Date of Meeting: 2nd September 2022
Location of Meeting:
The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK
Attendees:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)
Apologies:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) apologised to Richard Krisciunas. Unfortunately, because
Motions:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) moved that we should have more yo-yos because "nothing seems as bad when you have a yo-yo". No one seconded the motion. "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) carried on playing with his yo-yo anyway.
Presentation:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) gave a confusing talk about stuff:
Fine Sea Stories
There are a good deal of references to the ocean, ships and sea-faring folk in The Canon. An almost suspicious amount of references, in fact. It was while contemplating one of the least satisfactory of the Canonical boats that I hit upon the a realisation about the reach of Sherlock Holmes.
The Five Orange Pips ends very anti-climatically. Having identified the villains, Holmes seemingly failed to catch them and bring them to justice. Instead, fate did this for him: their ship – the Lone Star – was wrecked somewhere in the Atlantic and all hands aboard were lost.
This is not an isolated incident – the same thing happened to the Norah Creina which was helping the killers of Blessington escape justice in The Resident Patient.
Mulling over these lackluster finales led me to consider how unHolmesian they are. When reports came in that these ships had been lost, Holmes seems to have been content that his suspects were probably, maybe, perhaps dead and just moves along to his next adventure. Would he really be satisfied with these results? Patently not. Consider his emotional response to finding out that the KKK had murdered John Openshaw:
“That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang”
This is a man desperate to dish out justice. And we know from elsewhere in The Canon that Holmes was a passionate sort of fellow who would take the law into his own hands when he felt himself better capable of distributing justice than the official means. We see examples of this in the pseudo-court scene at the end of Abbey Grange and the “accidental” killing of Roylott in Speckled Band.
Yet, when the Lone Star failed to arrive in Savannah, he seems to have done nothing to follow the matter up. It is as if he is an entirely different person. The only tolerable explanation for such an insipid response from Holmes is that he knew more than he was letting on. That is, he already knew that the Lone Star and the Norah Creina had been destroyed long before he received the official reports. Furthermore, he knew for certain that his fleeing suspects had been destroyed along with their vessels.
How could he possibly know such things before anyone else? If the ships were destroyed – no one from them could have got news to Holmes. The news then, could only come from people who witnessed the destruction of the ships from another vessel. But the official reports never came from such sources – in the case of the Lone Star the news only came out due to the discovery of some driftwood bearing its initials some time later. So whoever told Holmes that the Lone Star sank, did not inform the authorities or anyone else. Nor, it seems, did they attempt to save any of its crew. Hardly the actions of innocent bystanders. The inference from this is that the observers were not innocent – that they were responsible for the sinking of those ships. And if they were secretly passing this news to Holmes, then Holmes also had a hand in the destruction of these vessels.
My theory then, is this, Holmes had a sea-faring accomplice who assisted him in his maritime endeavours. Holmes ordered this accomplice to sink the Lone Star when it seemed the villains aboard might evade justice. He did the same for the Norah Creina. Who knows how many other cases they became involved in?
For example, The Greek Interpreter is another case with an unsatisfactory end - the villains escaping capture and kidnapping Sophy Kratides. Justice once again comes, seemingly, without Holmes’s intervention - a newspaper report suggests that Sophy killed her captors in Buda-Pesth and ran away. In light of what we now know, is it not more likely that Holmes used his accomplice once again. I picture a daring assassination and the freeing of Sophy, before all concerned then flee on a vessel moored on the Danube.
What part might this accomplice have played in the disappearance of the cutter Alicia (THOR), the affair of the Dutch steamship Friedland (NORW), the case of Matilda Briggs (SUSS) or the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson (FIVE)? This oceanic reach Holmes seemed to have, suddenly becomes more understandable.
My mind is cast back to the exciting riverboat chase on the Thames in The Sign of the Four. In retrospect, it seems unlikely that Holmes would have had no contingency plan in case the Aurora evaded capture and managed to reach the Esmerelda. Now it seems obvious - the accomplice was almost certainly out at sea keeping an eye on the Esmerelda in case it needed to be dealt with.
