SHIP OF BLOOD-Charles Oldham

claim you're free. Welcome bonus. That's Chumba Casino dot com and lived Chumba Lane nover Necessary dripod where everybody lost the terms of conditions eating plus.

the dead officers were white. So began a legal spectacle that would captivate much of the nation's press and fuel a sensational trial in Wilmington. It was in Wilmington, after all, that shocking racial violence had occurred not long before, and now the city remained in the clutches of white supremacists. Most observers could have predicted a quick verdict and a

triple hanging, if not an even quicker lynching. Yet the legal drama would defy predictions, lasting seven years, reaching the Supreme Court, pulling in Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, then eating twisted into a fanciful, big budget movie. In the end, so many participants, from jurors to lawyers to politicians,

acted against type that justice had a fighting chance. The book that we're featuring this evening is Ship of Blood, Mutiny and Slaughter Aboard the Harry A. Berwin and the Quest for Justice, with my special guest, author and attorney Charles Oldham. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Charles Oldham, Well, thank you for having me, Thank you so much, and congratulations on this incredible tale.

is great. It's a wonderful place to vacation, wonderful place to live too. But I mean, for this story, we kind of have to we have to go back in time more than one hundred years, because the case happened in the year nineteen oh five. And yeah, back in those days, it was you know, life was hard in rural North Carolina. Back in that time, it was a

pretty pretty hard struggle place to live. And Southport Cape Fear was a very small, you might say, shipping and fishing village where you know, everything revolved around the shipping industry and fishing, fishing that type of thing, and life was difficult, and the people people back then were very

very hard folks. You might say, they had a lot of They had to deal with a lot of struggles in their daily lives, and politics reflected that at the same time, early nineteen hundreds were a very very tumultuous time in politics of the area back in those days. And that's that's also what I try to convey in the book.

ship was known as the Harry A. Berwin. It's kind of interesting because sailing vessels back then, commercial vessels typically were named after people, usually former ship captains or businessmen, officers in shipping companies and that type of thing. So the names of these these vessels were not particularly creative. They were just they were just named after people. But anyway, the uh I was just called it. The King and

the Berwin. The King was sailing the Lawn and they came across the Berwind, another vessel of very similar size and the size and dimensions, and the officers on board the King noticed that the Berwind was sailing pretty erratically.

They were kind of zigging, zagging, batting forth, and they didn't have their sails furled properly, and it was just it appeared like there was something to miss on board the Berwin, And so the King they drew up, drew up alongside the other ship, and they came within hailing distance, and the guys on board the King shouted out in Berwin and said, hey, what's wrong, And somebody shouted back from Berwin said we want to be taken off this ship because a man has gone crazy and he's killed

all of the officers on board the ship. So when the fellows on board of the King got into their lifeboat, they'll call it, and they went over to the other ship. They found a bloody scene. There was at least one man who was lying dead on board the deck of the ship, and there were four others the officers on board the ship, who were also deceased. They had been shot and killed and their bodies had.

walking around. So it was clear that someone had obviously committed some committed some murders, although it wasn't entirely clear at first who had done what because there were three three people remaining alive on board the ship, and they started telling different stories, blaming each other as to who did what.

and threw them overboard. And at the same time they claimed that Henry Scott had held them under the gun, claiming that he would kill them, Adams and Sawyer if they did not cooperate with it. And they claimed that that went on for several hours, and it was not until later that they were able to seize the opportunity to tackle mister Scott and beat him down and take

his guns away from him and tie him up. And in the process the Scott apparently had shot and killed one of the other sales whose name was Cokeley, and he was the one who was lying dead on board on the deck. That was their story, as you might imagine, Henry Scott, the other fellow, told a different story.

script on the other three guys. He claimed that they came up with the idea of seizing the vessel, maybe taking it into port and trying to claim that the officers had drowned in a storm or something like that, and they might use this as a way to try to collect a reward from the shipping company for having salvaged the ship or something like that. And mister Scott, as you might imagine, also claimed that when he objected to this plan, that the other guys decided to tagle

him and tie him down and so forth. So it was basically two guys against one telling completely different stories about what happened.

