The Star of the Sea (60 page)

Gangs of newspaper reporters have been coming out in skiffs and punts, also large parties of ordinary ‘sight-seers’. Though they are strictly forbidden to board any ship, nor to come within twenty yards of it, they call up to the passengers asking them questions, which can only spread alarm and inquietude. I understand that one reporter has been arrested for attempting to induce a passenger to
jump the
Slieve Gallion Brae
out of Wexford and thereby make himself an entertaining article.

Groups of resident New York Irish have also been rowing out to make enquiry about relatives or friends who are expected, in all manner of vessels from coracles to dories, some little better than floating bathtubs. They sometimes bring baskets of food or parcels of clothing and although we are supposed not to accept these, a blind eye is oftentimes turned. It is a very sad sight, to see people call out the names and home-towns of their loved ones – ‘Mary Galvin of Sligo, is she up there with you?’ ‘Is Michael Harrigan of Ennis there? It is his brother’ & cetera – and sometimes to be told that their people are in fact deceased and have been buried at sea. One poor man was seen by Reverend Deedes, gaily calling the name of his father, as in welcome, and saying a happy place had been prepared for him in his son’s home at Brooklyn, where he should never know want again. Only to be informed that his relative had never boarded the ship, having died on Derry Quay a month ago. Another man had brought out his infant daughter in the boat, never seen by her grandparents, and was holding the little mite aloft so proud, only to be given the terrible news that his mother and father had died at sea. It is an eerie sound, at night especially, to hear all the names being cried out from the darkness.

This morning I myself was assailed while on deck by a party of humble Irishmen who had come out in a row-boat. They appeared very poor and hungry themselves. They shouted up to enquire if a passenger by the name of Pius Mulvey of Ardnagreevagh was on board and I said yes. Then they asked if we had a certain Lord Merridith on board, also. Again I was happy to confirm that we did. Was Lord Merridith safe and well, they desired to know? I said he was in the best of health, if a little understandably wearied by the journey, and I had seen him only a quarter-hour previously.

At that a little secretive discussion was had amongst them. They said would I tell Mulvey, next time I saw him, that the committee of welcome was waiting to greet him. They very much hoped he had not forgotten them. Would I just say ‘the Hibernian lads’ had asked to be remembered to him fondly? They would be on the quayside, watching and waiting. They were preparing a whale of a time for him, they said. A time he should never forget so long as he
lived. The fatted calf was being prepared for the slaughter now the prodigal himself was coming into America. As soon as he sets foot through the customs post, they would be waiting, they said.

I am sure the poor man shall be extremely gratified; for it is always agreeable at the end of a long and difficult voyage to see a large number of friendly faces.

¹
‘First Day’: a Quaker term for Sunday. – GGD

One can only speculate as to the thoughts which must have tortured Pius Mulvey on Tuesday, the seventh of December 1847; the last day he would spend on the
Star of the Sea
.

Early in the morning he was seen playing shuffle-penny with Jonathan and Robert Merridith on the aft part of the upperdeck, and then teaching them the words of a nonsensical ballad. They, in their turn, appeared to be schooling him in the mysteries of some strange entertainment later identified as Winchester College Football. He was noticed on the deck, holding a ball made of rags above his head and shouting ‘Worms!’ – apparently one of that game’s important elements.

At about ten o’clock he visited the cookhouse and asked the sommelier if it would be possible to do some sort of work and have a bottle of wine in return for it. He explained that he wished to make a small gift to Lord and Lady Kingscourt who had shown him a great kindness. The ship’s cook, a Chinaman, set him to hacking at the frozen water-butts and he was indeed given a half-bottle of burgundy for his labours, which he presented to Lady Kingscourt with a note of gratitude. She thought he was acting very strangely indeed: all smiles one moment and great fearfulness the next. ‘He seemed to be speaking at an angle,’ she later said; ‘as though burdened by some great weight of which he wished to be free.’ He kept saying Jonathan and Robert Merridith were ‘fine boys’, that Lady Kingscourt’s husband was ‘a decent man’. That it was a pity all the troubles of home had caused such ‘separations’ between people. There was no need for any of it, especially in such difficult times. We had all done things in the past which we should not have done, but ‘an eye for an eye will leave every man blind’. The more she agreed with him, the more he said it. He seemed to be attempting to convince himself about something.

We know he had an intriguing conversation with the Captain that morning, where he wondered if it would be possible to sign as a hand on the ship and return to Liverpool. Lockwood found the question amazing. Never in all his years at sea had he had a passenger make such a request. For it to be made when America was literally a stone’s throw away struck him as bizarre to the point of absurdity, but he put it down to the anxiety often experienced by emigrants, compounded by Mulvey’s victimisation while on board. He said the
ship would not be going immediately back to Liverpool but needed substantial repairs in dry dock at New York and might well remain there until after Christmas. Further he told Mulvey about a curious incident which had happened the previous morning, when a group of apparently friendly Irishmen rowed out to the
Star
and enquired as to his wellbeing. The news was imparted to try to reassure him; but he did not appear reassured at all. Moreover he was said to have grown very pale, and moments later to have become physically ill: a matter he put down to having eaten something bad.