Of course, if all this is true, we must wonder what on Earth was going on in the Adventure of the Cardboard Box. Having identified the villain – Jim Browner – aboard the May Day, Holmes allows the vessel to safely land at Albert Dock. Why the lack of interception this time? There are a couple of possible explanations but the most likely one is that the heavy handed approach was not appropriate. Jim Browner was the only criminal aboard. In the other cases I have mentioned, it is likely that the entire crews of the vessels were culpable in some way. They all deserved Holmes’s justice. The crew of the May Day did not.
With the evidence mounting in favour of this nautical accomplice, I found that yet another unsatisfactory ending made more sense. At the end of The Valley of Fear Holmes rather callously receives news that John Douglas has been killed while fleeing Europe aboard the Palmyra:
“The ship reached Cape Town last night. I received this cable from Mrs. Douglas this morning:—
“Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St. Helena. No one knows how accident occurred.
— “Ivy Douglas.”
“Ha! It came like that, did it?” said Holmes, thoughtfully. “Well, I've no doubt it was well stage-managed.”
Rather than exhibit the outrage he did over John Openshaw’s death, Holmes laughs and compliments how well it was done. It is neither appropriate nor in character. Unless his accomplice had secretly been at work again…
Consider the facts of the case – John Douglas was being hunted by Moriarty’s gang on behalf of The Scowrers. In order to escape their clutches, he attempted to fake his own death. Holmes blundered slightly by exposing this scheme, thereby once again endangering John Douglas’s life. He was most assuredly aware of this:
“Get him out of England at any cost,” wrote Holmes to the wife. “There are forces here which may be more dangerous than those he has escaped. There is no safety for your husband in England.”
Would he then leave Douglas to Moriarty’s clutches? Or would he try to outwit the Napoleon of crime? Obviously, Holmes acted somehow. And now we can see how. Holmes had his accomplice follow the Palmyra and when Moriarty’s henchmen fought with Douglas onboard, Douglas, as planned, “accidentally” lost his footing and went overboard. The henchmen reported back to Moriarty that the deed was done. Little did they know the accomplice was on hand to fish Douglas out of the sea and sail him off to meet his wife in Cape Town where they adopted yet more aliases and began yet another new life.
At this point, I consider my point proven – Holmes had secret help at sea from some unnamed accomplice. The question now becomes “Who were they”? I have one proposal.
The Greek Interpreter makes it very clear that Holmes was reticent on the topic of his family. Before he was introduced to Mycroft Holmes, Watson “had come to believe that [Sherlock Holmes] was an orphan with no relatives living”. Combining this information with some off-hand comments Holmes made regarding his sister in Copper Beeches (“…it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for.”), it is tempting to propose the existence of a third Holmes sibling. Specifically a sister.
But whereas Holmes eventually does speak to Watson about his brother, the sister is never mentioned. Why might this be? I suggest that this is because she was not an entirely above-board sort of person, that is, she was the nautical accomplice. We can see that in the cases of the Lone Star and Norah Creina she was not above sinking other vessels. If I am correct about her involvement in the deaths of Sophy Kratides captors, she was also an adept assassin. In short, Miss Holmes was practically a pirate. Of course, Holmes could not speak of his connections with her. Those connections were not just familial – they were also criminal.
Further, I would say that the notion of The Pirate Miss Holmes actually makes sense when you consider the personality of Sherlock Holmes. If she was even half as Bohemian as her brother, she would have had a hard time dealing with the constraints of Victorian sensibilities regarding the role of women in society. Running away to sea and choosing a life of adventure would absolutely be in keeping for such a woman. That she stayed in touch with her brother and assisted him in his work also indicates that she shared his passion for justice and for endeavouring to make the world a better place.
In conclusion, I feel that I have sufficiently proven that Sherlock Holmes had a sister who was both his accomplice and a pirate. Assuming that she was as much an interesting character as her two brothers, it is to be hoped that she had her own Boswell somewhere aboard her vessel. I for one would pay a hefty fee to read The Adventures of Swashbuckling Sherrinford – the Sea-Salty Sister of Sherlock.
Any other business:
Buy my book. It is available from all the Amazon sites…
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