The Greenock stowaways, or Arran stowaways, were six boys (Hugh McEwan, 11; John Paul, 12; Peter Currie, 12; Hugh McGinnes, 12; David Brand, 16; James Bryson, 16) and one young man, Bernard Reilly, 22, who, in April 1868, stowed away at Victoria Dock in Greenock, Scotland, on a cargo ship, the Arran, bound for Quebec, Canada. They were dressed in thin and ragged clothing totally unsuitable for the bitterly cold North Atlantic weather encountered on the voyage; two of the boys (John Paul and Hugh McGinnes) lacked any shoes. On board ship they were lashed, beaten, starved, sometimes stripped naked or near-naked, had ice-cold sea water thrown over them, were generally ill-treated and, on occasion, handcuffed. All the stowaways were regularly beaten except Peter Currie, whose father was a friend of first mate James Kerr. James Bryson was subjected to torture.
When, after a little over one month at sea, their vessel became trapped in sea-ice off the west coast of Newfoundland, the captain ordered that six of them should be put overboard and told to make their way to shore across the ice. The seventh stowaway, Peter Currie, was allowed to remain on board. For the poorly nourished boys in flimsy clothing the trek across the ice was likely to result in their deaths, especially so for the two 12-year-old boys who were forced to walk over the ice in their bare feet. In fact two of the boys, McGinness and McEwan, died on the ice; the remaining four stowaways survived because they were, by chance, spotted by a woman on the shoreline (Catherine Ann Gillis-MacInnis) and rescued by local Newfoundland men. All four were snow-blinded, taking almost a week to fully recover their sight. John Paul, who had to walk on the ice in bare feet, survived the trek, but his badly lacerated feet needed almost a month to heal.
When news of these events reached home, a national scandal resulted. On its return to port, the Arran was met by an angry crowd; the captain of the ship, Robert Watt, and his first mate, James Kerr, had to be escorted off the ship by police. Watt and Kerr were tried in November 1868 at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, Scotland's highest criminal court. Watt was acquitted of assault, but convicted of culpable homicide and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment; Kerr, who had pleaded guilty to assault, was sentenced to four months, effectively time served.
Watt and Kerr both returned to the sea after completing their sentences, but never sailed with each other again. David Brand founded a marine engineering company in Queensland, Australia, where he died in 1897. James Bryson became a tram conductor in the United States. Peter Currie, the stowaway who was not put overboard, returned to Scotland on board the Arran, and died of consumption two years later. John Paul married at age 19 and had 12 children. He became a foreman in the Greenock shipyards; after his wife's death he moved to Southampton. Bernard Reilly found work on the railways in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Background Greenock, on Scotland's west coast, about west of Glasgow, was a mid sized fishing town in the late nineteenth century. The Arran was a mid sized, three-masted, bulk-cargo sail ship of owned by Ferguson and Hendry of Greenock.
Stowaways It appears that nine people, eight of them children, stowed away on the Arran, but two were found and returned to port. Seven others ranging in age from 11 to 22 remained undiscovered. All from very different social backgrounds, they were: Hugh McEwan, (who had taken advantage of his mother sending him into Greenock on an errand to stowaway instead), John Paul, Hugh McGinnes, Peter Currie, James Bryson, David Jolly Brand and Bernard (or Barney) Reilly who, as an adult, lodged on his own in the town. McEwan lived with his widowed mother in Glasgow High Street, although they originated from Greenock where the others all lived. They hid belowdecks in various discrete parts of the hold. Reilly appears to have been attempting to emigrate in search of work, but it is unknown what motivated the younger children to come with him. At least one considered it an opportunity for a pleasure cruise, and another the chance to become a sailor. Stowaways were not an uncommon phenomenon often being motivated by adventure and the chance to escape the poverty of the time. Ships were regularly searched on departure, and any stowaways found would be sent back to port on a tugboat, as the Arran had already done with two children.
Voyage The Arran was captained by Captain Robert Watt (occasionally Warr), aged 28, from Saltcoats, Ayrshire. He was assisted by his brother-in-law, first mate James Kerr, aged 31, of Lochranza, on the Isle of Arran as first mate with a crew of twenty-two men. The ship sailed from Greenock's Victoria Harbour on 7 April 1868 bound for Quebec, transporting coal and oakum. Captain Watt has been described, before the voyage at least, as being of a "weak but not naturally ill-disposed" personality, whereas his first mate was a dominant, even "ferocious", character. They have both been described as "large, bearded men who had never raised families and had neither the inclination nor the time to provide childcare".
Once the ship had been released by the tugs well out into the Irish Sea, but just before the carpenter battened down the hatches, the stowaways emerged one by one. First to come out were McEwan and Paul, who may have already been friends on land. It was too late for the ship to return to Greenock, and Captain Watt sent the boys to the cook for a meal. William Roughead, one of the first twentieth-century criminologists to return to the case, has suggested that since the vessel was stocked with plenty of provisions, enough for the next four months, there was sufficient food for the stowaways, and the elder ones at least could work for their berth.