a it was a federal case. It was a mutiny and a mass murders that took place on board the on the on the high seas, So essentially it turned into a federal mutiny and murder prosecution, which and the trial was held in Wilmington, North Carolina just a few weeks afterwards.

in this case. Tell us about all of that backdrop to this preliminary trial.

guys put on trial for murdering four white men. And this was in Wilmington, North Carolina, in nineteen oh five, And we have to take account of, as you said, what happened in Wilmington in eighteen ninety eight. This is a story that has gotten a lot of coverage in recent years from historians and the press because it was a very shocking event which was really didn't get a lot of coverage for a long time, which is unfortunate.

It's only within the past twenty years so that people have really become aware of what we now call the eighteen ninety eight insurrection at Wilmington. But the long short of it is that in eighteen ninety eight, Wilmington was a multi racial city, and very unusual for the South in those days. It had a multi racial government that had been elected in the say, the mid mid eighteen nineties. Around eighteen ninety four, they had black people and white

people both serving in the city government. And things really came to ahead in eighteen ninety eight when something called the white supremacist movement spread across North Carolina. The Democratic Party, which was a completely different institution back then from what we know it as today, was staunchly white premises, and in the eighteen ninety eight campaign, they really carved upon racial issues as a means of seizing control of the

state government. And I hate to I try to be delicate in the way that I described this, because it's so easy to give offense sometimes, but the campaign that they ran was absolutely brutal. They spread all kinds of rumors about black government officials praying on white women and that type of thing, and warning about the perils of what they call negro domination in state government. Again, I apologize to even use language like this, but that's those

were the dynamics of the situation. But again, to a kind of cut to the chase, in eighteen ninety eight, these white supremacist Democrats took complete control of North Carolina, state government in that election, and as a result of that in Wilmington, there was a very It led to a very very bloody situation in which the local white supremacists they decided they were going that when the election was not enough, they were going to see physical control

of the city government by killing people. And that's what happened. They staged and an armed insurrection in the city where they physically evict the white people and a lot of the blacks who had been involved in the city government, and they marched through the streets with guns and they went about killing people. They were probably about about sixty people who ended up lying dead in the streets as

a result of that. It really was a bloody governmental coupe tap probably the only, the only documented case where that has actually happened in the United States. It's a very very regretful thing for anyone who's from North Carolina to know about. And that's why that's unfortunately why the story remained hidden for so long. A lot of just didn't we didn't learn about it in high school because

it's so so shameful. But as a result of that, in eighteen ninety eight, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a completely the governmental institutions, the courts, everything was completely dominated by white supremacists. And therefore that was the environment that these three black guys facing when they were put on trial murdering these white men in nineteen oh five.

would be witness at the Scott trial. So other than that, who if anyone is there to represent talk about the representation of Adams and his partner and Henry Scott.

right after the other, and total three defendants. And one thing that is surprising to me is that all three of them had defense attorneys and they what's what's really ironic is that the defense attorneys who were appointed by the court were guys who were who came from the white establishment in Wilmington and whose families were staunched Democrats, and they had relatives who were actually involved in the events of the insurrection in eighteen ninety eight, in fact,

they had been leaders of it. And yet here they were being appointed to represent these black guys in court. And what's really surprising is that they actually did their jobs. They did not strike from the responsibility of representing these fellows and filing the appropriate motions, and I mean they

did the best they could in court. I mean, given the deck that was stacked against them, because they were these guys were they were put on trial in federal court, and the juries were called from taxpayer roles of and the jurors, as you might imagine, we're all white men from eastern North Carolina, and so I mean they were they had the deck stacked against from the very beginning. But despite all of that, the trial procedures we were followed,

the law was followed, and it was the trial. The trial presision was very deliberate and calm and professional, which is not exactly what you might expect. The verdicts were what you probably would expect, but I was rbally surprised by the sense of quorum in the court room was actually quite pretty pretty calm and professional.

