Greenock stowaways

It appears that nine people, eight of them children, stowed away on the Arran, but two were found and returned to port.[6] Seven others[5] ranging in age from 11 to 22 remained undiscovered. All from very different social backgrounds,[7] they were: Hugh McEwan, (who had taken advantage of his mother sending him into Greenock on an errand to stowaway instead),[6] John Paul, Hugh McGinnes, Peter Currie, James Bryson,[3] David Jolly Brand[8] and Bernard (or Barney) Reilly[3] who, as an adult, lodged on his own in the town.[6][lower-roman 3] McEwan lived with his widowed mother in Glasgow High Street, although they originated from Greenock where the others all lived. They hid belowdecks in various discrete parts of the hold. Reilly appears to have been attempting to emigrate in search of work, but it is unknown what motivated the younger children to come with him.[9] At least one considered it an opportunity for a pleasure cruise,[10] and another the chance to become a sailor.[11] Stowaways were not an uncommon phenomenon[12] often being motivated by adventure and the chance to escape the poverty of the time.[lower-roman 4] Ships were regularly searched on departure, and any stowaways found would be sent back to port on a tugboat,[1] as the Arran had already done with two children.[6]

Illustration from the London Evening News, 1850, of a ship's crew searching for stowaways prior to leaving harbour.

Their first night at sea the boys slept in a sail locker.[16] They were given menial work to do as deckhands.[1] It was not long before the ship sailed into rough weather, and the younger boys were repeatedly sea sick. Their sickness induced them to vomit up the valuable meat rations they had received. Kerr, hearing of this, declared that the boys would henceforth get "the ground of their stomachs before they get any more",[17] and ordered an immediate cessation to the meat ration.[15] Their rations were gradually reduced to sea biscuits, sometimes one each, and sometimes one between them. The ship's cook, however, occasionally supplied them with "surreptitious scraps",[9][lower-roman 7] and they also scavenged potato and turnip peelings.[1]

The stowaways had boarded the ship wearing only thin clothing. By the time it had entered the North Atlantic, the weather had become bitterly cold.[15] The stowaways had been put to work scrubbing the decks, which formed with ice; they had no shoes between them and only thin coats against the weather.[15] A member of the crew later wrote home that the weather was so bitter that "the men could hardly stand it", let alone the stowaways.[18] The cold weather exacerbated existing problems: since some of the boys had no shoes or other means of protecting their feet,[15] they were unable to perform deck duty and stayed below decks. In turn, Kerr then "went with a rope's end in hand and ordered them out, and as soon as they came out gave them a walloping, and pretty often severely".[18] Roughead notes the captain never interfered with his first mate's disciplinary measures.[18][lower-roman 8]

Kerr appears to have had a particular issue with James Bryson who suffered Kerr's "full fury",[18] being repeatedly thrashed by both the captain and the first mate.[19] He may have been singled out by them because not only the crew but also his fellow stowaways complained about his lack of cleanliness. As a result, he was stripped of his clothing, made to lie on the deck and repeatedly doused with buckets of icy water;[1] Bryson may have acknowledged that he was responsible for the "mess of filth in the hold", as Donald calls it, for he says that Bryson himself blamed it on having a bowel complaint.[20]

The filthier the children became sleeping below decks, the more they were beaten for being filthy. When they stole food to eat, they were then beaten for their thievery.[15] As the ship neared Newfoundland, a barrel of grain was found to have burst open, and the stowaways were accused of breaking it.[1] They, in turn, blamed members of the crew; Donald notes that a quantity of meal was subsequently discovered in the forecastle, "for which no one could, or would, account".[21] In any case, the stowaways were punished,[1] put in leg irons[22] and handcuffed together for the rest of the day with no food.[1]

The ill-treatment of the stowaways continued as the ship sailed around the southern Newfoundland coast.[8] On 10 May the Arran,[18] which had been fighting its way through ice packs for some time,[15] finally became stuck in an ice field near St. George's Bay,[18] at Cape Anguille in southwestern Newfoundland.[22] Other ships had been similarly caught.[8][lower-roman 9]

