March 8, 2009
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| The Durban Castle Steamship |
The Steward, the Steamship and the Missing Starlet
by Marilyn Z. Tomlins
At noon, shining Chevrolets and Fords began pulling up
beside the large white steamship with the lavender hull and the black and red
funnel anchored along the quayside.
From the automobiles stepped middle-aged ladies in frumpy
summer frocks, comfortable shoes and small feathered hats, all clutching purses
in which were the medication they were certain they would need for seasickness
on the 14-day voyage that lay ahead.
At the ladies' sides were their husbands; men who were
also no longer in their prime wearing their double-breasted suits cut by London
or New York's best tailors and their fedoras bought in Paris or Rome.
The husbands dropped copper coins into the hands of small
brown-skinned men in tattered clothing, many of them barefoot; these were the
porters who would carry the portmanteaux, the suitcases and the hat-boxes up the
gangplank, but who would go no further than the ship's reception lounge.
This was Cape Town, capital city and main port of the
British Colony of South Africa, and it was 1947 Friday, October 10 - and
although apartheid, the system of racial segregation that would later
cast a cloud over what a seafarer had once called "the fairest Cape of all" had
not yet been made law, every man whose skin was darker than a cappuccino knew
his place. And his place was not on the Durban Castle, set to sail to
Southampton, England, at the strike of four with her 1,300 passengers of whom
just 57 were in first-class.
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| Gay Gibson |
One of the first-class passengers, Eileen Isabella Ronnie
Gibson, 21, arrived in a Ford cab driven by a Lymie, the derogatory name
the Afrikaners had bestowed on British immigrants. The Afrikaners were the
descendants of Dutch, French and German immigrants and the ones who governed the
colony. The origin of the name Lymie is not known but some say that it
derives from the limes the British soldiers ate when they were based in Africa
believing that these would prevent them getting syphilis. Today this derogatory
name is used globally by English speakers when wishing to insult an opponent.
The young woman, a vivacious redhead, asked the cab driver
to grab her a porter. With a large portmanteau as well as a large suitcase and
hat-box, she was not exactly travelling light, but she was travelling towards
what she believed was a future of glitz and big bucks.
Gay, to use her professional name, was an actress; having
moved from her native England not all that many months previously, she'd been
acting with a Johannesburg-based theatrical company. She was off to London with
a promise of a West End contract. Asked, when she was still only 17, whether she
had a young man, she had replied: "Oh no, all I want to do is go on the stage
and be an actress."
It was just after 3 p.m., the African sun hot and high
over the flat-topped Table Mountain beyond the harbor, when Gay trotted up the
gangplank. At the top stood one of the ships' deck stewards. His job it was to
welcome the passengers on board and to direct them to their cabins after they
had produced their tickets.
James Camb Jimmy to his wife and family, Don James after
Don Juan to his fellow crew members, and by his own admission a sailor
with a girl on every ship and in every port noticed Gay instantly. "She's
mine!" he supposedly whispered to another steward standing beside him.
"Her appearance was fairly striking, small and slightly
plump, with deep auburn hair and the alabaster skin that accompanies it.
Somewhat flashily dressed, she was what I always describe as a bit tarty'," a
female passenger would years later describe her.
When at 4 p.m. sharp the 17,382-ton, 594-foot (181m) ship,
built in 1938 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the British Union Castle
Steamship Line, lifted its anchor, Gay began unpacking.
She was in a single cabin numbered 126 on the port side of
B Deck or as it was known on the ship, the Shade Deck. The cabin had a porthole
and a wash-basin but no toilet or bathroom: these were across the corridor; men
and women having separate amenities. Also on the Shade Deck were a hairdressing
salon, souvenir and tobacco shop, the doctor's surgery and dispensary, as well
as the pursers' and stewards' offices.
