Sherlock Holmes Chase Scene

 While rereading  The Sign of Four (1890) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I was struck by the chase scene on the Thames as Holmes & Co race after Jonathan Small and his crew. This may have been one of the first high-speed chase scenes in English literature. Both boats, steam launches, were reputed to be the fastest crafts on the Thames. The chase cannot compare to, let's say the scene in Bullitt, but it does have a sense of excitement and danger as bullets and poison darts fly. 

What makes this chase scene interesting to me is the number of landmarks Doyle uses. I counted no fewer than eleven. Not being familiar with the Thames I decided to label them tracing the chase. The map can be found at the bottom of the page.

No. 1 7:30 pm Holmes, Watson, and Athelney Jones board a police boat at Westminster Wharf near Westminster Bridge across the river from Lambeth. Today there are boat tours that embark from Westminster Pier and travel downriver. 

... we had been shooting the long series of bridges which span the Thames. Some of these would be Waterloo, Blackfriars,  and London Bridge. 

No. 2 As we passed the City the last rays of the sun were gilding the cross upon the summit of St. Paul’s. St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral was built between 1675-1710. It is one of many London landmarks. I have a photograph of my father in uniform in London during the war standing on Blackfriars Bridge with St. Paul's in the background. 

No. 3 It was twilight before we reached the Tower. The Tower of London is another famous landmark tracing its history back to 1078. William Shakespeare made reference to it a number of times. People were imprisoned in the Tower and some met their deaths there. The last Tower execution was in 1941.

Jacobson's Yard, the fictitious boat repair yard where the Aurora was secreted, was across from the Tower.

Here, Holmes, Watson, and the police waited for the Aurora to show herself. Holmes commented on the workmen leaving at the end of the day. “Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose every one has some little immortal spark concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at them. There is no a priori probability about it. A strange enigma is man!”

They spot the Aurora and the downstream chase begins. We were fairly after her now. The furnaces roared, and the powerful engines whizzed and clanked, like a great metallic heart. Her sharp, steep prow cut through the river-water and sent two rolling waves to right and to left of us. With every throb of the engines we sprang and quivered like a living thing.

A tug and three barges allowed the Aurora to pull ahead two-hundred yards. 

No. 4 Our boilers were strained to the utmost... We had shot through the Pool... The Pool of London is a stretch of the River Thames from London Bridge to below Limehouse. This was as far upriver as large sea-going vessels might travel.

No. 5 ... past the West India Docks... A series of three docks dating back to 1802.

No. 6 ... down the long Deptford Reach ... The strait between the two bends in the river.

No. 7 ... and up again after rounding the Isle of Dogs. A large peninsula formed by the bend in the Thames. It had been an important centre of trade.

No. 8 At Greenwich we were about three hundred paces behind them. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving the name to the Greenwich meridian (0°longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time.

No. 9  At Blackwall we could not have been more than two hundred and fifty. Blackwall on the north bank before the bend in the river. Until 1987, Blackwall was the centre of shipbuilding and repair. 

Steadily we drew in upon them, yard by yard. In the silence of the night we could hear the panting and clanking of their machinery.

No. 10 ... with Barking Level upon one side ... At the time it was a largely uninhabited area of the north bank below the Albert Dock.

No. 11 ... and the melancholy Plumstead Marshes upon the other ... Uninhabited low-land in the north-eastern part of Woolwich. The land was not particularly swampy but its tendency to flood on very high tides meant that the land was unstable and it remained mainly open and unused right up until the 1960s.

... the wooden-legged man threw himself upon the rudder and put it hard down, so that his boat made straight in for the southern bank, while we shot past her stern, only clearing her by a few feet. We were round after her in an instant, but she was already nearly at the bank. It was a wild and desolate place, where the moon glimmered upon a wide expanse of marsh-land, with pools of stagnant water and beds of decaying vegetation. The launch with a dull thud ran up upon the mud-bank, with her bow in the air and her stern flush with the water. The fugitive sprang out, but his stump instantly sank its whole length into the sodden soil. In vain he struggled and writhed.

I calculate that from the Tower to the marsh by boat is about 14.5 km. or 9 miles. According to Small, he started dumping the Agra treasure about halfway through the chase.

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