“I HAVE some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance over. These are the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it.”
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Victor Trevor, classmate of Holmes at college
Senior Trevor, father of Victor. A justice of the peace.
Beddoes, aka Evans, a fellow prisoner on the Gloria Scott
Jack Pendergast, a fellow prisoner on the Gloria Scott and leader of the mutiny.
Wilson, Pendergast’s partner. He posed as a chaplain on the Gloria Scott.
James Armitage, Senior Trevor’s real name.
Dr. Fordham, treated senior Trevor after his first stroke.
SUMMARY
In his youth, Armitage, who was a bank employee, embezzled money to pay a debt of honor and was detected before he could replace it. He was convicted and sentenced to penal servitude in Australia. He was being transported there on the bark, Gloria Scott. The prisoner on one side of him was Evans, a forger, and on the other side Jack Pendergast, who had defrauded a group of rich merchants out of £750,000 – and had not surrendered it.
Pendergast’s partner, Wilson, had obtained the position of ship’s parson and had bribed a number of the crewmen.
A mutiny was successful. An argument arose as to what to do about the surviving crewmen and soldiers who were not part of the mutiny.
Pendergast wanted to kill them all to completely cover their tracks but some of the mutineers, including Armitage and Evans refused to go along with this.
The dissenters were set adrift in an open boat.
Shortly after they were adrift, the Gloria Scott exploded. They rowed back to check for survivors and only found one, Hudson, whom they took onto their boat. The were soon picked up by a boat going to Australia and the survivors posed as flotsam from a passenger ship.
Once in Australia, they changed their names, went to the gold fields, became wealthy and returned to England where they lived quiet lives in the country for almost 30 years until Hudson showed up at Trevor’s and began to blackmail him. He then went to do the same thing to Beddoes who would have none of it, so Hudson told the police.
When he learned that Hudson had told all, Senior Trevor had a stroke and died. Neither Beddoes nor Hudson were ever seen again and Holmes concluded that Beddoes had killed Hudson and fled the country with all the money he could get his hands on.
OTHER ADVENTURES MENTIONED
None
DISGUISES
None.
UNUSUAL DEDUCTIONS & bits
- Holmes deciphers an apparently nonsensical message by reading every third word.
- He tells senior Trevor that he had once been closely associated with someone whose initials were JA and whom he had later wished to completely forget. Trevor swooned.
- Victor Trevor was Holmes only friend at university.
- Holmes says that he went to university for two years, but he does not say which one.
Official Abbreviation: GLOR
The Adventure Of The Gloria Scott was first published in the Strand Magazine, April 1893
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