. It was salt water. The captain then scrubbed me
with a hair broom all over my body. The mate then took the broom up and scrubbed me harder than the captain. After the scrubbing was finished I was made to wash my clothes. I was naked at the time.' David Brand said, ‘The weather was very cold, but I do not think that it was freezing. Bryson was very dirty and it was on that account that he was scrubbed. I stopped when I thought he was clean. He was crying out. There were about 30 blows given. The captain was present during the flogging, but said or did nothing. I saw blood on Bryson's back.'

On May 10th, after a stormy crossing, the
Arran,
which for some days had been nosing through packs of floating ice, became temporarily but firmly embedded in an ice-field off St George's Bay, on the west coast of the Island of Newfoundland, after passing through Cabot Strait into the Gulf of St Lawrence. The captain and the mate went down on to the thick ice for a walk, to stretch their legs, and while they were away, the two 16-year-olds, Brand and Bryson, dared to go below and scavenge for food. As usual, it was James Bryson who got into trouble.

‘I took some currants out of a keg,' he said, ‘because I could get nothing else. I was hungry at the time. I took about a fistful of currants and returned to my work of scraping the deck. The mate was coming up the vessel's side when he saw me coming out of the cabin. He ordered my hands to be tied, and Brand and I were searched. Nothing was found on Brand. My pocket was cut on the outside and the currants “kepped” in a saucer. The captain ordered the currants to be given to the other boys. I was afterwards stripped naked by order of the mate. The captain was present all the time and saw what took place. The mate placed my head on the deck, seized my legs, and held them up to his breast while the captain flogged me. He gave me 15 to 20 lashes. I was ordered by the mate to help the boy Currie to scrub the deck when I was stark naked...my semmit was returned to me.
I was then placed on the hatch and the mate told me to tell him all that I had done in my life.'

The last sentence of Bryson's complaint, although not
altogether clear, does have an uncomfortable feeling to it, as if the mate were deriving some illicit satisfaction. From now on, the mate withdraws from his role as Chief Torturer, and the captain takes over with a new plan for getting rid of his stowaways. They were to be driven down on to the ice, given one biscuit apiece, and told to walk to the shore. No line of land was visible to the naked eye, but the captain assured the boys that through his spyglass he could see houses with people living in them. The distance between the
Arran
and landfall was variously estimated by the crew as from eight to 20 miles. The mate put it at five miles, but he would say that, wouldn't he? In the alternative, the captain suggested, they could, if they preferred, make for another ship, the
Myrtle,
which was also lying fast in the ice one or two miles away from the
Arran.
There were not enough provisions left to feed the boys as well as the crew for the remaining part of the voyage to Quebec, he explained.

Some of the boys had had pieces of biscuit for breakfast. Only two of them went willingly: Reilly, the young man, because he had not given up his dream of finding a job ashore, and Bryson, lately tortured, because he felt that nothing could be worse than what he had already suffered on board. Peter Currie, the favoured one, was allowed to stay. That left four. David Brand, the 16-year-old, refused to go over the side, and the captain caught him by the collar and forced him. Three small boys aged 11 remained.

Hugh McGinnes asked the captain how he could walk on the ice with his bare feet, and the captain said that it would be as well for him to die on the ice as in the ship, as he would get no more food there. John Paul hid himself in the forecastle. The captain went in and brought him out. He went crying to the mate, and the mate said that he would have nothing to do with putting them on the ice. The captain told him to go forward, and struck him with a belaying-pin because he would not leave the rails. John Paul had no shoes either. He had a blue coat. Hugh
McEwan, the boy who had tuberculosis, was hiding in the galley. He began to cry and the captain found him. He had boots and was better clad than any of them. John Paul was crying that his fingers were hurting in the cold and all three little boys were crying as they were made to slide down a rope and stood on the bitter ice, looking up and pleading for food. Several biscuits were thrown down for them and there was a scramble. It was each boy for himself: they were all too weak for acts of conspicuous heroism.

One young man, two youths, and three boys set out on their 12-hour journey. It was between 8.00 and 9.00am and clear daylight. At first they followed the line of the stern of the
Arran,
because the captain had told them that it would lead them to the
Myrtle,
but they could not see her, never saw her all day, and changed their course while still within sight of the
Arran.
They could see a black haze which looked like land. It would be unrealistic to imagine the ice-field as smooth like a rink: it was rutted and humped and progress was slow. They kept together in a small, tattered party. After about 10 or 11 miles, with the shore clearly in sight, conditions worsened and became very dangerous. Until then, the ice had held up well, but now it was beginning to soften and crack, with crevices and separate floes. Sometimes they fell into the icy water and their thin clothes froze on their backs. It is better not to think about their bare feet.

