The Lucky Charm of John Kelsey

Aboard the Arctic whaler, the SS Crow, heading into Baffin Bay, 1906. Finn Quick is still learning the ropes.

 John Kelsey, was a man down on his luck, or so it seemed to Finn, who discovered that the old man was once a prosperous agent of the Central American and Honduras Steamship Line, in which capacity he oversaw the shipping of engineering and surveying equipment to those American companies tasked with finding and building a canal route across the Central American isthmus, via Lake Nicaragua or the Chagres River in Panama; widely viewed as a fool’s errand.   Kelsey, it seemed, was once a man of substance, of considerable wealth, engaged in affairs of consequence, yet aboard The Crow, Kelsey was an unskilled deckhand, doing menial chores, treated in many ways like a greenhorn or a cabin boy, except in one important respect, he was always addressed as Mister Kelsey, never Master or Boy, and in this manner given the same respect as the Mates and Captain. 

After dinner, in the Captain’s quarters, the Doctor and the Skipper were indulging in a bottle of whiskey.  Finn used this moment of quiet reflection to ask the Captain about Mr. Kelsey. 

“Gospellers and mariners, on business of luck, they are contrary minded” said the Skipper, sipping at the cup of whiskey.

As was the case more often than not, Finn was confused and intrigued, in equal measure, by the Skipper’s opening gambit.

“I reckon that the priest sees in luck God’s Hand, whereas the sailor is inclined to blame himself.  But it matters not one whit to the Captain of a vessel, because  – unless there is a clergyman aboard – the Captain  is Gospeller, Chart and Mariner’s Compass.”

Still not understanding the Captain’s circuitry, Finn was keen to get at the matter of Mr. Kelsey, and how and why he was such an esteemed man aboard the Crow, when more than anyone, he seemed to Finn a non-paying passenger.

“He is Saint Nick, and a Black Cat, and the whistling Caulker combined, or the Hot Cross Bun that hangs in the Galley.  He is our lucky charm.”

Doctor Magnus thought this disrespectful to Kelsey, the man, and let the Captain know it, to which the Captain apologized, though in passing, he suggested to the Doctor that he might ask Mr. Kelsey  his own thoughts on the subject, and the Doctor might be surprised at the answer.

“How so?” said Finn, eager to get on with it.

“Well Mr. Kelsey, you see, has only ever traveled on two ships before the Crow, and both ships were shipwrecked!”

“That doesn’t sound very lucky,” said Doctor Magnus.  “Captain, you undermine your own argument.”

“Once is unlucky, I grant you.  Twice is a Shakespearean tragedy, but thrice?  Can you imagine the odds of serving aboard only three ships, and all three were sunk?”

Finn, whose head for math was second to none, deliberated on this question, the answer to which he knew to lie in statistics.  Statistics, of course, were grounded in facts.  He would need shipping records from Lloyd’s Register in London, and a credible way to infer the number of mariners that had sailed upon the registered vessels to make an inference, but – alas – he was at sea with men adept at argument without facts, and at sea there was no conclusion to any deliberations that required facts not available in the ship’s library or in the captain’s log.

“The odds might be quite high, if he were the cause of the shipwrecks, “ said Finn.

“True, but he has only ever served in passive roles,” said the Skipper, “once as a steward upon a package ship heading from Halifax to Portland, wrecked off the Coast of Maine. Once as an owner’s agent, a steamship headed from New York to Central America.  In both cases he was blameless. It was bad luck, I tell you.”

Doctor Magnus conceded the point; however, it stirred him in another direction. “I believe we are stepping into the realm of philosophy here, and the British empiricist, David Hume.”

“Scottish,” said Skipper.  The great man was a Scot.”

“Great Scott!” said Finn, quite proud of his wit, which went by unnoticed.

“As may be,” said the Doctor with a dismissive wave at the Captain, “but I am thinking Hume and his black swan.  Here, let me test it out on Finn.”   Finn was game for this thought experiment.

