Polestar Unmasked

Many thanks to Jan Heinemann for the fascinating insights of the article in Sherlockiana (no.2, 2004) on the melancholy story of The Captain of the Polestar. As Sherlockiana’s editor so rightly points out, the article might seem somewhat disconnected from the other material appearing in this distinguished newsletter, since it concerns a story published by Doyle, the editor of the Watson papers. Doyle’s main claim to fame, of course, is his services in bringing those fascinating documents to the knowledge of the world in general, but he also made a modest name for himself as an author, The Captain of the Polestar being one of his more successful attempts.

I believe, however, that there may be a hidden connexion between Heinemann’s article and the main subject matter of the newsletter. I refer, of course, to the question of the true identity of the melancholy Captain and his unhappy fiancée. The chronicler is able to give very little information about Captain Craigie. A tall, well-formed and bearded man, ridden by some secret horror, his inexplicable outbursts of rage during his final voyage with the ‘Polestar’ are finally explained by the revelation that he has suffered a heavy loss in the tragic death of his fiancée “under circumstances of peculiar horror”. There is even less information about the captain’s fiancée, but we are given to understand that she has been a young lady of striking beauty and personality. The final addendum to the narrative reveals that she was a resident of Cornwall.

It is here that the connexion springs to mind. Who can forget the story of the ‘Cornish Horror’, published by Watson under the title of The Devil’s Foot? Clearly, the beautiful Cornish fiancée of Captain Craigie must be Brenda Tregennis, murdered under horrific circumstances by her vindictive brother Mortimer. The 'Captain Craigie' of the ’Polestar’ must therefore the great lion-hunter and explorer, Dr. Leon Sterndale, who murdered Mortimer Tregennis in revenge, but was permitted by Holmes to escape justice and return to Africa.

We must conclude that Dr. Sterndale's secret, although safe with Holmes and Watson, in some way became known to others, so that the distinguished explorer found it prudent to adopt a complete change of identity and radically different way of life. For this purpose, what could be better than the life of a whaling captain? In the strange and self-contained world of the Dundee whalers, a man of his force of character and great natural talents could rapidly earn a reputation by his exploits during the voyages, while his life between one voyage and the next was of no concern to his shipmates and his employers. Favourable to our hypothesis is the fact that in the unanimous opinion of the crew of the ‘Polestar’, Captain Craigie was not a Scotchman, and his name was an assumed one.

Quibblers will of course find some inconsistencies in the dating and details of the two stories. The dates are widely different, and the descriptions of Sterndale/Craigie and of Brenda Tregennis/Craigie’s unnamed fiancée do not match completely. Watson places the incident of The Devil's Foot in the spring of the year 1897, whereas the captain of the ‘Polestar’ can have met his end no later than 1883, when the story was published under Doyle’s name. However, these points can surely be explained by the very understandable desire of Watson to protect some of the surviving protagonists - or their relatives - from unwanted publicity. Watson may have had very good reasons for suppressing the story of the Cornish Horror for many years, and for concealing its true date when he finally gave it to the world.

You will notice that I refer here to Watson, rather than Doyle. This is deliberate. It is my contention that, despite the claim of Doyle to be the author of The Captain of the Polestar, there are far too many similarities of style and vocabulary in the two stories to accept that they have each had their own author. I hope I do not greatly surprise you by advancing the bold, but not impossible, claim, that both stories are the work of the same person. That person, of course, can be no other than Watson. This is obvious from his later career as chronicler of the great Holmes.

Doyle must therefore resign his claims to authorship of the ‘Polestar’ narrative, and content himself with the acknow­ledge­ment of his later services as Watson's literary agent. For the present, however, it must remain a mystery why Watson assisted a struggling and obscure fellow doctor by allowing him the rights of author to this story (and possibly others). We do know that in the early 1880’s, when these events occurred, Watson himself was a man of quite modest circumstances. We may consider The Captain of the Polestar to be an early attempt by Watson in the narrating of a strange and mysterious story, showing the first gleams of that talent which was to flower so richly when recording for posterity the exploits of the Master Detective. We may admire Watson's unselfishness in allowing another to reap the early fruits of his literary endeavours - or the cynic might claim to detect the influence of a certain Scots canniness, which might have impelled him to allow another to run the risk of a hostile reception, permitting him the luxury of making sub­sequent, more success­ful, attempts under his own name.

Be this as it may, I must conclude that it was by no means misplaced to publish Jan Heinemann’s reflections on The Captain of the Polestar in the distinguished pages of Sherlockiana. My hearty thanks !