The weather was poor and visibility worse because of fog and sleet.[22] Watt and Kerr left the ship to examine the ice field. The boys took advantage of their absence to forage for food in the hold.[23] When Watt and Kerr returned to the ship and discovered what the children had been doing, they were beaten again.[15]

Eventually, Watt and Kerr put the remaining five stowaways off the ship at Bay St. George, near Highlands, on 15 May,[3] between 8:00 am or 9:00 am.[24] An anonymous crew member, who later wrote home from Quebec, reported "succinctly in a dozen words"[23] that, "The stowaways got a biscuit apiece, and were ordered to go ashore".[23] These biscuits were thrown overboard for the boys to gather up from the ice after they had been ejected.[19] Roughead says land "was not visible to the naked eye" from the ship, but Watt "alleged he could see it by means of his spyglass".[23]

The captain told them personally that there were plenty of occupied dwellings "not so far away", or there was another ship also stranded in the ice within reasonable distance to which they could make their way.[23][lower-roman 10] In the meantime, Watt said there was insufficient food left on the Arran to provide for them any longer.[23]

No one actually knew with certainty how far the ship was from land; various reckonings were made which suggested a distance of between 8 and 20 miles (13 and 32 kilometres); "the mate, taking a rosier view of the boys' prospects, put it at five" (8 km).[23] According to the boys' testimony at the later trial, McGinnes asked Watt how he was meant to cope on the ice flow with bare feet. He replied that "it would be as well for him to die upon the ice as he would get no more food there".[19] At least one crew member believed that it was unlikely "that those without shoes would ever reach the land".[1]

Of the six boys, Reilly and Bryson were keen to leave at Bay St George. Reilly was eager to seek work, and Bryson felt "nothing worse could happen than he had suffered on the ship". John Paul, Hugh McEwan and Hugh McGinnes followed, but Paul Currie did not. Apparently, he had been asked to remain on the ship and had consented.[24][lower-roman 11] McEwan, by now, had been coughing up blood for some time and asked the captain to change his mind. Watt replied that he "might as well die on the ice as on the ship".[26]

The stowaways later related the harsh conditions they travelled in. Bryson said the first day they walked twelve hours, with the ice getting thinner the closer they got to the shore.[27] The ice was breaking up with the warmer spring tides,[1] and they were all subject to regular slips, falls and drenchings on route.[27] This, in turn, caused their thin clothes to freeze "as hard as boards" onto them.[28] It was in the course of falling through the ice that they lost McEwan,[27] who was the youngest and the weakest physically; he fell in most often.[29] He had been spitting blood for some time.[1] Bryson related:

We all fell into crevices at various times. We got out the best way we could, each just had to scramble for himself. M'Ewan [sic] fell in once and I pulled him out; he fell in a second time and scrambled out himself; the third time he went down and never came up, the ice closed over him. it was hopeless to try and save him...[27]

McEwan died about midday.[29] McGinnes was also left behind. Wearing only ragged frozen clothes, a few hours after McEwan's death,[27] by now about 5 miles (8 kilometres) from shore,[29] he sat down and said he could go no longer:[27]

We urged him to come along with us, and said if he did not he knew what would become of him: he would be frozen. He appeared exhausted. No attempt was made to assist him; we had enough to do to assist ourselves...we heard his cries a long way behind us although we could not see him...[30]

David Brand deposed that it was impossible for them to help McGinnes—the ice was too treacherous and prevented them from trying to carry him.[31]

The captain may have expressed concern for the boys after they left the ship. Donald reports that he posted a regular watch to look out for them and even took the duty himself; he suggested to Kerr that they send out a party to bring them back, but the first mate replied they would doubtless be back by dinnertime.[32]

