The Naval Knaves

by Craig Stephen Copland

  “Except,” I said, “on a big match day.”

  “What, Watson,” said Holmes, “do you mean by a ‘big match day?’”

  Every sportsman in London would have understood what I had just said, but I had to explain it to Holmes.

  “Twice in the season, the team from the Royal Arsenal, who are on the south shore, play The Irons, the team from the Thames Iron Works, who are on the north shore. It is quite the occasion. Great rivals they are and several thousand fans come and watch and cheer. Depending on which team has home field for the game, either the Arsenal fans will cross over to the north, or the Irons will have to cross to the south. The ferries are packed on those days.”

  Holmes’s face had suddenly become pale. “And when,” he asked, “is the next big match?”

  “This afternoon,” I said. “Starts at two forty-five. It has been in all the sporting pages of the press. It is being played in the Boleyn Grounds and the Arsenals and their fans will all be crossing. The stadium holds over 35,000. Half of them will be from Arsenal and most of them will cross in the ferries. Promises to be quite the spectacle. All those football fans make for quite the party coming and going and in the stands.”

  “Good Lord,” whispered Holmes.

  I looked over at him and was alarmed. I have observed Sherlock Holmes as he reacted to countless circumstances. Only on one or two occasions in the past had I seen the horrifying look that I now saw on his face. He had paled and was trembling. He was terrifyingly afraid.

  Chapter Ten

  A Sinking Feeling

  THEN HE SPRANG TO HIS FEET. “Watson!” he shouted at me. “Come. Now!” He was already rushing out the door. I followed him out to the pavement where he was screaming for a cab.

  “Scotland Yard!” he shouted to the cabbie. “As fast as you can go!”

  He kept his head leaning out of the cab window and shouting directions to the cab driver as we galloped south on Edgeware Road, then across Oxford Street and down through central London until we reached the offices of Scotland Yard on the Embankment. Upon reaching the Yard, he leapt from the cab and rushed inside the building.

  “LESTRADE!” he shouted as loud as I have ever heard his voice. The officers at the desk, who all knew him, were alarmed.

  “Lestrade!” he shouted again, and then again.

  Inspector Lestrade emerged and appeared about to rebuke Holmes for his highly unacceptable outburst, but then he saw what I had seen on Holmes’s face. He saw the unmistakable fear and terror.

  “Good heavens, Holmes. What is it?”

  “We need a dozen of your men to the Woolwich ferries. At once!” He was screaming at the inspector.

  For a brief second, Lestrade hesitated and then must have realized, as I had, that Holmes was deadly serious and he began shouting orders. In less than a minute, a dozen constables had emerged from the office and gathered at the front desk.

  “Your fastest police carriages,” commanded Holmes. “To the Woolwich ferry. South shore. They used the plans to put a bomb on board.”

  The look on the faces of the policemen made it clear that, being sportsmen all, they knew about the big match and the thousands of fans who would be crossing. A look of horror came across Lestrade’s face, and he also began to shout at his men to move faster. Two large police carriages were quickly summoned, and we clambered in. Off we went with bells clanging and whistles blowing.

  “Are you certain?” demanded Lestrade, shouting at Holmes as we galloped along the Embankment and across Blackfriars Bridge.

  “No!” Holmes shouted back at him. “But if I am right, a disaster is about to take place. If I am wrong, we can live with the embarrassment. Do you want to risk that, Inspector?”

  Lestrade stared at Holmes briefly and then stuck his head out the window and screamed at the driver to give more speed.

  The time was already well past noon, and the ferries would be working at full capacity, transporting the raucous football fans across the Thames. Even at a full gallop, it would take us close to thirty minutes to get all the way to the docks in Woolwich. Fortunately, it was a Saturday, and the traffic on Lower Road and Woolwich Road was light, and the carts and wagons scampered out of the way when they heard the clamor of the police carriages. The powerful horses thundered past shops and houses and small buildings. Londoners standing on the pavements stopped where they were and looked at us in wonder as we sped past them.