Ill treatment
Their first night at sea the boys slept in a sail locker. They were given menial work to do as deckhands. It was not long before the ship sailed into rough weather, and the younger boys were repeatedly sea sick. Their sickness induced them to vomit up the valuable meat rations they had received. Kerr, hearing of this, declared that the boys would henceforth get "the ground of their stomachs before they get any more", and ordered an immediate cessation to the meat ration. Their rations were gradually reduced to sea biscuits, sometimes one each, and sometimes one between them. The ship's cook, however, occasionally supplied them with "surreptitious scraps", and they also scavenged potato and turnip peelings.
The stowaways had boarded the ship wearing only thin clothing. By the time it had entered the North Atlantic, the weather had become bitterly cold. The stowaways had been put to work scrubbing the decks, which formed with ice; they had no shoes between them and only thin coats against the weather. A member of the crew later wrote home that the weather was so bitter that "the men could hardly stand it", let alone the stowaways. The cold weather exacerbated existing problems: since some of the boys had no shoes or other means of protecting their feet, they were unable to perform deck duty and stayed below decks. In turn, Kerr then "went with a rope's end in hand and ordered them out, and as soon as they came out gave them a walloping, and pretty often severely". Roughead notes the captain never interfered with his first mate's disciplinary measures.
Kerr appears to have had a particular issue with James Bryson who suffered Kerr's "full fury", being repeatedly thrashed by both the captain and the first mate. He may have been singled out by them because not only the crew but also his fellow stowaways complained about his lack of cleanliness. As a result, he was stripped of his clothing, made to lie on the deck and repeatedly doused with buckets of icy water; Bryson may have acknowledged that he was responsible for the "mess of filth in the hold", as Donald calls it, for he says that Bryson himself blamed it on having a bowel complaint.
The filthier the children became sleeping below decks, the more they were beaten for being filthy. When they stole food to eat, they were then beaten for their thievery. As the ship neared Newfoundland, a barrel of grain was found to have burst open, and the stowaways were accused of breaking it. They, in turn, blamed members of the crew; Donald notes that a quantity of meal was subsequently discovered in the forecastle, "for which no one could, or would, account". In any case, the stowaways were punished, put in leg irons and handcuffed together for the rest of the day with no food.
The ill-treatment of the stowaways continued as the ship sailed around the southern Newfoundland coast. On 10 May the Arran, which had been fighting its way through ice packs for some time, finally became stuck in an ice field near St. George's Bay, at Cape Anguille in southwestern Newfoundland. Other ships had been similarly caught.
The weather was poor and visibility worse because of fog and sleet. Watt and Kerr left the ship to examine the ice field. The boys took advantage of their absence to forage for food in the hold. When Watt and Kerr returned to the ship and discovered what the children had been doing, they were beaten again.
Arrival and marooning in Newfoundland Eventually, Watt and Kerr put the remaining five stowaways off the ship at Bay St. George, near Highlands, on 15 May, between 8:00 am or 9:00 am. An anonymous crew member, who later wrote home from Quebec, reported "succinctly in a dozen words" that, "The stowaways got a biscuit apiece, and were ordered to go ashore". These biscuits were thrown overboard for the boys to gather up from the ice after they had been ejected. Roughead says land "was not visible to the naked eye" from the ship, but Watt "alleged he could see it by means of his spyglass".
The captain told them personally that there were plenty of occupied dwellings "not so far away", or there was another ship also stranded in the ice within reasonable distance to which they could make their way. In the meantime, Watt said there was insufficient food left on the Arran to provide for them any longer.
No one actually knew with certainty how far the ship was from land; various reckonings were made which suggested a distance of between ; "the mate, taking a rosier view of the boys' prospects, put it at five" (8 km). According to the boys' testimony at the later trial, McGinnes asked Watt how he was meant to cope on the ice flow with bare feet. He replied that "it would be as well for him to die upon the ice as he would get no more food there". At least one crew member believed that it was unlikely "that those without shoes would ever reach the land".
Of the six boys, Reilly and Bryson were keen to leave at Bay St George. Reilly was eager to seek work, and Bryson felt "nothing worse could happen than he had suffered on the ship". John Paul, Hugh McEwan, David Brand and Hugh McGinnes followed, but Paul Currie did not. Apparently, he had been asked to remain on the ship and had consented. McEwan, by now, had been coughing up blood for some time and asked the captain to change his mind. Watt replied that he "might as well die on the ice as on the ship".
Journey to land The stowaways later related the harsh conditions they travelled in. Bryson said the first day they walked twelve hours, with the ice getting thinner the closer they got to the shore. The ice was breaking up with the warmer spring tides, and they were all subject to regular slips, falls and drenchings on route. This, in turn, caused their thin clothes to freeze "as hard as boards" onto them. It was in the course of falling through the ice that they lost McEwan, who was the youngest and the weakest physically; he fell in most often. He had been spitting blood for some time. Bryson related: