The attorney general wanted the men sent back to England on the warship HMS Adventure. In fact, they returned on a merchant ship, the Nestor. It had already sailed with the men on board when the Colonial Office, alarmed at the illegality of returning them to England, sent a cable telling the Singapore authorities not to do so.
The five survivors arrived in London, aboard the Nestor, on 9 July and were held in custody for five days while civil servants dithered over what to do. The Home Office remained very eager for a prosecution to establish a leading case defining the law. Two factors weighed against them.
The first was the lack of evidence. The witnesses were in Batavia, Singapore and, in the case of the Java Packet, on the high seas. The only admissible evidence was the depositions of the men involved which were vague and contradictory. Detaining the men without charge and shipping them half-way round the world was also plainly illegal.
Douglas paused. ‘There was also a political dimension to the case of the Euxine. You have heard of Sir Edward Bates?’
‘The ship-owner? I’ve heard of him, and nothing but bad at that. They say he overloads his ships and starves the men who crew them.’
Douglas nodded. ‘He was also a Conservative Member of Parliament. When the men of the Euxine arrived in Britain, Mr Disraeli’s government was under great pressure from “the seaman’s friend”, Samuel Plimsoll.
‘In July of that year Mr Plimsoll addressed the House of Commons. He spoke of thousands of living beings consigned to undeserved and miserable death in coffin-ships. He described the murderous tendencies of ship-owners and before he was shouted down, he pronounced himself determined to unmask the villains who sent thousands to death and destruction. He named Edward Bates as one of them, “a ship-knacker”, who owned three ships sunk the previous year with the loss of eighty-seven lives.
‘Amongst the ships Bates owned was the Euxine. It would have been a political catastrophe for the Government if the trial had gone ahead. Here was a prominent member of the Conservative Party already accused of starving the men who served on his ships. The men of the Euxine, forced to resort to cannibalism to survive, would have been seen as living proof of that.
‘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.’