The stowaways had given up trying to find the Myrtle and had been making for shore. About a mile from land the ice ended. Using chunks of ice as makeshift canoes, and paddling with pieces of wood, they made their way slowly towards the shore, where they could now see the light of dwellings.[1] They shouted for help, but it is unlikely they were heard. They were eventually spotted—at some distance, and in the dusk[33] with the light behind them—by Catherine Anne Gillis MacInnis,[3][lower-roman 12] with the aid of some old opera glasses.[7] A resident of Highlands and one whose house could be seen from the Arran,[1] she summoned help. A boat, crewed by her husband and other local men,[1] was dispatched to pick them up and ferry them in.[29] The boat had to be carried over the ice before it could be launched. Making their way out into the ice flow, the men picked up the "strange voyager", as The Scotsman later referred to the boys' craft.[34] This was merely a large lump of ice. Brand was picked up first, then Reilly, and lastly Bryson and Paul who were at the other side of the ice flow.[33] Further, the paper reported that the Newfoundlanders, "being informed that McGinnes had been left on the ice, proceeded back some distance, in hopes that they might find him. But no trace could be had of him".[34] The boys were taken to Catherine MacInnis' fisher-farmhouse to recuperate.[28]

The populace of Greenock was angry and remained so until the return of the Arran[23] on Thursday,[6] 30 July 1868 when news spread of its arrival in the Clyde.[35] A hostile reception awaited the ship, and after she moored, some local men managed to board her.[23] The officers may have escaped a lynching[6] by locking themselves in the captain's cabin[23] and defending themselves with their pistols.[36] The harbourmaster, one Captain Millar, reported the riot to police, who arrived under the command of a Lieutenant Burrell.[37] They were unable to disperse the crowd until nearly midnight.[23] The next day, Watt and Kerr were transported to the courthouse in a taxi. It was followed by a still-angry crowd, who were "hooting, yelling and pelting the vehicle with stones".[37] They were charged before the Sheriff with "cruelly and maliciously compelling one or more of her Majesty's lieges to leave a ship"; bail was refused. At this point it was not yet known in Scotland that two further children had died since being put ashore.[38]

These charges were probably holding charges intended to justify the officers' detention while preliminary enquiries were made.[37] In the meantime, the procurator fiscal contacted the Newfoundland police. They informed him that, to their knowledge, five children had reached the shore, four of whom were still with Catherine MacInnis.[38] Of the others, Reilly had moved on to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and joined the railways,[2] while the two youngest had died. As a result of this new information, the two officers were also charged with murder. This count was subsequently dropped. As well as the charge of evicting a ship's passengers, they were also accused of assault and "barbarous usage".[38]

The four children who had survived were unable to do anything in St George's Bay for at least a week, as they had all suffered from snow blindness from the glare of the ice,[1] and those such as John Paul who had been shoeless had severely lacerated soles which took some weeks to heal. John Paul, at least, also lost fingers and toes through frostbite;[1] he had been so badly injured that his rescuers had had to carry him up to the house.[8] At one point they worked at fishing and farming in Sandy Point, on the other side of the Bay[28] but later split up to travel around Newfoundland for work.[36] One of them, who is unknown, wrote a letter home to Greenock reporting on their rescue by the Innes of Cape Breton Island.[39]

The boys were required as witnesses in Scotland, however, and so were regrouped by the Newfoundland police[36] and taken to St. John's where they were transported in a brigantine owned by Greenock's provost and member of parliament[10][lower-roman 14] called the Hannah and Bennie.[39] He also provided for their clothing and provisioning from his company's own stores, recorded The Scotsman.[34] They arrived on the Clyde on 1 October 1868, exactly six months since they had left.[38] When asked what had motivated him to stow away in the first place, John Paul stated that:[10]

The reason I ran away from Greenock was for a pleasure sail. I was comfortable at home. I lived with my mother, but did not tell her I was going. I took the Arran to go in because she was a good ship. I did not know the captain.[10]

The Scotsman described their arrival in Greenock on Thursday, 1 October 1868, saying they were met by a "great crowd" of locals. The following day town officials began legally questioning them as to their experiences with Watt and Kerr, which, the paper suggested, dovetailed with the accounts of the Arran's crew.[40] There had been a confusion over the names of the survivors in the telegrams to and from Newfoundland, however, and it was originally reported that Hugh McGinnes had survived and was returning to Greenock. As such, his widowed mother went to the docks to meet the returning children, only to discover that it was not the case; a local paper reported how she[1]

Went down expecting to meet her son, when she received the painful information that he had died on the ice from exhaustion. Another lad, named [John] Paul, who was believed to have perished, has returned.[1]