All the crew members were white and British nationals. Not
employing non-Brits was to ensure that the crew would always be white; the
company officially abhorred the racism of South Africa its ships, all named
after cities, sailed between Britain and South Africa, but business was business
and no-one wanted to displease the Afrikaners. A year later, in 1948, the
British Parliament would heatedly debate a case of racial discrimination on the
Durban Castle. That year, the ship had arrived in Cape Town on Saturday,
October 23, with racially segregated amenities. Three African male passengers,
two of them preachers, had not been allowed to use the white bathrooms
and toilets; they had been given a bathroom and toilet of their own, duly marked
"For Non-Europeans Only." Non-European was the South African
classification term for a person of color; European having been that of a
white.
On the afternoon that Gay was unpacking her bags, the
ship's master was Captain Arthur Patey, a tall, slim man. He didn't envisage a
troubled voyage; the Atlantic Ocean would be calm, the company's weather people
had informed him. There were also only one passenger who would need a little
extra care and attention; Sir Vernon Thomson, the steamship company's chairman
and managing director. Among the company's past passengers had been the Mahatma
Gandhi, the journalist Henry Morton Stanley of "Dr. Livingston I presume" fame
and Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement.
The ship's surgeon was Dr. Anthony Griffiths; previously
he had been a general practitioner in a private North England practice. Eileen
Field was the name of Gay's cabin stewardess.
All crew members wore navy-blue uniforms pants, jackets,
shirts, ties and caps but once the ship reached the Equator all would be
allowed to take off their jackets and ties and strip down to white short-sleeved
shirts and plimsolls.
Behavioral rules were however to remain strict: crew
members were, as the steamship company's rule-book stipulated, to "conduct
themselves in an orderly, faithful, honest and sober manner," and dining-room
staff had to assemble in the chief purser's office before meal times and hold
out their hands to show that their nails were not grimy.
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First-class deck
steward James Camb
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Camb, as first-class deck steward, worked the Promenade
Deck, two up from the Shade Deck. He served tea, coffee and alcoholic drinks on
the sun-deck beside the swimming pool as well as in the lounge, the library and
in the smoking room. He also organized card games and saw to it that no-one
ended up a lone wall-flower at tea-time or at night when there was dancing in
the lounge. He had his own office to work from and he had an assistant, a deck
man, to do jobs too menial for a deck steward.
"A very personable young man, and quite the best steward
on the ship. Efficient and always cheerful," another of Gay's fellow passengers
said about Camb years later.
He was thirty-one years old; he was born in Lancashire,
Northern England on Sunday, Dec. 24, 1916. He started out in life working in a
shoe factory, like his father. Then he joined the wartime (WW II) merchant
marine and after the war, the Union Castle Steamship Line, working himself up
from galley boy. In May 1946 he had made his first voyage on the Durban
Castle.
Not very tall, but a looker with black hair and black
eyes, and already a married man and the father of a baby daughter, he, indulging
in both on-board and off-shore sexual adventures, had quickly earned his
sobriquet "Don James." At school already he was known as one for the
girls; ungallantly he had made a game of putting his hands up the skirts of the
girls in his class.
Said the same passenger: "He was very charming, a very
good steward. He showed me a picture of his little girl. I was young and much
better looking then than I am now, but he never made one single play for me.
Obviously he was a bit over-sexed, but there was no harm in him."
On the first morning of the voyage that will take the ship
up the west coast of Africa to its home port of Southampton, Gay sat down in the
Promenade Deck's lounge, her silk-stocking legs crossed at her knees. She called
Camb over; she wanted rum. The two started to chat. "She told me about a man
named Charles. She told me that she was very fond of him, but possible
complications may have set in," he would recall when the time had come to defend
himself. He asked her whether she was pregnant. "You don't mean to tell me you
are going to have a baby?" he said were his exact words. She told him that it
was too soon to know. "So why don't you marry him?" he asked her. Her reply was
short and to the point. "He's married."
What Camb did not know because Gay did not tell him was
that Charles had paid her passage. Charles Schwentafsky was part of her past,
the past that she hoped the forthcoming glitz and big bucks would forever
eliminate.
Gay Gibson was born in Jamalpur, India, in June 1926 where
her British wanderer father worked as a blacksmith for the East India Railway.
