THE SAILOR POLICE.
Fantastic reflections dappled the Pool of London--reflections from the
riding lights of ships at anchor, and the brighter glare of the lamps of
the bridges. They danced eerily on the swift-running waters of the
river, intensifying the gloom of the black waters. Here and there the
darker blur marked where a line of barges was moored.
The police-boat, its motor chug-chugging noisily, slipped
unostentatiously behind one of the tiers of lighters. To my untrained
eyes it was incredible that in the labyrinth of craft, amid the
darkness, we should be able to pick our way. Yet deftly, unerringly, the
inspector moved the tiller, while two constables kept keen eyes on the
motley assembly of vessels.
A barge was swinging across the stream with two men at the sweeps. The
tide caught it, and it dropped heavily down on us while we were trying
to steal a passage athwart another vessel. The launch was caught between
the two, and it seemed inevitable that our boat should crack like an
egg-shell. With my heart in my mouth, I prepared to jump. But with swift
precision the constables acted. Holding tight to the gunwale they forced
our boat over sideways, and we sidled through at an angle of forty-five
degrees into open water.
I looked for an expression of relief, but the men had calmly resumed
their seats. The escape had been a matter of course to them, and they
laughed when I spoke of it as an escape. For the men of the Thames
Police take things as philosophically as sailors. It was all in the
day's work to them.
Since then I have seen much of the men and methods of the force which
guards the great highway of London. They have heavy duties to perform,
and, from the rank and file to the superintendent, are adequately fitted
for their work. The histories of some of those who wear the blue jacket
with the word "Thames" on the collar, and the peaked cap with the anchor
badge, would make enthralling reading.
There is Divisional Detective-Inspector Helden, who probably knows more
of the ways of the waterside thieves than any man living. He is a
linguist, as are many of his staff--a qualification much necessary in
dealing with the cosmopolitan crews of ships plying to and from the Port
of London.
There is an inspector who has saved three lives--a fact none the less
noteworthy in that he holds the quaint superstition that all the
troubles of those people will accumulate on his own unfortunate head.
There is a bronzed, brown-moustached station-sergeant who had been
around the world before he was twelve, and who has had strange
adventures in every quarter of the globe. There are men drawn from the
Navy--and now serving again--the mercantile marine, and river craft.
All have an intimate knowledge of that thirty-five mile stretch of river
which passes through London from Teddington to Dartford Creek.
They know every eddy, every trick and twist of the tide; they know on
any given day what boats are on the river, be they barges or liners; and
they know the men who work them.
The force is under the control of Superintendent Mann, who has had a
varied experience of many years, and has brought a ripe knowledge of men
and organisation to his work.
There are five stations--at Wapping, Waterloo Pier, Barnes, Blackwall,
and Erith--with a complement of 240 men, fourteen launches and motor
boats, as well as row-boats. The division possesses its own engineers
and carpenters, and does its own building and repairs.
Now-a-days, men are only drafted to the division after serving for a
time in the ordinary land force, but the rule has only been in force of
late years, and consequently most of the men have spent their whole
police career on the river.
A different thing this to land work. In the whole thirty-five miles
there are only five "sections." These are patrolled by series of boats
putting off at different hours. For eight hours they ply to and fro,
keenly vigilant, courteous as their colleagues in the West End, as
helpful and resourceful in an emergency as men of the Navy. Sometimes a
barge gets adrift. It has to be boarded and towed to safe moorings.
Some of these barges have valuable cargoes--tobacco, silk, and what
not--and the incredible carelessness of the owners in not always
providing a watchman presses hardly on the police, who may, perhaps,
have to spend a whole night in looking after some single craft. There
was a case in which a barge broke adrift with L20,000 worth of goods
aboard.
"Oh, that would have been all right," said the owner off-handedly, when
told that it had been safely looked after. "It would have come to no
harm."
Not a word of thanks. And that attitude is a typical one.
The patrol-boats beat to and fro, each with two men and a sergeant, in
all weathers, amid blinding sleet and snow in the winter, fog in
November, and more pleasantly on summer nights. Eyes are strained
through the darkness at the long tiers of barges, ears are alert to
catch the click of oars in rowlocks. They know who has lawful occasion
to be abroad at such times.
Occasionally the sergeant hails some boat. He can usually identify the
voice of the man who replies, but should he fail to do so, the
police-boat slips nearer. A stranger or a suspicious character is
invited to give an account of himself. Should he not be able to do so
satisfactorily, he is towed along to the nearest police station until
inquiries have been made.
Sometimes, not often, when a man, who on the river corresponds to the
sneak thief ashore, is caught red-handed stealing rope or metal or
ships' oddments there is resistance. But always the police win. They
know the game. A hand-to-hand struggle in a swaying boat, even a fall
overboard with a desperate prisoner, does not concern them greatly.
"You see," explained a veteran to me, "if you fall out while you've got
hold of a man it's ten to one that he tries to get his breath as he goes
under. That makes matters worse for him. All you do is to hold your
breath, and let him wear himself out. He's usually quiet enough when you
come up again." Of course, every man in the division is an expert
swimmer.
