Blackbirding James Patrick Murray (1 results)

Condition: very good. Sydney, Govt Printer 1873. Foolscap, disbound in a modern plain wrapper; 16pp. Atrocity, massacre, mass murder - you choose. Seventy or more kidnapped men from the Solomons and Bougainville trying to break out of the hold of the Carl were shot from the deck and thrown, dead or alive, into the sea. Murray, owner of the Carl, when evidence of kidnapping during the second voyage began to surface, discovered religion and turned Queen's Evidence. The captain and members of the crew were tried in Sydney. Two were sentenced to death but of course not hung. Murray's father wrote to the Melbourne Herald that if anyone went to the gallows, his son should be the first. Murray disappeared from Sydney before the trial was finished and not much more is known about him. Collected here are sworn statements given by Murray and others to the Consul in Levuka and proceedings of a Naval Court held in Levuka before sending the prisoners to Sydney. Reading Murray's account I wonder that he wasn't strung up on the spot, for mealy-mouthed hypocrisy as well as murder. He must have had some persuasive skill not conveyed in the words themselves.