and then and be done with it. So the prosecutor, when he put Adam and Sawyer on trial first, he simply brought in Scott to take the stand and give his given his testimony and then Adams and Sawyer took the stand on their own behalf told their story, and people noted that Adams and Sawyer in particular, they were very concisient in stories that they told. They seemed calm and sincere and so forth. So a lot of the

press the moment were actually pressed with adamson Sawyer. Despite that, they were found guilty and they were immediately sentenced to death. After that trial concluded, and the trial of Adams and Sawyer took about three days. About a half hour after that trial concluded, they simply started the second trial Scott's. They just declared the recess. Thirty minutes later. They filled the jury box twelve more people and they started the

second trial. And then the prosecutor then brought in Adams and Sawyer to be his witnesses to testify against Scott, despite the fact that the same prosecutor had just gotten death sentences against them only hours before. Yeah, they now became his witness They took stand, told the very same story that they had in their own trial. They said Scott did it. And then you know, Scott took the stand, told his story again in his own defense. This time

he also was found guilty and sentence to death. So it was I mean, the whole thing was I said this a moment ago, that the trial process was very deliberate and calm, probably a little too much so, because there was just a sense that all the all the attorneys just wanted to get it over and done with, and the judge wanted to be sure that he followed all the all the rules, dotted all the eyes and crossed all the t's, and so that he wouldn't be

overturned on appeal. Probably, But I mean, the trials were obviously a rush job, and the verdicts and the sentences were no surprise and given the given the whole black white dynamics of the thing. But what was surprising is that a lot of the people, the people in the courtroom and especially press in Wilmington who were reporting on this, they actually listened to what these people were saying in

court and they were really impressed with Addatant Sawyer. They sounded sincere and I hate to use the languige they

used in print. They called them like a simple minded, which is a racially loaded term, but they meant it as a compliment sort of, because they sounded honest, and it sounded like they were telling the truth, whereas they noted that this guy Scott, on the other hand, was he seemed really slit and evasive, and again this is a little offensive, but they said that he was unusually smart for a black guy, which lived them to think, well, he's probably lying and he's probably the guilty one, which

turned out to be true. But what really surprised me was that the press really were that discerning and they were willing to They were willing to say, you know, all three of these guys probably are not equally guilty, and all of them probably did not deserve to hang.

And in fact, these were the same newspapers who just a few years earlier had been advocating in favor of the white supremacy movement, and they had all all but they had been cheering on the sidelines when that insurrection happened and when people were being shot dead in the streets. But they were willing to acknowledge that. But you know, this probably is a mischaracter justice as far as Adams and Sawyer concerned. So that was very surprising to me.

or conceivably even to the surviving sailors Adams and Sawyer. So you might say that they had a financial motive to come into court and swear that all three of the guys had been had been actively involved in the mutiny and murders, and the captain of the of the King and also the owners of Berwin they also testified in the trials to that effect.

Supreme Court. And that attorney's name was George Roundtree. And that was really fascinating to me because he, in fact had been one of the one of the prime ring leaders of the insurrection back in eighteen ninety eight. He had been walking around in the in the streets. There's still some dispute about exactly how he was involved, but he probably was involved in coordinating the shootings and the demonstrations that ended up killing Hi about sixty people. But

he didn't have to do it. I can't imagine that he was being paid very much. But he willingly came into this case and he defended Adams and Sawyer and took their case to the US Supreme Court. So again that was very surprising to me. Scott's attorney did not file an appeal for him because he I think he realized that the writing was on the wall as far as he was concerned. But yes, the case Adam the Sawyer,

their case did go to the Supreme Court. They did not actually prevail in this Supreme Court because well, the issues that their attorneys were able to raise, they just the Supreme Court wasn't really looking at issues like the advocacy of defense councils, and they weren't looking at racial

issues at that point in time. You know, it wasn't until later, say discotsper of cases and really much later in the nineteen fifties and sixties when when the federal courts really began to take seriously how racial prejudice interfered with due process of law in cases like that. So they did not win in Supreme Court. But there was a very unforeseen surprise that came along, and I think you probably know what I'm referring to. There was the anonymous letter that appeared in the jail.