There are other tricks of boatcraft in such a case which all
river-police officers know. The flashing of a light is an equivalent of
a police-whistle ashore, and will bring the assistance of any
police-boat in sight.
At the floating police-station at Waterloo Pier a dingey is always in
readiness to put off to rescue would-be suicides who fling themselves
from the "bridge of sighs." In the little station itself there is a
bathroom with hot water always ready, and every man in the division is
trained to the Schafer method of resuscitation of the apparently
drowned.
A still more grim side of the work is the finding of dead bodies. The
average number is somewhere around a hundred a year. Most of these are
suicides, a few accidents.
The duties of the patrols are to keep vigil over the river and its
banks. There are other patrols at work for the Customs and the Port of
London Authority, who see that the revenue is not defrauded, and that
the traffic regulations are kept. But this does not free the police from
all responsibility in these matters. Here are a few of the things they
have to do:--
Secure drifting barges and inform owner,
Detect smuggling, illegal ship-building or illegal fitting out for
service in a foreign State,
Report damaged cargoes or food, and offences against the Port of
London Authority's bye-laws,
Arrest any drunken person navigating a boat,
Detect cases of navigation without sufficient free-board below
Battersea Bridge,
Search all suspicious-looking craft,
Inform harbour-master of vessel sunk or dangerous wreckage adrift,
Report wrecks to Lloyd's.
There is more--much more. For instance, all manner of craft have to be
watched to see that they do not carry more passengers than their licence
permits, that obstruction is not caused by mooring across public stairs,
that more than the fixed fare is not demanded by watermen, that no boat
is navigated for hire without a licence, and so on.
Detective-Inspector Helden and his staff of the Criminal Investigation
Department of the division are the most dreaded enemies of the river
thieves. Time was, when the "light-horsemen" of the river were in their
heyday, that L25,000 worth of property was stolen annually. That has
been reduced to less than a couple of hundred pounds--a comparatively
trivial, insignificant figure.
It is to both branches of the river police that those who use the river
owe this complete immunity from theft. Every man of the C.I.D. in the
division has a complete knowledge of thieves and receivers on whom it is
necessary to maintain constant surveillance. Marine store dealers and
old metal dealers are kept in close touch, for it is to them that the
odds and ends of ship equipment might be taken by a dishonest sailor or
watchman.
One of the most famous of river thieves was a man whom the public knew
as "Slippery Jack." He made a rich harvest until he was laid by the
heels. Almost naked, and his skin greased lavishly, he would slip aboard
likely-looking craft in search of plunder. If he were disturbed, he
would dodge away, his greased skin aiding him if anyone attempted to
seize him. He was tracked down one evening to Blackfriars, where he
backed his boat into midstream and turned at bay with a vicious
sheath-knife. Only after a fierce struggle, in which the police did not
escape scot free, was he arrested. His exploits cost him ten years'
penal servitude.
It was the detective branch of the Thames Police that solved the
complicated mystery of a supposed case of murder which attracted much
public attention at the time. The full facts have never been made
public, and may be interesting.
In August, 1897, the body of a naked man was found floating near the
Tower Bridge. A line was woven tightly round the body, arms and neck,
and a doctor stated that the body must have been in the water about
three weeks, that death was due to strangulation, and that he thought it
impossible for the man to have tied the rope round himself, though it
must have been tied before death.
A woman identified the body as that of her husband, Von Veltheim--he who
shot Woolf Joel in Johannesburg and was later sentenced at the Old
Bailey for the blackmail of Mr. Solly Joel--and a jury brought in a
verdict that "death was caused by strangulation whether amounting to
murder the evidence fails to show."
Here were all the elements of the mystery that might have puzzled
Sherlock Holmes. The detectives began to puzzle it out. They were all
watermen, and knew, what the doctor had apparently overlooked, that a
body will often swell after prolonged immersion in water. Although the
rope was woven tightly about the body there was only one actual knot.
They came to a directly opposite conclusion to the doctor--that the rope
had somehow enwound itself round the man after he was in the water, and
that the swelling of the body had tightened it. They began to make
enquiries. Soon they discovered that a seamen named John Duncan had
vanished from the ship _Thames_, moored at Carron Wharf, near Tower
Bridge. Also a piece of "throw line" similar to that twisted round the
body was missing. Also that Duncan, the last time he was seen alive, had
declared his intention of taking a bathe. These facts made it easy for
the sailor police to reconstruct the tragedy.
Duncan was unable to swim. He attached one end of the rope round his
chest and fastened the other end to the ship. Then he had slipped
overboard among the piles of the wharf. By some means the end of the
rope in the ship became detached. Duncan struggled to save himself and
the rope became entangled about him. That was the solution of what
seemed a baffling problem.
The men of the division receive the same pay as men ashore, but they are
a class entirely apart. On land, men are transferred from division to
division as they are promoted, or as occasion demands. On the river this
system does not apply in practice. Most of the men spend their whole
police career on the water, for it takes so long to make the complete
police officer of the Thames Division, and a man once trained is too
valuable to be used for other work.