Unknown Sailor

The Unknown Sailor was an anonymous seafarer murdered in September 1786 at Hindhead in Surrey, England.

The Unknown Sailor is first recorded as visiting the Red Lion Inn at Thursley as he was walking back from London to join his ship at Portsmouth on 24 September 1786.

The Hampshire Chronicle, dated 2 October 1786, reads: Sunday last a shocking murder was committed by three sailors, on one of their companions, a seaman also, between Godalming – They nearly severed his head from his body, stripped him quite naked, and threw him into a valley, where he was providentially discovered, soon after the perpetration of the horrid crime, by some countrymen corning over Hind Head, who immediately gave the alarm, when the desperadoes were instantly pursued, and overtaken at the house of Mr. Adams, the Sun, at Rake.

(Moorey 2000: p. 1) It reads: In memory of A generous but unfortunate Sailor Who was barbarously murder'd on Hindhead On September 24th 1786 By three Villains After he had liberally treated them And promised them his farther assistance On the road to Portsmouth.

In 1851 Sir William Erle paid for the erection of a granite Celtic Cross on Gibbet Hill on the site of the scaffold.

One of these (number 25, engraved by Robert Dunkarton) was of Hindhead Hill with the gibbet clearly shown: On his return to London from Spithead in the winter of 1807 Turner was stimulated by the grisly associations of the place to compose some fragmentary verses, and when he made his preliminary drawing for his Liber plate he carefully delineated the forms of the three bodies on the gallows in allusion to the events of 1787.

Turner enjoyed visual punning and he may have intended the form to represent a macabre allusion to his own initial.

[8] The verses include the lines "Hind head thou cloud capt hill" and "Hark the kreaking Irons.

Hark the screaching owl" (Moorey 2000: p. 8) Charles Dickens mentions the murder of the Unknown Sailor in Chapter 22 of his novel Nicholas Nickleby[9] published in 1838–39: They [Nicholas Nickleby and Smike] walked upon the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl; and Smike listened with greedy interest as Nicholas read the inscription upon the stone which, reared upon that wild spot, tells of a murder committed there by night.

Here they pastured their sheep, goats, and cattle and gleaned profits of a trade which they monopolised: making and selling brooms.

Rods supplied by coppices of Spanish chestnut served for handles, the long and wiry heather twigs for brush.

I found the stone two days ago and I scratched my initials on it with the marline spike of my knife.

In The Man from Morocco or Souls In Shadows or The Black (US title) (1926) by Edgar Wallace, part of the story is reused in a modern setting.

Haslemere police find an unidentified sailor, bludgeoned to death on the Portsmouth Road, at the edge of the Devil's Punchbowl.

"Ten years ago," he said, speaking with more than his ordinary deliberation, "the Haslemere police picked up a dying sailor on the Portsmouth Road."