— The Scotsman, 5 October 1868

They reported on the "very painful scene" that occurred when she found out that he had died on the ice. It had been John Paul who had been reported as lost; he had, however, survived.[40][1]

The High Court of Justiciary in Parliament House, Edinburgh, where Watt and Kerr were tried in November 1868

Captain Watt and first mate Kerr were tried at the High Court of Justiciary.[18] They appeared before Lord Justice Clerk George Patton[41] in Edinburgh[6] on 23 November. The trial was to last three days;[41][lower-roman 15] they had already spent four months in custody.[42]

The charge of forcing the boys to leave the ship to their own endangerment was objected to by the defence on the grounds of being innominate in law, but after much debate and deliberation the Judge allowed it to stand and the trial proceeded.[41] Members of the Arran's crew testified for both the defence and the prosecution. For the former, the steward and boatswain appeared, while for the latter, six seamen and the cook took the stand.[43]

The stowaways were the main witnesses summoned by the prosecution. First to testify was James Bryson, who told the court how, after they left Glasgow, they remained hidden "for a day and a night", only emerging when they saw the hatches about to be nailed. From that point on, he said he was often sick, for which he was repeatedly "scrubbed and flogged" with the lead line. Other punishments included dousings with ice-cold salt water and the public removal of his clothes after which he would be forced to stand on the forecastle for hours at a time or scrub the decks naked.[41] He said as a result, "I suffered very much from exposure".[1] Bryson testified that throughout this the Captain was a silent observer, and on occasion flogged Bryson himself. On other occasions, the boys were made to scrub each other at the direction of the first mate.[44] John Paul, who "was so small he had to be mounted on a stool in the witness box so he could be seen",[43] reported how he had been unable to make himself a pair of trousers because the canvas he was trying to use was taken away. He also related how the first mate beat him with a belaying pin.[19]

The crewmembers who testified for the prosecution, "sought to minimize the cruelty with which the stowaways were treated throughout the voyage".[10] For example, the exchange between one George Henry under cross-examination by the jury demonstrates this. Having been asked, "If the master or mate had been going to murder the boys, would you have interfered?" He answered, "There was a chance of their reaching the shore, and some of them did reach it".[45] The ship's cook, meanwhile, attested to the fact that, contrary to the captain's assertion in Canada, the ship had plenty of provisions to get them all to Quebec.[45] Captain Watt averred that, in fact, he had merely told the children that they could have fun playing on the ice. When he pointed out the houses on the shore, it was merely to suggest they could have "a fine run" there.[45] Either way, Watt admitted he did enquire after their well-being following their departure;[45] first mate Kerr bluntly denied ever harming Bryson, by either scrubbings or beatings.[45] One crewmember, James Hardy, testified as to the condition of Bryson's skin after one of his beatings describing it as looking like red and white tartan.[1] Although Kerr pleaded not guilty to culpable homicide from the start, he subsequently changed his plea to being guilty of assault alone. This plea was accepted by the prosecution.[46]

The main witness for the defence was twelve-year-old Peter Currie, who had returned on the Arran with Watt and Kerr. He testified that when the other boys had left the ship, he had heard Kerr tell other members of the crew that "he would wager any man on board £20 that they would be back to their dinner",[45] but Currie also described how the captain both ordered the boys to leave and assisted them in doing so, with them "'greeting' [weeping] all the time".[lower-roman 16] He also stated that he believed they had a half biscuit each at about 8:00 am, which was the first thing they had eaten since noon the previous day.[45] Other members of the crew praised the captain for being a "kind, quiet man, who seldom interfered with the discipline of a ship", which, they said, was in the purview of the first mate. One crew member said that he thought grown men could probably have successfully made the journey to land, "but not for boys so clad".[46] The chaplain of the local Seaman's Friend Society stated on oath that he believed Watts to be of such a kind disposition, "especially to boys",[45] that they would often stowaway on his ship for that very reason. The parish minister of nearby Ardrossan also testified to the captain's good character.[46]