In 1943, aged 17 and a chubby schoolgirl in wartime England, she joined a tap
dancing troop, The Top Hats Gay Dancing Company. (Gay meaning jolly.) Always
described by the troop's manager as a "gay young thing," she soon adopted the
name Gay for the stage.
After the war, 21 years old and having lost some of her
puppy fat, she set off by ship the Durban Castle's sister ship, the Carnavon Castle for South Africa with her mother to join her father who
was already living in Durban. The two women sailed steerage class as immigrants
on assisted passage: At that time there was an influx of demobilized British
serviceman to the colonies; South Africa, North and South Rhodesia (today Zambia
and Zimbabwe), Kenya, Tanganyika (today Tanzania), Australia and New Zealand.
First in Durban and then in Johannesburg, she joined small
theatrical companies. Looking older than her age, she always played a femme
fatale. Critics often slammed her acting as wooden, therefore despite her
dreams, she was not hailed as Hollywood's next great star.
Speaking about her later, those who knew her those years
in South Africa said that she was never without a boyfriend. A woman who was on
stage with her said: "She was attractive enough for all the men to go round her
like bees round a honeycomb. Her response was very, very flirtatious, as any
pretty girl's would be, and perhaps more so as she was sexually experienced.
South African girls in those days were either good or bad ... She was crazy
about men. She was always throwing her arms round them, or talking to them, or
propositioning them."
One of the men she had thus propositioned, an amateur
actor named Mike Abel, liked her easy approach to sex. On the day that he had
first met her he told a friend: "I bet you a dollar I will have her by the end
of the week".
So Abel did, but the relationship soon ended.
And it ended very openly.
Gay was overheard by the rest of the theatrical troupe
accusing Abel of having made her pregnant. The argument became violent on her
side; she kicked him and tried to scratch his face. Then she fell down in a
faint. "Come on, you bitch, you are acting!" he shouted at her and walked off.
She picked herself up after a few minutes of lying motionless on the floor and
walked off as well.
Fainting was something she did. Whenever something or
someone upset or excited her, she slid to the floor. Like Abel, all believed
that it was an act to draw attention to herself. But a few did wonder whether
she might not be suffering from the after-effects of an undetected bout of
malaria or perhaps from tuberculosis; she was often very wheezy.
Polish-born Charles Schwentafsky had arrived in South
Africa via Kenya. Later a friend of his would sum his life up as one of "to put
it crudely, screwing. It wasn't his fault, because the girls literally threw
themselves at him. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he was a charmer with a
becoming smile, very sexy, penetrating eyes, blond hair."
He also had a beguiling bedside manner, always sending
flowers before and jewelry after.
As had happened with Abel, Gay also claimed that he had
made her pregnant. He, also like Abel, denied it, telling all who cared to
listen that he had not even had sex with her. "I promise you she didn't appeal
to me sexually one little bit," he would say.
But he wanted her out of the way all the same and when she
bemoaned the fact that she did not have the £500 needed for a passage to
England, he gave her the money.
Romancing the Starlet
For the first seven days of the sea voyage north, Camb and
Gay played a kind of musical chairs of the emotions.
Each morning she sat down in the Promenade Deck's lounge.
She always sat at the same table. He was always waiting with a glass of rum for
her.
He would later say: "Perhaps it was an unlucky chance for
both of us that she was the only attractive young woman on my deck. The first
morning she asked for a drink but in such a way that I felt instinctively that I
need not be lonely on the 14-day voyage back to Southampton.
"She had the trick of tucking her long legs under the
chair, clasping her knees with her hands and throwing back her head as she
spoke. I found myself watching her sitting in this quiet corner of the lounge as
I was serving drinks to other passengers. When the lounge filled just before
dinner we would steal glances across the crowded tables. When she was chatting
to friends she had made on board, I felt her eyes following me."
She kept on asking him to bring her a late-night cup of
tea to her cabin. He never himself took the tray to her cabin, but always sent
another steward. On her eighth morning on board Friday, October 17 - she
loudly reprimanded him for having forgotten about her request for the late-night
cup of tea.
