The Brief but Notable Career of SS Laurentic
SS Laurentic, modestly built with only one funnel. Illustration: John Quirk
This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine and is the latest edition of Foul Bottoms with John Quirk exploring maritime history, shipwreck survival and seafaring stories.
We don’t often do true crime stories in this column, not since the Midsomer Marina Murders where the son of the local boatbuilder who had been trying to chat up my sister, (“Don’t like him. Gives me the creeps.”) stepped over the rotting remains of his parents and grandparents after playing with his automatic rifle. This one is slightly more famous.
The 15,000 ton 550-foot White Star liner was launched by Harland and Wolf in Belfast in 1908. Her original and innovative propulsion systems used two conventional triple expansion steam engines for the outer propellers, while their exhaust steam was used to power a central low pressure steam turbine driving a central propeller. Surprisingly, she sported only one funnel, when funnels were considered to be symbols of power. Titanic had a fourth one added to enhance the illusion. Laurentic had a top speed of 19.5 knots and a service speed of 17 knots for her regular route from Liverpool to Quebec; 850 miles up the St Lawrence River.
Quite quick, when you think that the much longer 833 feet Titanic could reach 23 knots and cruise at 21 knots. She was close to her maximum speed when she hit the iceberg.
The Crippen case
In 1910, the speed of the Laurentic liner was to bring her international fame in one of Britain’s most celebrated murder cases. Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen is remembered for the dramatic chase and arrest, but I always thought that the name Crippen was as good as any villainous name dreamed up by Dickens, up there with Scrooge, Squeers, Heep and Murdstone.
He was born in Coldwater Michigan in 1862. His first wife died of a stroke in 1892, and he sent his son to live with his parents in California. Crippen was a homeopath ear and eye specialist. An odd mix, the latter involved science, but homeopathy was a Victorian health fad often using red onions.
Crippen worked for a prominent homeopath, James H Monroe and later married a music hall singer, Cora Turner, who used the stage name of Belle Elmore. The Crippens were sent to London to manage Monroe’s branch office. There he found his US qualifications did not allow him to practice as a doctor in the UK, so he was reduced to selling patent medicines.
Cora threw herself into the party life of variety players. Crippen was fired and they moved to less salubrious Holloway and rented out rooms. He was still flogging his magic meds and took on a secretary, Ethel Le Nerve.
Cora took on many of the available show biz personalities of the music hall circuit. After a party at Chez Crippen in January 1910, Cora disappeared, and Ethel moved in and was seen wearing Cora’s clothing and jewellery.
Friends and neighbours called the police. Chief Inspector Drew came to investigate and was told by Crippen that Cora had returned to the US and later died in California. Drew made a perfunctory search of the house but found nothing suspicious.
But Crippen and his mistress thought that Drew had more evidence against them. They panicked and fled the next day to Brussels and then Antwerp. Neighbours again raised the alarm. Drew searched the house and found decomposing female body parts in the basement under a layer of bricks.
A widespread alarm was sent out and the newspapers published full descriptions of the missing couple.
Atlantic crossing
A continental version of one of those papers was read by Henry George Kendall, captain of SS Montrose en route from Antwerp to Montreal. He telegraphed the authorities a Morse message of his suspicions about the first class ‘father and son’ travelling together.
There was no way the ‘son’ was a bloke, and the huddling, hand holding father treated him more like a girlfriend. He saw that Crippen had lost the trademark moustache and was trying to grow a beard.
This news was passed to Drew who leapt on a train to Liverpool and boarded the much faster SS Laurentic.
As SS Montrose arrived in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Captain Kendall asked the father and son if they would like to come on the bridge and meet the pilots who had just brought the ship in. One of the pilots removed his hat and Crippen recognised Chief Inspector Drew. He had arrived three days ahead on Laurentic.
Crippen is alleged to have said, “Thank God it’s over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn’t stand it any longer.” And he held out his hands for the cuffs. Does that sound like a confession to you?
Despite most of Mrs. Crippen being exhumed in pieces from the basement, the head and limbs were never found.
Hyoscine
Crippen was hanged on November 23rd, 1910. Not only was this the first time in history that a radio signal had resulted in an arrest, but the diligent and ground-breaking forensic evidence of Cora’s remains showed that she had been poisoned with hyoscine, five grains of which Crippen had purchased two weeks before Cora vanished.
Crippen claimed that the filleted, boneless remains were that of somebody who had been placed there before the Crippens moved in. But a distinctive abdominal scar from Belle’s surgery was confirmed by none other than Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the Home Office pathologist who was such a major figure in early forensics.
The remains were wrapped in a pyjama jacket which detectives tracked to a batch that was not on sale until 1908, after the Crippens moved in. Brilliant!
Amazingly, there are people today who claim his innocence and that the remains discovered were of a male. I think Bernie would have noticed this.
No charges were brought against Ethel who moved to Canada then returned to the UK to marry, raise a family and lived until 1967.
War and wreck
SS Laurentic used her speed to outrun U-boats in WW1, yes, they were just as great a menace then as in the WW2 Battle of the Atlantic.
In 1916, she was entrusted with her most valuable cargo yet. In Birkenhead she was loaded with 3,211, thirty-pound gold bars to buy munitions from Canada and the US. This was 43 tons, worth five million pounds at the time.
On January 25th, 1917, off Lough Swilly, Northern Ireland she hit two German mines that had been laid by U-80.
There were 475 people on board, only 121 survived. The loss of 354 lives was about half that of Titanic. But they didn’t all drown. Most of the poor souls froze to death from hypothermia in the January sea or in open lifeboats.
Remarkably, The Royal Navy, in thousands of secret dives, retrieved all but 22 of the bars in 22 fathoms. This made Laurentic famous again, for at the time it was the richest gold salvage in history.
Remember the weight of these ingots, this will come up in a future article and dramatically, because Captain Kendall again made headlines four years after the Crippen incident, also in the St Lawrence.
Stay tuned.
This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine. To explore more stories like this, browse the AFLOAT Magazine archive or view the latest edition of AFLOAT Magazine.