Some time that morning I went down to the lock-up to seek an interview with the prisoner Seamus Meadowes, but did not find him there. Suffering badly from fever in the damp and cold of the lock-up, he had been released into the custody of the Captain, who had warned that he would be shot if he attempted any trouble. He was lodged in the cabin of First Mate Leeson, under lock and key, where he refused to grant me the interview. He had little use for newspapers, he said; still less for those who wrote in them. Furthermore he affected to speak little English, though I knew he could speak it quite fluently if he wanted to. Indeed as I left the quarters I distinctly heard him asking his guard if he could be permitted to go above and take some air.

I then spent about an hour in the steerage cabin, doing what very little I could to help Surgeon Mangan administer to the passengers. Many were in a state of exhausted fear and were begging him to use his influence to get them off the ship. On the way back, I saw Mulvey in the First-Class quarters. He appeared nervous when I met him in the corridor and said nothing at all as we passed. Since he often looked nervous I thought nothing of it.

What he found in his cabin must have greatly increased his anxiety.

We know it must have been placed there some time late that morning or in the afternoon, for a steward had been in to fetch some stored blankets at about ten o’clock and described the lazaretto in a later statement to the police as ‘completely empty; I mean there was nothing unusual about it’. The same man went in again just before four and saw the note lying unopened on the bed. Thinking it private, he did not look at it closely.

Mulvey’s initial – M – was carefully inked on the envelope, in
the cold careful hand of one wanting anonymity. The stark letters forming the note had been cut from a page. To many another it would have appeared impenetrable. To Pius Mulvey it can only have seemed terrifying.

GET HIM
RIGHT SUNE
Els Be lybill

It was nothing less than denial of commutation. David Merridith or Pius Mulvey: one of them would never set foot on Manhattan.

As for the intended victim, it is possible to establish with some precision what he did on the morning and afternoon of the same day.

Just before dawn, at a quarter after seven, he called a steward and reported that he was not feeling well. He asked for Surgeon Mangan to be sent for immediately, but by the time the physician arrived, Merridith seemed a little better. He complained only of a headache, brought on by a bad hangover and the intense cold, and sent the Surgeon back to his quarters saying he intended to sleep a while.

At about half-past eight, he called the steward again and ordered a light breakfast to be taken in his cabin. When the man came back with the coffee and porridge, Lord Kingscourt asked him to draw him a bath. He was apparently in good spirits, though quiet.

When he had bathed, he then asked the steward, a Brazilian named Fernão Pereira, to help him shave and dress. His eyesight had not been good of late, he mentioned, and he did not want to cut his face. He told the steward to leave the razor behind, saying he was in the habit of shaving twice daily, once in the morning and once before dining. He was ‘very insistent’ about it, the steward would later testify.

Lord Kingscourt remained in his room until about eleven-thirty; his wife and son Jonathan both saw him as they passed. He was searching through a small attaché case in which he kept papers. He greeted them both in the normal way.

Nobody then saw him until about one o’clock when he lunched
with the Maharajah in the small dining area off the Smoking Saloon. Several post-prandial refreshments were summoned. They played a few hands of gin rummy for shillings and unusually enough Lord Kingscourt won. A conversation then ensued about variant rules for poker, billiards and other gentlemanly amusements. The ship’s Mail Agent, George Wellesley, remembered several years after the voyage that Merridith had bored him by attempting to explain a word-game called ‘doohulla’, which he and his sisters had devised in childhood, and had enjoyed a small glass of port wine with the company as he did so. As the conversation came to its end, Merridith ordered up a bottle of the port and returned to his cabin, saying he intended to read.

On his way back, at about a quarter to three, he was seen on the deck outside the First-Class quarters, kicking a football with his two sons. He seemed ‘happy enough’, according to one witness, an English seaman named John Grimesley.

His younger son, Robert, had eaten too much at luncheon and was feeling unwell, so Lord Kingscourt accompanied him back to his quarters. A conversation took place about the untidiness of the room, Robert being chided by his father for its general messiness and lack of fresh air. Little wonder that the boy had become ill, it was suggested. Also it was said that he must not take advantage of Pius Mulvey’s friendliness and have the poor man playing football all morning, when the decks were so icy as to be perilous. Poor Mulvey’s handicap was very severe and it was important to show kindliness to one in such a situation. Lord Kingscourt went to the porthole, drew back the curtain and opened it. And at that point Robert Merridith said something which would have profound consequences.