  The carriage rocked and bounced as we tore along the streets. After what seemed an eternity, the traffic circle in front of the ferry docks came into view. There was a queue of people, several thousand of them, snaking their way around it and up to the docks. Being football fans, they were already singing and bellowing their cheers and were no doubt well into their cups even before arriving at the stadium.

  We had to slow down and force the crowds to part as we entered the ferry docks. One boat was just pulling in to the dock, making its way back from the north side of the Thames. It appeared to be almost empty.

  “That’s the Gordon coming back from the Pier Road dock,” Lestrade commanded his men. “Do not let anyone get on it after it docks and discharges its passengers. And get the captain and crew off of it!”

  As we pulled up closer to the boarding ramps, we could see that the second ferry, the Duncan had just pulled away. Its great paddle wheel was churning up the water as it surged out into the open expanse of the Thames. It was utterly jammed with passengers. Not an inch of railing was vacant as the loyal Arsenal fans leaned against the rails and enjoyed the brisk fall breeze on the river.

  If there was a bomb on board and it exploded when the ferry was in the middle of the river, a thousand lives could be lost. The boat had to be stopped.

  One of the constables, who was now fully apprised of the danger, spotted a small private ferry at a dock to the left of the main pier. He and a fellow officer were already running toward it, and soon they had commandeered it and pulled up to the boarding area. The owner of it did not look at all happy, especially when the officers ordered his passengers off and Holmes, Lestrade, two constables, and I boarded.

  “Catch up to the Duncan!” ordered Lestrade. “Now get moving. On the double.”

  The driver did as ordered and soon the sleek smaller craft was cutting its way through the chop of the river. The Thames at Woolwich is half a mile wide, and the Duncan was already one hundred yards out and into deep water. But we were moving quickly and were soon alongside it and signaling to the bridge. The captain understood our orders and slowly began to turn the large ferry around and head back to the dock on the south side of the river.

  At first, the passengers were confused by what was happening, but then as it became obvious that they were being taken back from whence they came, the mood became rather ugly. They had already stood in line for up to two hours to get on the boat and were not pleased with being returned. The shouts and jeers from both the lower and upper decks were not at all respectful of the officers of Scotland Yard. As soon as the Duncan reached its berth on the south dock, several constables ran on board and started shouting at the passengers to disembark. They were not particularly cooperative about doing so. Once on the dock, they were pushed back into the crowd who had been prohibited from boarding the Gordon.

  By now there must have been several thousand football fans thronging the end of the dock, and the police were hard-pressed to keep them back from the boats. There are few things in British life that are more unpredictable than a throng of football fans, but one of them has to be the same throng who are quickly seeing that they will not even get to the stadium to watch the match. The screams and invective coming from them was frightening, and I feared that they could easily break into an unruly mob who might attempt to storm the boats.

  And that is what happened. One of the louts who was likely quite drunk shouted, “To the boats!” and started running past the thin blue line of constables. He was immediately followed by a hundred more, and they began stampeding down the dock back t
o the boarding ramps.

  Then they stopped.

  An enormous explosion blew out of the side of the Duncan at midships, just at the water line. Debris came hurtling toward the crowds, and the smoke and flares were terrifying. The crowd retreated in stunned silence. A gaping hole in the boat appeared after the smoke had cleared. We watched as the ferry quickly took on water and began to list. Soon the entire boat was sinking into the water. The tide was out, and there was only a few feet of clear water between the underside of the boat and the sand on the river bottom. Within ten minutes the Duncan had sunk down and was resting on the mud, water washing over the lower deck. Had it been out on the river, it would have quickly become fully submerged. The crowds, who were looking on in horror, could see that they would have drowned had they not been forced off the boat.