“If you are traveling on a river, and saw one, two, three swans, all white, what color would you expect the next swan, the one around the bend in the river, to be?”

“White, of course!”

“And if a hundred swans were white?  The next would be…”

“The whitest of whites, a brilliant dazzling white!”

“So as the number of perceived and individual incidents of White Swans increases, the probability of the next one being white, increases!”

So, the more often a man experiences a shipwreck, the more often he will do so?

Yes, I believe that is true. 

“But let’s think on the Black Swan, which also exists.

“No, surely not!”

Finn had never seen a swan, black or white, but had read about them in books, and had seen etchings of the beautiful creatures, drifting along on still waters.  The swan was white, by definition, he thought.

“Yes.  Black swans exist, primarily in the antipodes, but there are a pair in the Cincinnati Zoo and the King of England is said to have a clipped brace, resident on the Thames, in the borough of Richmond.  They are very valuable…. But I digress.  My point, dear boy… is that the more white swans you see, the more likely the very next swan will be a black swan.”

“That’s absurd,” said the Skipper, by now at sea in a war of words, the origins of which were lost in the glass of whiskey and time… something to do with Mr. Kelsey, he vaguely remembered.

“Not at all, and the more often the theorem is wrong, the more likely it will be proved true at the next test of the proposition.”

Finn found this quite fascinating, but unlike the Captain and Doctor Magnus, he was tying things back to Mr. Kelsey, whom he found much more interesting than the Scottish philosopher, Hume, and his swans, white or black. “Doctor Magnus, are you saying that Doctor Kelsey’s experience therefore sets us up for a Black Swan… which in this case would be an entirely uneventful voyage, since his two prior ships experienced a one-and-done wreckage?

At this point, Doctor Magnus presumed that he had enough of the ship’s whiskey, which accounted for his not thinking straight; he meant to disprove the Captain’s theory regarding Kelsey but had done the opposite.  The Captain too seemed – all at sea – because the probability of the black swan seemed so preposterously low that it could only mean one thing: they were doomed.   The next swan must be white!  The series would continue, and it was inevitable.  Kelsey would wreck the Crow, just as he had the two prior vessels upon which he had served.    The Captain felt very uneasy at the prospect of throwing old Kelsey overboard as a reincarnation of Jonah and sensibly sensed that it might do him good to lay off the whiskey for a while.

So, was Kelsey down on his luck?  Finn felt the entire discussion had missed the mark since it was not directed at the question of Kelsey’s luck, but at that of the Crow.  He would have to talk directly to Mr. Kelsey, since the Captain and the Doctor were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee at this hour. 

Finn left the Captain and Doctor at one another’s throat in a whiskey-fueled argument, this time regarding the number of fairies on the head of a pin, or something of that ilk.  Finn wend from the Captain’s cabin, directly up to the wheelhouse, to check the ship’s bearing, and was pleased to find the able seaman, Ben Bingley, at the helm, attentive and alert, but no sign of the first or second mate.

“Mr. Bingley is there a man on Ice watch?” said Finn.

“Aye Captain,” said Ben.  It was late, Finn caught the man off guard, the mistake understandable, but Ben looked embarrassed that he’d mistaken the greenhorn for the Captain.  “Aye Finn, Danny’s in the crow’s nest.  If you look you can see his pipe glowing under is hat.”

“Not my business Mr. Bingley, but how can Mr. Rocca see ahead in the dark, if his pipe is glowing bright beneath his nose and outshining the moon?”

“Ooh, I don’t know bout that Master Quick.  Captain’s never said anything about the matter.”

“I guess we’re lucky we haven’t bumped into an iceberg or a growler, by now,” said Finn.

“Good night Mr. Bingley!”

“Call me Ben.  I’m only a few years older than you, Finn.  We can be mates aboard the Crow.”

“Good night, Ben,” said Finn.

“Good night, Captain,” said Ben, laughing.