whenever I want to unwind. I'm on level eight hundred and twenty right now, so so many more levels that I want to achieve. Best Fiends is a mobile puzzle game that everyone can download and play. No matter how much time you have to play. You'll love the great escape Best Fiends offers. There are a lot of cool characters help you solve all the thousands of puzzles, and the more characters you collect, the more challenges you face.

As you keep winning, there are challenging puzzles and new characters added all the time, and with thousands of levels, you'll never ever get bored. Download Best Fiends free today on the App Store or Google Play. That's Friends without the are Best Fiends.

supposedly happened in Alabama a couple of years before. And it also contained some hints that Henry Scott was involved in some kind of conspiracy of black militants that was taking place throughout in different states throughout the South, and they were planning to overthrow white supremacist governments. Now that's it seems kind of far fetched. And the jailers when they read this letter, they didn't they didn't really take it seriously, but they thought, you know, we really need

to look into this. And so what they did they got up with this gentleman who was the director of one of the episcopal churches in Wilmington and one of the he was an African American priest who had been been ministering to all three of these guys while they

were while they were in the jail. So they they talked with this this priest and they they basically goaded him into crying Henry Scott for some information, trying to figure out if there was anything to these these allegation of the other murders and the conspiracy and so forth. And we don't know exactly what the priests said to

Henry Scott. He would be really really need to know how the how that conversation went, but he did talk to Scott and it appears that he he prevailed upon Scott to come clean, essentially, and Scott eventually he as a result of this. He I don't know his motives precisely. But he came around and he did confess to the murders, and again his his story was evasive again, and nobody, nobody really believed that he could be that he was

telling the truth about how it actually happened. But he did come around and he said Adams and Sawyer in fact, were not involved in the murders. He said, I did the murders myself. So when when Scott did that, it's it immediately brought renewed hope to Adams. Adams and Sawyer, but they were still under sentence of death, and they were only a few weeks away being hanged. So their attorneys then went in overdrive and they started a new legal proceeding to try to try to save their lives.

But his attorneys, you know, like I said, they really went into overdrive and they prepared an clemency petition that was signed by some of the some of the most influential folks in Wilmington's political and financial communities, including the very head ring leader of the insurrection. His name was Albert Moore Waddell, and this is a really infamous name in North Carolina days because he's now known as the man who back in eighteen ninety eight, he gave a

speech that inspired the insurrection. In the riot and I'll give you the quote, although it is kind of shocking, he said, we were we will take over the city, even if we have to choke the kpe Fier River with Negro carcasses, which is a very crude thing to say. And it resulted in, as I said, about sixty people

being shot dead in the streets. But Alfred More Waddell, who gave that speech and became the mayor of Wilmington as a result of the insurrection, he actually signed the clemency petition for Sawyer at Adams, which was really astounding to me. I was very surprised when I saw that. And it took a lot of It took a lot of cajoling and some personal visits from the attorneys and several other people who were influential in Wilmington at the time. They met with Theodore is Well, and it took him

several months to come around, but he did. He commuted the sentences of Adams and Sawyer commuted them from death to life in prison. Mister Scott meanwhile, had actually been his death sentence had been carried out. He was hanged in he it was a pretty pretty dramatic scene. In fact, he uh, just a few hours before he was hanged, he finally put his put his signature on the written confession,

which exonerated out of Sawyer. So it was the timing was just about as close as you could you could make it right.

as I said, convicted of killing white men. And this is this is arguable one way or the other, but you know, the conditions, as tough as they were, they probably were better than if they had been sent to something like a chain gang working on a working on roads or working in a cotton field in North Carolina. But again that's again that's that's debatable about which it's worse.

