Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Old Whaling Days

[section]

On 18th January, Captain Edward Palmer was charged before Colonel Wilson, at the Police Office, Sydney, with having killed a lad named Charles Denahan, who had run away from the Denmark Hill while she was in Foveaux Strait and had joined the Preservation Inlet whaling station. Palmer was alleged to have beaten the lad with a rope's end because he neglected to look after a boat which had been left in his charge at Look Out Point, with the result that it had drifted among the rocks and got broken to pieces. He was committed for trial. Mr. G. R. Nichols defended Palmer, and bail was allowed, Palmer himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each.

Before the date fixed for hearing, two of the Crown witnesses—Howard and Perry—left Sydney in the whaling vessel Pilot, and, as they were in the house when Denahan was beaten, and it was suggested that they had been smuggled away by the defendant and his partner, the proper conduct of the case was very materially prejudiced. Informations were, therefore, laid against Palmer and Jones for endeavouring to pervert the ends of Justice by keeping these men out of the way. When the case was called on at the Police Court, on 10th May, an adjournment was granted until the seventeenth.

The Supreme Court trial took place on 16th May, and, owing to the position of the parties, was reported at length in the press, and attracted great attention in Sydney. Advantage is taken of the fact that it was never published in New Zealand, where Jones and Palmer afterwards became so well known, to reproduce the trial in full here.