Captain Henry Kendall
"The Main Who Caught Dr. Crippen"

By Richard Taylor

This article by NHCRA secretary Richard Taylor was first published in The Review, issue number 20.3, Winter 2007. It led to an association member who has Capt Kendall’s medals completing the story behind those awards. He had not previously realised the recipient was the man who caught Dr Crippen, a clear illustration of the value of The Review to members.

THE transatlantic pursuit in 1910 of the so-called ‘London cellar murderer’, Dr Crippen, remains one of the most extraordinary episodes in British criminal history – and for a brief but memorable period a mercantile master was a central player in the media sensation.

Captain Henry George Kendall, who achieved world-wide fame for his part in the arrest of Hawley Harvey Click Here Crippen, lived to the age of 91, dying on 29 November 1965. About five years before that he signed the back of a portrait photo of himself: “The man who caught Dr Crippen, 1910, Yours sincerely, H G Kendall, Commander, RD, RNR 18/7/60.” When this postcard-sized photo appeared on eBay it was, for me, a “must have” purchase.

Kendall, born in January 1874, began his career in 1888 in sailing ships. In June 1901 he survived a shipwreck on the Newfoundland coast when he was an officer in the LUSITANIA, an earlier ship than the celebrated liner which was torpedoed and sunk during the First World War. Two years later he worked with Marconi to develop ship-to-shore radio before getting his first command in 1908. In another two years he was appointed captain of the Canadian Pacific Line’s 7,207-ton MONTROSE and within months had become famous for his role in the arrest of Dr Crippen – the first time wireless had been used to capture a criminal.

The MONTROSE, launched in 1897, had been Boer War Transport No 93 and the senior officers serving in her at the turn of the century earned Transport Medals. The year before the Crippen incident her owners, Elder Dempster’s Beaver Line, were in financial difficulties so she was sold to Canadian Pacific. She was one of very few of the Canadian company’s liners fitted with a Marconi wireless so Kendall was able to wire back to the UK with information about Crippen and his companion.

The observant Kendall had noticed that two of his passengers, a “Mr Robinson” and his “son”, were behaving Click Here in an over-familiar fashion. Suspecting that the pair were Crippen and his mistress Ethel le Neve, posing as a boy, the captain sent the signal that led to a dramatic transatlantic chase. His message alerted Scotland Yard who on 23 July 1910 despatched Inspector Walter Dew to Canada on a faster ship, the White Star Line’s LAURENTIC.

The captain said later in an interview: “I happened to glance through the porthole of my cabin and behind a lifeboat I saw two men. One was squeezing the other’s hand. I walked along the boat deck and got into conversation with the elder man. I noticed there was a mark on his nose from wearing spectacles, that he had only recently shaved off a moustache, and that he was growing a beard. The young fellow was very reserved and I remarked about his cough.” To get a closer look, he invited the two to his table for dinner and was able to compare the suspects to pictures in a newspaper that he had on board.

After the wireless message, Dew quickly boarded the LAURENTIC which overhauled the MONTROSE so the inspector was waiting for his quarry at Father Point on the St Lawrence. Posing as a pilot, he boarded the MONTROSE and arrested Crippen who was returned to England where he was hanged on 23 November 1910 for the murder of his actress wife, Cora, whose body he had dismembered.

On 28 May 1914 Kendall was appointed captain of the 14,000-ton EMPRESS OF IRELAND which a month later sank in Canada's St Lawrence River after colliding at 2am with the STORSTAD, a Norwegian coal freighter with an ice-breaking bow. The EMPRESS, with 1,477 people on board, was out of Quebec bound for Liverpool. The two ships were head to head when a fog bank rolled on to the river and the STORSTAD changed position, believing the EMPRESS to be on the port side. This turned the freighter into the side of the larger ship, which was passing on the starboard side. The damage - a 350 square foot hole - was catastrophic and the EMPRESS sank in only 14 minutes with the loss of 1,012 lives. More passengers, but fewer crew, perished in this tragedy than in the TITANIC two years earlier.

In the accident, which still ranks as Canada’s worst maritime disaster, Kendall was thrown from the bridge as the ship keeled over. He survived and was subsequently cleared of all blame. Three months after the EMPRESS sank, the First World War broke out so the disaster, despite its magnitude, was largely forgotten in the maelstrom that followed. The loss of the EMPRESS did not have the drama of the TITANIC’s iceberg collision, nor did the ship carry millionaires and aristocrats. Nevertheless, Candian Pacific erected a memorial on the south bank of the St Lawrence River, near Father Point. Grace Hanagan Martyn, said to be the last survivor of the tragedy, died on 15 May 1995. In April 1998 Quebec’s provincial government declared the remains of the EMPRESS an historic site, which also benefits under Canada’s merchant marine legislation.

After the EMPRESS incident, Kendall was posted to Antwerp as Canadian Pacific’s marine superintendent. There he found his old ship, the MONTROSE, which had no coal, and another Canadian liner, the MONTREAL, whose engines were in pieces for overhaul, were both laid up. As the Germans invaded Belgium, the British consulate in Antwerp was besieged by around 600 refugees. Kendall worked with the consul, Sir Cecil Hertslet, on a plan to rescue them by using the MONTROSE to tow the MONTREAL out of the port and to England. Kendall put the MONTROSE alongside the MONTREAL to take on board her coal and other stores. With MONTROSE leading and two tugs with MONTREAL following, they went down the Scheldt to Flushing. There MONTROSE took the two lines from the tugs and carried on with the MONTREAL and her refugees in tow to the Thames estuary. MONTROSE was bought by the Admiralty on 20 October 1914 for conversion as a blockship for Dover harbour. In fact, she suffered an even more ignominious end when she broke loose from her anchorage in the Thames and was wrecked on the Goodwins in December 1914.

Kendall later joined the crew of the 17,515-ton armed merchant cruiser HMS CALGARIAN and served with her until 1918, during which time he was mentioned in despatches on several occasions. On 1 March 1918 the CALGARIAN was escorting a large westbound convoy through the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland. She was also carrying a large number of naval ratings who were being transferred to other stations. At 4.42pm off Rathlin Island she was attacked by U-19 which fired two torpedoes that struck her amidships on the port side. Despite frantic efforts by warships to get her under tow, she was hit at 5.35pm by two further torpedoes; about twenty-five minutes later she heeled over and sank. Two officers and forty-seven ratings were lost but Kendall again survived. He went on to serve as a King’s Messenger before being appointed Commodore of Convoys.

When the war ended he was appointed Canadian Pacific’s marine superintendent at Southampton and he remained there until he moved to a similar position in London in 1924. He lived for many years in Crosby, Liverpool, but died in a London nursing home.