Maritime Murder by Steve Vernon Page B

raised himself on voyages from the port of New Orleans to Boston, London, and as far as the Black Sea. He was a man at home upon the water, and he valued the land as nothing more than a place to spend his earnings.
    Being what he considered a “practical thinking man,” he kept acquaintance with women in all of his many ports, including a wife in Dublin, Ireland, and a steady Canadian girlfriend who was known as Flora MacQuarrie and lived her days in Charlottetown, pei . Oddly enough, that quiet bit of marital indiscretion would sadly prove to be the downfall of George Dowey.

The Murder
    The night of November 26 , 1868 , found George Dowey in Flora MacQuarrie’s company. They had been drinking gin all night long; the alcohol was burning in their systems, and the “gin sweats” and the heat of the closed room had driven them out to the street to cool off in the evening breeze.
    George was leaning on and pumping the heavy iron pump outside the jailhouse on Pownal Square (now known as Connaught Square) so that Flora might refresh herself with a splash of cold well water, when John Cullen stepped out into the street and boldly approached the two.
    John Cullen was a sailor out of Liverpool, England, and was as much an admirer of women as George Dowey professed to be. Cullen had already approached Flora several times throughout the run of the evening with lewd suggestions that the two of them might ditch George and run off together for a mutual bedroom frolic.
    Being that Flora was as much a “worldly spirit” as either John Cullen or George Dowey, this suggestion was not as outlandish as it might sound. Indeed, she had spent a lot of indiscrete and intimate moments with the good Mr. Cullen while Dowey was safely away to sea. But tonight she was with George Dowey, and she did not take kindly to John Cullen’s continued insistence that she had somehow chosen the wrong man to partner with that night.
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” Flora said, “and I’m resting them on George Dowey tonight.”
    â€œYou can just wait your turn,” Dowey jeered. “And you might want to find yourself a comfortable spot to wait in. Somewhere far away from here.”
    George Dowey took umbrage to Cullen’s persistent advances, and John Cullen, for his part, took deep umbrage to Flora’s reluctance to join him that evening—which is a fancy way of telling you that John Cullen took a wild, bare-knuckled swing at Dowey’s chin. George Dowey, in turn, pulled a long fishing knife from the beaded leather sheath dangling at his belt, and drove that well-honed knife blade deep into John Cullen’s heart.
    In the crowded streets of Charlottetown, directly outside the jailhouse, it did not take much time for the long arm of the law to arrive.
    â€œIs he dead?” Flora asked.
    â€œI think he is,” Dowey replied, drawing the knife from out of Cullen’s chest. “For the knife went into him up to the handle.” Dowey calmly wiped the blood off the knife blade before handing the weapon, hilt first, over to the Charlottetown police officer.
    â€œI’m done with this for now,” he told the officer. “I’ll have it back when the court has its say.” It turns out George Dowey would have himself an awfully long wait in the Charlottetown jail.

The Trial
    In March of the next year, George Dowey was brought to trial. Solicitor General Edward Palmer, Dowey’s lawyer, believed that he could get the murder charge knocked down to manslaughter, based on the fact that Cullen had made the first hostile move. This would still earn Dowey some time in jail, but it would definitely remove the possibility of an execution.
    However, the tactic backfired. The delay allowed time for Flora to discover the truth about Dowey’s wife and children living in Dublin. Flora did not take kindly to Dowey concealing this small bit of information from her