But one advantage is that because they were in the federal prison system, everywhere they went and everything they did was actually document in the in the prison files and port files, which I was I count myself fortunate that I was able to find them, because they're still in the National archives these days, and I was able to find the letters that they wrote and who they communicated with.

And because of that, I know that even though they were even though they were in prison, they didn't give up on the possibility of proving their innocence and they kept it up, and they communicated with folks at Wilmington who were friendly with them, and they worked really hard to get a second presidential clemency proceeding.

a sort of a celebrity activist in a way. But he somebody, somebody introduced him to the fact that these two guys, Adams and Sawyer, were serving a life prison prison term for murders that they apparently didn't commit. And so eventually mister Warner decided that he was gonna he

was going to take an interest in their case. And he had he had money at his disposal, and he had attorneys that he was working with, and so mister Warner sent his attorneys down down to Atlanta to meet with these guys and collect evidence and uh, basically spearhead a second a second clemency edition which they directed to William Howard Taft, who was who succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as at president.

If you see in credits Henry Warner you'll you'll recognize the name and you'll see him there.

prominent actors in it. James Mason was in it and Dorothy Dandridge, who was a emerging as one of the one of the better known actresses of the day. But they just they changed all the details of the case.

Whereas the actual actual case occurred on board of the sailing vessel in the year nineteen oh five, they updated the story to take place on a on a ship in the present day being the nineteen fifties, and had it take place in the Pacific Ocean off off New Zealand on board a liberty ship that had a crew of thirty people on it, which was completely different from

what actually happened. And I mentioned Dorothy Dandridge. She was one of the stars of the movie, and she was she played this sort of sort of exotic, sexually alluring New Zealand Maori character who played the role of the temptress temptress, and it added a whole bunch of romantic tension in the story, whereas there were no there were no women on either of those ships in the real story,

so that was completely embedded. I had to guess that when the filmmakers wrote the street play, they were probably basing it on some some detected stories that were written for magazines back in the nineteen thirties that really that were ostensibly based on the on the true story, but they embellished a lot of details. But anyway, this film that they made in the nineteen fifties did not do well. It was a critical disappointment and a commercial plot. People

just thought it was laurid. It was over dramatic, and it was just kind of silly, which is it's regretful because it really did not do justice in the history of the events at all. And that's really my purpose in writing this book is to go back and really really document the events as they occurred, because I think in this case, truth is much more interesting than the fiction.

people going against type in this. But as time progressed as well, it seemed that I wouldn't say a dramatic change, but there were changes in the attitude and in society in general that would seem to have helped the future of Adams and his partner Sawyer.

were released from prison. That happened in nineteen twelve, after they had then they'd served more than six years behind bars, and they actually moved to New York where they took they had jobs with mister Wardour and his attorney, the guys had who had been so influential in getting them getting clemency right entirely clear on where they went to that Unfortunately, the record kind of the records sort of sort of go cold on where they moved to and where they live after that, but we know they got

out of they got out of prison. And it's again, I mean, I just have to say that it really was a striking turn of events for that for that time period. We might ask, you know, why why did these people act against type? Why did they Why why did they put forth so much effort to correct this injustice? Why did they why did they work in favor of these black guys who had been accused of murdering white people.

Yet you might you might be tempted to say, well, it was just it was all altruistic on their part, or they just felt it was appropriate to you know, be be kind and merciful and so forth. I suspect it's also because by nineteen oh five and nineteen ten, just you know, Jim Crow by that time had become so entrenched and white supremacy had been so well established in the South that the white establishment by that time really didn't did not feel that they were under threat

in any way. They were firmly in control, and so you know, maybe they could they could afford to be to be merciful in a few cases like this sort of as a as a means of maybe trying to be benevolent and trying to express a sense of nobless oblige in a few a few cases like that. So it might be it might be tempting to overstate, you know, whether this, whether this really reflects any type any kind

