Death of a Seaman: The murder trial of two master mariners

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Notes

¹ This case received extensive coverage in national and regional newspapers throughout the UK. The details reported here are taken from the Durham Advertiser, 23 Jul. 1858 and the Durham Chronicle, 30 Jul. 1858. I thank the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions.

² A pile or cluster of piles to which a vessel may be moored in open water: both vessels lay alongside each other head to stern.

³ This term, as used in this trial, was not taken to mean the playful running among the rigging but more pejoratively to mean rough horse play and/or minor vandalism.

⁴ The Tyne River Police were formed in 1845 under the auspices of the Newcastle-uponTyne Corporation river watch committee.

⁵ A distant relative of William Bligh of HMS Bounty fame.

⁶ A legal term which is a partial translation from the Anglo-French, literally meaning ‘to hear and determine’. The term was used to denote the court which had jurisdiction to try offences within the limits to which the commission extended. In this case the limits were ‘the high seas’.

⁷ Unbeknown to the court, Fox had deserted from the Royal Navy in his youth. See Rodger, ‘Edwin Fox’.

⁸ Craig, Nix and Nix, Chronometer Jack.

⁹ Andrew Rose is commemorated in a famous eponymous sea shanty which tells his story with some accuracy.

¹⁰ Liverpool Mercury, 21 and 24 Aug. 1857.

¹¹ London Daily News, 12 Sep. 1857.

¹² See ‘Trial of Henry Rogers’.

¹³ Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 16 Mar. 1858 and Moreton Bay Courier, 20 Mar. 1858.

¹⁴ Christie took up his old profession and commanded the Azelia and the Mary Ann coasting from Freemantle. He made his way to Adelaide and there he was found ‘accidentally’ drowned in the Tam o’ Shanter Creek on 14 Mar. 1883. He appears to have been remembered with some affection as a ‘pioneering master mariner’. See South Australian Register, 12 Sep. 1883, and Perth Daily News, 10 Feb. 1925.

¹⁵ Liverpool Mercury, 29 Mar. 1858 and Lancaster Gazette, 3 Apr. 1858.

¹⁶ Quoted in the Melbourne Argus, 26 Nov. 1857.

¹⁷ In the cases of the murders of Rose and Rodriguez, of course, British seamen had stood by and let the abuse continue.

¹⁸ See, Oldnall Russell Treatise on Crimes, 119 and 120. Campbell Foster and Finlayson, Reports of Cases.

¹⁹ See Rodger, ‘Edwin Fox: A Victorian Seafarer’.

²⁰ Manchester Times, 18 May 1861.