That night, the ship off the coast of Sierra Leone, the
air was hot and humid. In the lounge some of the passengers were enjoying
themselves dancing to the ship's band playing Glen Miller. Gay sat at her usual
table. Alone. Three times she called Camb to bring her rum. When she took to the
floor, which wasn't often, there was not an eye in the lounge that was not on
her. She wore a clinging off-the-shoulder black evening gown and high-heeled
silver shoes. "A pretty red-head but a very excitable girl," one of her
ex-boyfriends would also later describe her.
That night twirling in the arms of the husbands of her
fellow female passengers to "In the Mood," beads of perspiration formed on her
perfectly made-up face; she was in a high state of excitement.
Camb, although he was rushing around serving drinks, did
not fail to notice. "I have a bone to pick with you, and a big bone at that," he
was heard to say to her.
"Why?" she asked
The darkness of the night not cooling the air, some
passengers discussed going for a swim. Gay said that she was going to join them.
She went down to her cabin to get her swimsuit. A few minutes later she was back
in the lounge; she couldn't find her swimsuit, she said. Meanwhile, the plan to
go swimming had been abandoned and only a handful of men were still in the
lounge; their womenfolk having gone to bed. The band had packed up for the
night. Camb asked Gay if she wanted another rum. "I've got a good mind to bring
one down to your cabin and to join you there," he told her.
"Please yourself. It's up to you," she replied.
Taking their drinks with them, she and the men went out on
to the deck hoping it would be cooler there.
At 12:45 a.m. the lounge deserted and in semi-darkness, a
steward named Bill Pott joined Camb in the Promenade Deck's pantry; the deck
steward was washing, drying and packing away glasses. Pott, Camb's cabin mate,
offered to help but he was told that it would not be necessary. "Go down to the
cabin, I won't be long," said Camb.
Pott having left, Camb started to carry in deckchairs that
had been left out on the deck. He saw Gay leaning over the rail, a glass in one
hand and a cigarette in the other. Beside her stood her table companion, a man
named Frank Hopwood, an official from the steamship company, on his way back to
England after a holiday in Cape Town. They were chatting.
Not very many minutes later Camb, back in the pantry, saw
Gay walking past. She was walking in the direction of the elevator; to retire
for the night obviously.
But no; very quickly she was back on deck. The ship's
maintenance man, Bill Conway, saw her leaning over the rail; Hopwood had gone to
bed. Conway walked up to Gay and she told him that it was too hot down below to
sleep. After a while she slowly walked off, back to the lounge and towards the
elevator.
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| First-Class Cabin on the
Durban Castle |
What happened next only Camb knew. He would later say that
shortly before one o'clock he had gone down to her cabin. He knocked but the
door remained closed. He then returned to the Promenade Deck; he thought that
Gay had stepped out on the deck yet again, so he went to have a look. The deck
was deserted. He waited an hour and went downstairs to Cabin 126 again. He
knocked and felt the knob; it turned. It was going on two in the morning. He
walked into the cabin and closed the door behind him.
Gay was wearing a yellow quilted dressing gown and
slippers. The seductive black evening gown hung on a clothes hanger. She was
flushed; she had had three rums in the lounge and another one or two out on the
deck. Camb had another with him. She took it and for a while she sipped it, then
she put the glass down on the night table and lay down on the bed. So did Camb.
"As I pulled her towards me and kissed the nape of her
neck, I had second thoughts about the unlocked cabin door. She smiled and said,
It doesn't matter no-one will come in. We will be quite safe'," he would
remember.
Finally, the two had stopped playing musical chairs of the
emotions; what was to follow would be for real.
When day came Saturday, October 18 Gay Gibson was
nowhere to be found. Eileen Field, her cabin's stewardess said that her
nightgown, a pair of black silk pajamas and her slippers were gone too. Her
black evening gown still hung on the clothes hanger. There was no sign of a
struggle in the cabin; the bed had been slept in as a dent in the pillow and a
yellow stain on the bottom sheet bore witness.
Had she fallen overboard? Had she jumped overboard? Had
she been pushed overboard?