"The case", noted the Solicitor General, "was one of considerable importance", hinging as it did on the extent and breadth of a sea captain's authority on his own ship, which "might be used for good or evil".[48] He put it to the jury that the boys were clearly compelled to leave the ship against their will; that the journey was bound to be extremely dangerous whoever made it; and that the consequences of the journey were far from being unforeseeable. Overall, he said, the ship's captain was directly responsible for all these things.[49] The defence, however, submitted it was incredible to suggest that 22 professional sailors would stand by watching such alleged abuses take place with no one saying anything, let alone doing nothing. The defence also noted that the charges of assault were the least heinous. If anything, a number of the stowaways may have deserved a form of corporal punishment since, by their own admission, they had stolen food both before and after their discovery on the vessel.[50]

As to the most serious charge, that of putting the boys ashore and inciting their certain deaths, defence counsel suggested that the true course of events was somewhat different to that presented by the prosecution. The captain, he said, had originally put them on the surrounding ice a couple of days previously "for the purpose of giving them a fright",[51] but had subsequently taken them back aboard. Reilly and Bryson, said the defence, decided to go out again taking the smaller children with them; for this, it was suggested, the captain could not be blamed. He believed that they would all return when they realised the dangers.[51] At least one contemporary source reports that this line of argument was refuted by the judge himself.[52] The defence maintained that the deaths, while tragic, could not be laid on the culpability of the captain—especially since no bodies had been found.[53] Indeed counsel proposed, "it would surprise no-one if both McEwan and McGinnes were to turn up alive and well".[54]

The jury retired at 3:30 pm on 27 November 1868. Their deliberations lasted 35 minutes. They found Captain Watt not guilty on the charges of assault, but guilty of culpable homicide and putting ashore the Queen's subjects from a British vessel. On account of his previous good character, the jury made a recommendation of mercy. The first mate was already guilty of assault by his own plea.[42] Both men received prison sentences. Captain Watt received 18 months, and his first mate four.[3] For Kerr this amounted to time served.[36] "The astounding lightness of the sentence" was met by the packed[1] public gallery "with loud hisses".[53][lower-roman 17]

In London, The Spectator took advantage of the soft treatment of the two officers to indulge in some casual racism at the Scots' expense, describing it as indicative of a "callousness [that] might, in this instance, be set down to that latent 'hardness,' diamond-heartedness, as Queen Mary called it, which is the one defect Scotchmen admit in themselves". The paper did, however, lambast the ability of ships' captains to get away with the mistreatment of their crews in a manner that would never be tolerated on dry land. The newspaper compared it to a mistress who struck her maid: "It is difficult for the police to protect her from popular vengeance; but a merchant officer may do anything, yet scarcely stir the sympathies of the jury".[52]

Contemporaries considered the case a cause célèbre[13] and a national scandal.[57] In Scotland, apart from The Scotsman, the stowaways' stories were also covered by The Dundee Courier & Argus[58] and especially The Glasgow Herald.[59] There was extensive coverage in English newspapers too, including: the London Standard,[60] the Cheshire Observer,[61] Liverpool Mercury,[62] Royal Cornwall Gazette,[63] Manchester Weekly Times,[64] The Leicester Chronicle and Mercury,[65] and The Huddersfield Chronicle and West Yorkshire Advertiser.[66]

The case remained of international interest into the next year: In Australia The Brisbane Courier reproduced the Scotsman's coverage of the case.[67] In the US even local papers such as the Rockland County Messenger wrote extensively about it.[68] Over the following years the legal profession did treat it as a case study in sentencing disparity.[69] The Spectator led a campaign against "'cruel or unusual' punishment, like that of keeping a lad naked on deck in Arctic cold" which the paper believed was prevalent throughout the merchant service.[52]

The story of the Arran stowaways has been told regularly ever since and fictionalised several times. In 1928 John Donald depicted it in his The Stowaways and other Sketches.[56] One hundred and fifty years later, this was rewritten as a graphic novel by Magic Torch Comics in association with a local primary school, Ardgowan, in Greenock, retitled The Boys on the Ice.[1][72] In 2002, John Paul's great-grandson, Tony Paul, told the tale in his The Brats,[73] and in 2015, Patrick J. Collins fictionalised the story in his Forsaken Children.[74]