of benevolence on their part. But you know, if nothing else, you know, the reason I wrote this book is to, you know, provide a sense of hope, because here's a case of the case that occurred in the very worst of times, in the very worst of places as far as race relations, and how the very worst of times as far as race relations are concerned. And here's a case where despite all of the bad history and all of the bad demographics and the bad racial dynamics, justice

was actually able to prevail in a sense. So in these days, especially when we hear we hear nothing but nothing in the media except in your pessimism about race relations and oppression, marginalization of white supremacy and so forth. Well, times were a lot worse back then, and even then

it was possible for justice prevailed. So if there's any message that I'm trying to convey with this book, then that would be that would be it that things were it was possible for things to turn out well, even in far worse times.

to get out of prison. And there were also a couple of times when the ship owners they tried to intervene in the case again and they tried to make up a new story about how, for example, they had been they had been threatened by Adams and Sawyer about that they supposedly had made threats that if they got out of prison, they were going to hunt down and try to assassinate the fellows who owned the ship. And again I think they probably did that just through their

own financial selfishness. They didn't want to take a chance on them getting out of prison because it might cost them money. They'd have to pay pay off their insurers or have to pay those salvage fees that I mentioned earlier. And it was just just a very very transparent, very really really cruel thing for them to do at that stage. But fortunately, fortunately, as you said, the courts were able to able to see through it.

a deposit at a bank. So a very striking difference from the time that they were convicted.

for their saviors and their benefactors yea. And they were quoted to say how grateful they were for the intervention of mister Warner and his attorney, and how they were going to pledge their lives to upright living and so forth, and it's just you get the sense, of course they were expected to be deferential, and they were expected to show gratitude and to be essentially they were expected to be lifelong servants of these guys because they had done

this then great and done them this great, great favor and so forth. And then again that's a little bit a little bit cringe. But the language of the of the news reports is still, you know, steeped in racial racial prejudice to that extent. But at the same time, there's no denying that the outcome was really really exceptional and completely unexpected and positive in the end.

flickering candle in the darkness. It's an example of how given a given an exceptional confluence of circumstances may given the fact that this was a federal case, and because it was a case where the President had a chance to weigh in, and Alfred clemency and frankly because the court procedures were taken more seriously because it was a federal case, and also given the fact that I think this is also important, the victims in the case, the men who were killed, they were not they were not

Wilmington natives. They didn't have families who lived in that area, and they didn't have they didn't have friends were serving on the juries. I mean, if that if that had been the case, then I'm not sure that the reporters in Wilmington would have been as willing to be discerning and listen to the descimote as clearly and point out

the weaknesses in the prosecution case and so forth. But these these guys Adams and Sawyer, I mean, as unlucky as they were to have been on board that ship serving Henry Scott, I mean, they were fortunate in a number of other ways that they were able to gain favor among so many people in Wilmington, and people in Wilmington were willing to listen to them and believe in them. That was very, very lucky and very unusual.

Tell us why you included this little bit of a story and all the help that you had to be able to put this credible story together.

You know, one of the one of the notable, you know, historical tie ins that people associated with Southport is the pirates. It used to be a hunting ground with pirates vaguely the early early seventeen hundreds and so forth, and that's just that's just really neat. It's one of those one of those interesting cultural things that cultural tie ins and

people associated with the area. And you know, when I was a kid, you know, I thought pirate stories were really cool, and so I became familiar with with some of those as I was growing up, and later on I came across this particular story sort of by accident.

This is my second book, and after I finished my first one, I knew that I wanted to write another another true crime book, and it wouldn't I'd like to focus on the area that I know best, which is eastern North Carolina, and so I came across this story

sort of by accent. I came across a historical review article that was written about it back in twenty fourteen, which covered the basic details of the trials and Adams Sawyer and Scott and so forth, and I was really amazed that nobody had ever written a definitive book about it yet. And so that's what I resolved to do, because it was right up my alley, you might.