At 9:45 a.m. a message was broadcast over the ship's
loudspeakers. "A first-class lady passenger, Miss Eileen Gibson, cannot be
found. Any person who knows where she is or can give any information concerning
her, please report at once to the purser."
Forty-five minutes later Captain Patey turned the ship
round; it was his duty to go and look for a missing passenger. The other
passengers joined him and his crew in leaning over the rails to search the
shark-infested ocean with their eyes and with binoculars. There was no sign of
the red-headed starlet.
The captain also sent an S.O.S. over the ship's radio
alerting other vessels in the area that a passenger was believed lost overboard.
The passenger, female, might be wearing black silk pajamas under a yellow
quilted gown and possibly bedroom slippers.
Camb was calmly preparing the Promenade Deck for the day's
drinking and jovialities. He had started at 6 a.m.
What happened to Gay
Later that morning, while Cabin 126 was being sealed on
orders from the steamship company's London headquarters, Captain Patey called
those crew members connected to the Shade Deck to his office for statements on
their whereabouts and activities the previous night. There were eight such crew
members, Camb being one. The captain also took a statement from passenger
Hopwood.
It appeared from what he heard that the previous night had
been somewhat different from what the crew was used to.
At 2:58 a.m. the silence of the tropical night was broken
by two emergency buzzers sounding simultaneously on
the Shade Deck. One summoned the deck's head steward; the other the deck's
stewardess. Both were off duty and asleep in their cabins, so it would be two
night-watchmen, Jim Murray and Fred Steer, who ran up the stairs to see from
which cabin the urgent calls had come. An indicator board at the top of the
stairs showed that Cabin 126 had buzzed. Murray and Steer rushed to it and saw
that from underneath its door came light. Steer grabbed the knob and it turned
in his hand. He pushed open the door but a man behind it blocked his way. "It's
all right!" said he and slammed the door. He wore blue trousers, a brown leather
belt and the white short-sleeved shirt and plimsolls of a member of the Durban Castle's crew. "That's Camb in there," said Steer to Murray.
Later, back on the Promenade Deck, Murray told another
crew member about the buzzing from Cabin 126 but he did not say that the man in
Gay's cabin was Camb. He did though go down to the cabin yet again just to make
sure that the young woman was indeed all right. It was 3:20 a.m. and the light
in the cabin was still on but the cabin was silent. Having a good idea what was
going on in there, he returned to the Promenade Deck. Steer thought that he
should also go down to the cabin just to make sure that the young starlet really
did not need help. It was 3:40 a.m. and the cabin was not only silent but dark.
The rest of the night had passed calmly.
As for Camb, told that he had been seen in Cabin 126, he
denied that he had been anywhere near it on that night or on any other night.
Having heard all out, Captain Patey wrote in the Durban
Castle's log: 18/10/47. At 11:40 a.m., after hearing statements of the
aforementioned persons (he named them), it was assumed that Miss Gibson
disappeared sometime between 3 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. today and that no reasonable
hope could be entertained of recovering her by retracing ship's course any
further. To confirm this assumption the ship's doctor was consulted and he
agreed. The Master then gave orders to resume the ship's normal course."
But he wanted to have another word with Camb.
Later, Camb would recall: "Stewards exchanged glances.
Officers hurried past us without speaking. Then I felt the ship turning. We were
going back to search. I went down to my quarters for a smoke, to calm my nerves.
I must not crack. I wondered whether I was suspected of having something to do
with Gay's disappearance. I was soon to know the answer. The chief steward told
me that Captain Patey wanted to see me in his cabin immediately."
Elsewhere on the ship, the passengers had no idea that
Camb was under suspicion. So the tarty passenger was nowhere to be found, so
what? One female passenger would recall: "She (Gay) had been seen on deck late
at night by a member of the crew and many people reckoned she had committed
suicide and just jumped overboard. There was no indication that Camb had
anything to do with her disappearance."
Camb though was told that when the ship called in at
Funchal, Madeira, he was to stay on board. It led to him writing a letter to the
captain. He again denied having been to Cabin 126 on that night or on any other
night. He signed off, "I am, sir, yours faithfully. J. Camb, Deck Steward."