At around midday, the weakest member, Hugh McEwan fell in three times. The first time, James Bryson, the despised one, managed to pull him out, the second time, he scrambled out on his own, but the third time, the ice closed over his face and he was lost. Two of the smallest boys were left. Some hours later, about five miles from the shore, Hugh McGinnes, whose bare feet were swollen, sat down and said he could go no further. They had to leave him. For a good ten minutes as they struggled on, they could hear him ‘greeting'. He could not have lasted long: his skin showed through his ragged trousers. On they
went, the depleted band of four, one young man, two youths and one small boy, John Paul, who, although barefooted, must have had some extra powers of endurance. Later he said that he had run away to sea for a pleasure sail! He was comfortable at home. He lived with his mother but did not tell her that he was going. He chose the
Arran
because she was a good ship. He did not know the captain.

The long day passed and they reached the rim of the icefield. One mile of deep, open water lay between them and the houses on the shore-line. Reilly, Bryson and Brand had, surprisingly, been allowed to bring with them some pieces of wood and a batten from the ship, and they tried to ferry across on separate floats of ice, using the wood as paddles. John Paul, one supposes, stood and watched. Just then, a woman looking out to sea saw them, and a boat was sent over to rescue them, as the sun was going down.

Three of the boys never left the safety of St George's Bay until it was time to go home. When he was strong enough, the fourth, Bernard Reilly, made his way southwards to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to seek work. Meanwhile, the ice had creaked loose and released the
Arran,
set free to sail across the gulf of St Lawrence and up the St Lawrence River to Quebec. From harbour there, a member of the crew who could not get the hellish incidents out of his mind, wrote a graphic letter on June 10th to his people in Greenock: ‘The boys were thinly clad, and were not able to stand the severe cold. The men could hardly stand it, let alone them...' His account was received with horror by the relatives of the missing boys and a hostile crowd was waiting on the quay when the
Arran
came up the Clyde on July 30th. A boarding party would have attacked the two officers, who locked themselves in the cabin. The police were called to the disturbance, a near riot, but the crowd did not disperse for many hours.

Worse violence might have occurred if it had then been known that two of the children put out on the ice had in fact
been lost. The writer of the letter from Quebec did not know. Nor did the captain and the mate. Next day, those two were arrested, taken before the Sheriff and charged with assault. Both were committed for trial and bail was refused. As a part of his enquiries, the procurator fiscal had telegraphed to the police force at St John's, the capital of Newfoundland, and report was now received that two stowaways had died. The prisoners were further charged with murder.

The trial was held back until Brand, Bryson and Paul were brought from Newfoundland and were fit to give evidence. They were taken first in a schooner to St John's on the far eastern coast of the island, and there transferred to the brigantine
Hannah and Bennie,
which was the property of the Provost of Greenock. Home they came on October 1st, well-fed and clothed, to face their new ordeal of a solemn trial in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, which occupied three days from November 23rd, 1868. Both captain and mate were now charged and indicted with assault and culpable homicide (manslaughter) not murder, and both relied upon a straight denial. Their declarations read out in court were plainly outrageous humbug. The captain swore that he ‘invited' the boys to leave the ship and have a ‘run' on the ice. ‘I pointed out to them houses on the shore, and said to them they might have a fine run ashore.' He denied forcing them to leave but did admit that he ‘of course, told them to go'. The mate, against all the very strong evidence, denied the scrubbing and flogging of James Bryson, or that he had compelled the stowaways to leave the ship.

The three survivors present gave corroborative accounts of the cruel sequence, and members of the crew examined for the Crown found themselves strongly criticised for not interceding. Said one George Henry, ‘I had no right to interfere with my master and mate: I was a servant.' But, asked a juryman, ‘If the master or mate had been going to murder the boys would you have interfered?' The reply was oblique: ‘There was a chance of their reaching the shore, and some of them did reach
it.' In those violent times, when an officer would fell a crewman with a blow and think nothing of it, or clap him in irons on suspicion of mutiny, the plight of those who watched is understandable.