  Unfortunately, the closest bridge across the Thames was all the way back past the Isle of Dogs and to the Tower. There was no possible way that several thousand fans could get back there and then run along the north side in time to see more than the few final minutes of the match.

  Lestrade seized the occasion and took a bull horn from out of one of the police carriages. He walked confidently toward the fans.

  “Now hear this!’ he shouted. “On order of Scotland Yard, the match between Royal Arsenal and the Irons will be postponed until tomorrow afternoon. All of you now, get along. Enjoy your day. Nothing more to see here. The match will take place tomorrow.”

  A roar of approval went up from the crowd, and someone led a cheer for the police. It was followed by several more cheers, and the fans slowly turned and began to make their way back into the neighborhoods and pubs of South Woolwich and the other sections of Greenwich.

  The three of us surveyed the damage to the ferry. It was lying on the shallow flats that bordered the docks and, to my untrained eye, it looked as if the damage could be repaired within a couple of months and the boat put back into service.

  “What about the other boat,” I asked. “Might there be a bomb on board the Gordon as well?”

  “Most likely not,” said Holmes. “Had there been it would have gone off by now, and since only one of the boats at a time was crossing with a full load of passengers, there would have been no point in placing two bombs. Once the first bomb had gone off, the other boat would never have loaded any more people. But for good measure, the constables should do a full search.”

  Lestrade agreed, and the constables took the better part of the next hour to search the Gordon from stem to stern. No dynamite was found.

  The big match was postponed and played the following day. The near-disaster of the drowning of over a thousand fans of the Royal Arsenal team was replaced with the actual disaster of their resounding defeat at the hands of the Irons.

  Over the course of the next week, the press ran stories and pictures of the bombing of the Woolwich ferry. Scotland Yard was universally praised for its brilliant actions in discovering the anarchist plot and preventing a terrible tragedy. A team of constables, led by Inspectors Lestrade and Forbes rounded up most of the members of the Club Autonomie and put them through the third degree. Several of them agreed to inform on their fellow comrades, and it was generally acknowledged that the two French naval captains had been eliminated because of their greedy efforts to use the cause and the selling of the plans for their own personal gain.

  The woman known either as Lucy Goldman or Princess Casamassima was understood to be the ringleader of the violent plot to sink the Woolwich ferry. A notice for her arrest had been circulated throughout England, but it was reported that on the day following the failed bombing, a woman matching her description was observed on the ferry to Calais. She had escaped.

  On the Friday of that week, Holmes, Lestrade, Percy and I met in a pub near the Admiralty offices to conduct our post-mortem of the case. Lestrade, understandably, was quite jovial but, to his credit, gave credit where it was due.

  “Not sure at all what we are going to do with you, Holmes,” he said between large gulps of his ale. “It just won’t do to have you barging into diplomatic residences claiming that you are acting on behalf of Scotland Yard. But we admit that had you not done that we would still be searching for all those plans and still fishing bodies of football fans out of the Thames.”

  “I would have thought,” said Holmes, smiling slyly, “that there are days when Scotland Yard would not have minded at all if there were a thousand fewer football fans alive and roaming the streets and ferries of London.”

  Lestrade thought that was quite funny and laughed loudly. Fortunately, he did not have his mouth full of ale at the time.

  “Right,” he said. “But you will have to come up with a more elegant way of helping us get rid of them.”

  “And you, Mr. Phelps,” Lestrade said, turning to Percy, who had not joined in the laughter and appeared rather sullen. “Got your locks changed, I hear.”

  Percy shrugged his shoulders and replied. “Yes, we did. Although it seems to have been unnecessary.”

  “Well then,” continued Lestrade, slapping Percy on the back, “we hope you’re doing a better job of investigating visiting French diplomats before allowing them a chance to pirate your vaults.”

  “I suppose we could do that,” he said. “But again, it is not necessary.”

  “Not necessary?” said Lestrade. “What do you mean, not necessary? They stole you blind.”