Meanwhile, the ship's doctor, Anthony Griffiths, examined
Camb to see if he had any bruises or scratches on his body. He did. He had some
dry scratches on his left collar bone and some fresh scratches on the back of
his right shoulder and another 12 fresh scratches on his right wrist. The doctor
described the wrist scratches as "of an intriguing interest." He said some were
"linear, some crescentic, running more or less horizontally across the inside of
the lower right arm, commencing four to five inches above the wrist."
The examination resulted in a second letter from Camb to
the captain. "The slight scratches on my left shoulder and wrist, also a few on
my right wrist were self-inflicted three or four nights ago whilst in bed. I was
feeling terribly hot and itchy, and I must have scratched myself during sleep. I
remarked during the following morning that I'd damned near scratched myself to
death. Also early last week I broke a small patch of skin on my neck by a too
vigorous rubbing with a very rough towel."
On the night of Friday, October 24, eight days since Gay
Gibson's disappearance and 14 days after having sailed from Cape Town, the Durban Castle docked in Southampton. As discreetly as possible detectives
arrested Camb.
"I believe that you were in Miss Gibson's cabin at about
three o'clock on the morning of the 18th of October," said Detective
Sergeant John Quinlan of the Southampton police to Camb.
"That puts me in a tight spot," he replied.
"Are you in the habit of visiting female passengers in
their cabins?" he was asked later at the Southampton station house.
"Yes," he replied, "some of them like us stewards better
than the passengers."
A few hours later he admitted to having been to Gay
Gibson's cabin on the night of her disappearance. He said that he had wanted to
speak of this before but he waited for a moment when no Union Castle Steamship
Line official would be present.
"I had no right to go to her cabin. But I did go at about
11 o'clock that night to ask her if she wanted some lemonade with her rum."
Then after yet a few hours had passed he asked if what he
would be saying next could be taken down.
"Can you take this down in shorthand? I want to make a
quick and short statement."
He was told to go ahead, his words would be taken down.
"Whilst in the act of sexual intercourse she suddenly
clutched at me, foaming at the mouth. I immediately ceased the act, but she was
very still. I felt for her heartbeats but could not find any. My wife must not
know. If she does I will do away with myself. "
Quinlan replied: "James Camb, I charge you with the
willful murder of Eileen Isabella Ronnie Gibson."
"My God is it as serious as that?" Camb wanted to know.
Ten days after having docked in Southampton, the Durban
Castle was back on her way to South Africa. Cabin 126 did not have a
passenger; it had no bed. The bed had been ripped out; it was needed as evidence
in court. So was the bed's bottom sheet; police pathologists had identified the
yellow mark on it as human urine. No-one had asked Camb to hand over the clothes
he had worn on that Friday night; no-one had in fact even looked at them.
Camb faced capital punishment; if found guilty of willful
murder he would be hanged.
Camb in the Dock
Five months later, on Thursday, March 18, 1948, the
Porthole Murder Case, as the media called it, opened in Winchester Court
House, nine miles (14 kms) away; Southampton Court House had not yet been
rebuilt after WW II bombing. The court room was packed. As the media would
report, most in the public gallery were women. James Camb, all the ladies
agreed, was one very handsome hulk of a man. After the first day, admission
would be by ticket only; one woman who would not be applying for a ticket would
be Margaret, Camb's wife.
In court, Camb pleaded "Not guilty," in a firm voice. He
stuck to the story he had already told the police and his team if lawyers,
Geoffrey Wells, Joshua Casswell and Joseph Molony.
After Gay had told him not to worry about the unlocked
door, she took off her slippers and gown and he saw that she was naked
underneath. He loosened his belt and unbuttoned the fly of his trousers, but he
did not take off his clothes. Sexual intercourse took place in the "missionary
style."
He said: "I lay on top of Miss Gibson. I was face down
her head was in the crook of my left arm, my right arm resting on her hip. Her
right hand was around my neck and her left hand holding my right arm. Just as
intercourse would normally have come to an end she suddenly heaved under me as
though she was gasping for breath, as though she was taking a deep breath
her
body stiffened for a fraction of a second and then relaxed, completely limp
her right arm was still round my neck when she heaved against me. That arm
automatically tightened, and the left arm, holding my right forearm gripped
tightly. All this happened in a matter of seconds."
