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IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: February 1904

UK: March 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS

Captain Peter Carey (“Black Peter”) Retired whaling captain.

John Hopley Neligan Banker’s young son.

Patrick Cairns Whale harpooner who once served under Peter Carey.

Stanley Hopkins Young police inspector.

Set in 1895, Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of Black Peter” is an atmospheric story of the murder of a brutal retired whaling captain. Its rich authenticity comes in part from the author’s personal experiences. As a young medical student, he spent seven months as surgeon on a whaling ship, the Hope, as it hunted in the Arctic. As Conan Doyle wrote later, he “came of age at 80 degrees north latitude,” amid the ice floes and flailing whales. The whalers themselves were a tough breed, and Conan Doyle would have gotten to know hard men like Black Peter only too well.

The tale opens with Holmes returning to his and Watson’s lodgings with a harpoon tucked under his arm. Holmes reveals that he has been at the butcher shop, trying to spear a pig carcass with a single strike and singularly failing. Watson, familiar with such extraordinary behavior, concludes that Holmes is engaged in an investigation. In fact, Holmes is conducting a forensic experiment that is itself far ahead of its time—a controlled test of the effectiveness of a murder weapon. Tests such as this are now standard practice for a forensics team undertaking a murder investigation, but Holmes, it seems, was a (fictional) pioneer.

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Inspector baffled

Holmes and Watson are soon joined by the young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, a great admirer of Holmes. It seems that Hopkins has been investigating the same case—the gruesome murder of retired whaler Peter Carey. He has had little success and is seeking Holmes’s help.

Carey, commonly known as “Black Peter,” was a cruel man, loathed and feared by all who knew him. He slept away from his house in a hut, which was arranged like a ship’s cabin, and it was there he was found murdered—pinned to the wall, “like a beetle on a card,” with a harpoon that had passed all the way through his body. The only clues Hopkins has found are a tobacco pouch with the initials “P.C.” inscribed on it (which is strange, since Peter Carey rarely smoked), and a notebook carrying the initials “J.H.N.”and filled with details about the stock exchange.

A double arrest

Hopkins, Holmes, and Watson arrive at Black Peter’s cabin in the Sussex countryside and discover that someone has tried to break in. They lie in wait the following night and catch the would-be burglar—a frail young man called John Hopley Neligan (J.H.N.). Neligan explains that he was looking for some securities he believes Black Peter obtained by murdering his banker father. Convinced he has found his killer, Hopkins arrests Neligan.

However, knowing from his experiments that this “anaemic youth” would not have had the strength to harpoon Black Peter, Holmes continues his investigation. As “Captain Basil”, Holmes advertises for a harpooner for a whaling trip. One of three applicants is Patrick Cairns, a hard-as-nails harpooner who once crewed on Black Peter’s ship, The Sea Unicorn. Cairns’s initials are also P.C., and Holmes—sure he has his man—handcuffs him. Cairns admits he killed Black Peter, but insists it was in self-defense. He says that he went to Black Peter to demand money for keeping quiet about the murder of Neligan’s father, which he had witnessed years earlier. As Cairns is led away, Hopkins is full of admiration for Holmes’s success in identifying the real killer.

The tale ends on a note of mystery, with Holmes telling Hopkins that if he is needed for the trial, his address and that of Watson will be “somewhere in Norway”—leaving the reader to speculate on what the next adventure will be.

"…if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope."

Patrick Cairns

19TH-CENTURY WHALING

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, whale blubber was the main source of oil for the lamps that lit the world’s homes. Whaling became big business, and the British whaling ports of Whitby and Dundee (where Black Peter’s ship The Sea Unicorn was registered) boomed. Across the Atlantic, New Bedford, Massachusetts, was soon dubbed “The city that lit the world.”

Life aboard a “whaler” was perilous and tough, as Herman Melville’s great novel Moby Dick (1851) makes clear. Many whalers never made it home, yet the financial rewards were tempting enough to make countless men take the risk. Every February, whalers sailed north to make the most of the brief Arctic summer. By 1895, though, the industry was in decline as kerosene from mineral oil supplanted whale oil for lamps. Strong-armed harpooners, like Patrick Cairns, became increasingly rare, as more whalers used the new harpoon guns to kill their prey with brutal efficiency and little skill.

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