A BOAT IN THE MIST
ON SATURDAY NIGHT FOG SETTLED over the St. Lawrence and forced Captain Kendall to slow the Montrose. The blue spark of the ship’s wireless lit the suspended droplets and made the Marconi cabin seem as if it truly were a magician’s cavern. Even with the door now shut against the weather, the crack of the spark generator was audible on the deck outside.
Fog during a voyage was never pleasant, but in so heavily traveled a channel as the St. Lawrence, it was especially unnerving. “The last night was dreary and anxious, the sound of our foghorn every few minutes adding to the monotony,” Kendall wrote. “The hours dragged on as I paced the bridge; now and then I could see Mr. Robinson strolling about the deck.”
Kendall told Robinson that he ought to consider getting up early so that he could be on deck in time to watch the pilots come aboard from Father Point. The captain suggested he might find the experience interesting.
At four-thirty the next morning, Sunday, Kendall blew the Montrose’s whistle to alert Father Point of the ship’s imminent arrival.
CRIPPEN FOLLOWED KENDALL’S suggestion and rose early. He and Ethel had breakfast, then returned to their cabin, where Ethel snuggled up with her latest book, Audrey’s Recompense by Mrs. Georgie Sheldon, the pen name of Sarah Elizabeth Forbush Downs. Crippen urged her to come up on deck. “I don’t think I will,” she told him. “It’s very wretched up there, and I would rather stay down here and finish this book before lunch.”
Crippen left “quietly,” Ethel recalled, and went up alone. On deck he began to walk. Inside the lining of his vest he had sewn four diamond rings, a pin in the shape of a butterfly, and a gold brooch studded with diamonds that evoked a rising sun.
THE SHIP’S SURGEON, Dr. C. H. Stewart, also came up on deck early. He knew of the trap about to be sprung and wanted to see the whole thing unfold. At around eight o’clock he encountered Mr. Robinson, and the two began to chat. They stood together at the rail on the ship’s port side. The fog had thinned to mist, and now rain began to fall.
Robinson seemed nervous. Stewart noticed, too, that Robinson had clipped off his new beard and had cut his upper lip, apparently while shaving. What most struck Stewart, however, was that Robinson looked nothing like the man in the photographs published in the Daily Mail.
A boat emerged from the pewter mist and gained definition.
“What a lot of men in that small boat,” Robinson said. He turned to Dr. Stewart. “Why so many?”
Stewart shrugged. “There is only one pilot for the ship,” he said. “Perhaps the others are his friends, who are going to take a little excursion as far as Quebec.”
Robinson asked if the men might be medical officers. Dr. Stewart said he did not think that was the case.
They continued to watch.
KENDALL WENT TO HIS CABIN and found his revolver. As a precaution he placed it in his pocket. He returned to the bridge.