  “No sir, they did not. They only purchased the plans with the intent of selling them on to various foreign powers. The protection I will have to take, I regret, is from the actions of my dear, loving but awfully naïve wife.”

  The three of us looked at him in disbelief.

  “Mr. Phelps,” said Holmes. “Kindly explain yourself.”

  “My secretary, Mr. Charles Gorot, has not come in for work this entire week. His residence is vacant. We received a report that he was seen on Sunday afternoon on the Calais ferry. He was standing by the rail with his protective arm around a woman, a beautiful woman who was said to be … dazzling.”

  Historical and Other Notes

  The final years of the Victorian era were full of international intrigue, espionage, and the actions of anarchists. One September 15, 1894, Martain Bourdin, a French anarchist living in London, died while carrying a bomb near the Greenwich Observatory. The accounts of the incident vary but are more or less as described in the story, including the borrowed library book on how to make a bomb, but not including the stolen plans.

  London was a city of refuge for European anarchists from throughout Europe and they met at the Club Autonomie. The assassinations and bombings carried out by anarchists and noted in the story took place as described. The widely admired (among anarchists) Communard, Mme. Louise Michel, lived in exile in London from 1890 to 1895.

  The shipyards of England were highly productive during these years, turning out the world’s most advanced ships of war for the British Navy. Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth (his actual name) served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Navy during the latter part of the 1890s.

  Marks and Spencer opened their first store during the weeks that this story takes place. The debate on the accumulation of horse manure also appeared in the press at this time.

  Many of today’s great football clubs began as recreational programs for men working in the massive factories of England. The Thames Iron Works formed a team initially called “The Irons.” It changed its name to West Ham, but the team crest continues to this day to show the crossed hammers of the ironworkers. The workers at the Royal Arsenal formed the team that now plays under the name of Arsenal. Both teams began and continue to play in the neighborhoods of North and South Woolwich.

  The Woolwich ferries, the Duncan and the Gordon, were launched in the late years of the nineteenth century and crossed back and forth across the Thames for several decades. They were never bombed.

  The character and description of Princess Casamassima is fictional but has been borrowed from the novel by Henry James in which
she is a supporter of anarchists, and dazzling.

  About the Author

  In May of 2014 the Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada – better known as The Bootmakers – announced a contest for a new Sherlock Holmes story. Although he had no experience writing fiction, the author submitted a short Sherlock Holmes mystery and was blessed to be declared one of the winners. Thus inspired, he has continued to write new Sherlock Holmes Mysteries since and is on a mission to write a new story as a tribute to each of the sixty stories in the original Canon. He currently writes from Toronto, the Okanagan, Buenos Aires and Manhattan.

  More Historical Mysteries

  by Craig Stephen Copland

  www.SherlockHolmesMystery.com

  Studying Scarlet. Starlet O’Halloran, a fabulous mature woman, who reminds the reader of Scarlet O’Hara (but who, for copyright reasons cannot actually be her) has arrived in London looking for her long-lost husband, Brett (who resembles Rhett Butler, but who, for copyright reasons, cannot actually be him). She enlists the help of Sherlock Holmes. This is an unauthorized parody, inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.

  The Sign of the Tooth. Fifteen hundred years ago the courageous Princess Hemamali smuggled the sacred tooth of the Buddha into Ceylon. Now, for the first time, it is being brought to London to be part of a magnificent exhibit at the British Museum. But what if something were to happen to it? It would be a disaster for the British Empire. Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and even Mycroft Holmes are called upon to prevent such a crisis. This novella is inspired by the Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Sign of the Four.

  A Sandal from East Anglia. Archeological excavations at an old abbey unearth an ancient document that has the potential to change the course of the British Empire and all of Christendom. Holmes encounters some evil young men and a strikingly beautiful young Sister, with a curious double life. The mystery is inspired by the original Sherlock Holmes story, A Scandal in Bohemia.