He added that Gay's nails had at first dug into his flesh
then her whole body had stiffened in his arms and her back had arched in a
violent spasm.
"She heaved a long, tired sigh and her head lolled
awkwardly to one side. Her eyes opened wide and fixed me with a sightless
stare."
He said that he must have held her for several seconds
before jumping off the bed. He thought she must have fainted. Her mouth was
slightly open and bubbles gathered in the corners of her mouth. The bubbles were
a muddy color as if blood-speckled. He felt for her pulse, there was none. He
put an ear to her chest but could not hear a heartbeat. For 20, perhaps 25
minutes, he tried to bring her back to consciousness. He massaged her stomach
upwards towards her heart, he pumped her chest, he slapped her face, rubbed her
hands, massaged her arms and legs hoping to restore her blood circulation.
Just at that moment there was a tap on the door and
someone started to open it. He jumped to it, said "It's all right", and locked
the door.
Then he panicked.
Being in a passenger's cabin was against the rules; he
would certainly lose his job and what would he say to Margaret caring for their
little girl Evelyn or Tootsie as they called her up in Glasgow, Scotland? But he
might still have got around that problem, but how was he going to explain the
passenger being naked and dead?
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Detectives examine the
porthole through which Gay Gibson's body
was thrown. |
The solution, the only one he could think of, was to push
the body through the porthole.
"I confess it sounds very foolish but I hoped to give the
impression that she had fallen overboard and deny all knowledge of having been
in that cabin in the hope that the captain's further inquiries would not be too
severe."
The porthole was just short of 16 inches in diameter (41
cm), but right above the bed.
"I lifted her up to a sitting position and then lifted her
with my hands just above her hips to the porthole and pushed her arms through
and then her head," he explained.
Next, he pushed her body and legs through. She hit the
water, some 25 feet (eight meters) below, with a loud splash.
"I was sure nobody could have heard the splash. The ship's
motion gives a certain amount of backwash and the initial wave of the bow
cutting through the sea washes back past the ship and creates a suction noise,"
he said.
He did not throw her nightgown, pajamas and slippers out
as well. He had no idea what had happened to those. He said that he had not even
seen a pair of black silk pajamas in the cabin; she wore nothing under the
nightgown.
The body gone, he switched off the light and went to his
and Pott's cabin and crawled into his bunk to lie awake for what was left of the
night on the high seas.
Truth or Rumors
Without a body nor with hard, damning evidence that Camb
was in Gay Gibson's cabin on the night of her disappearance, the prosecution had
to prove that the starlet, on her death, was in excellent health and that the
cause of death was strangulation either during or after violent non-consensual
sex.
The prosecution's pathologist, Dr. Donald Teare, pointed
out that on death by strangulation the human body empties itself of waste.
Therefore the yellow stain on the bottom sheet, identified as human urine,
proved that the victim was strangled to death. It also of course therefore
proved that she was dead on hitting the water; her family did not have to fear
that she had been thrown into a shark-infested ocean alive.
The defense team however argued that Gay had a history of
inexplicable faints and that these might have been caused by a serious
undetected and consequently untreated heart condition. And the human body did,
the team added, empty itself of waste on death, whether death had been natural
or not. Gay having urinated on death did not therefore prove that Camb had
strangled her. She probably died of a heart attack.
Passenger Hopwood testified that the young woman had
appeared tired when he had chatted to her out on the deck. He also described her
as having often been not in a cheerful mood. He thought something was worrying
her. "She was more or less like that all the time except for one evening when
she seemed to brighten up."
Worried about what? About being pregnant perhaps and
having to find an abortionist in London; not only was abortion illegal but also
very costly.
As not all of both the prosecution and the defense's
witnesses were able to make the voyage from South Africa, the absent ones had
sent affidavits; the defense alone had as many as 22. All these affidavits
painted a picture of a sexually uninhibited, hard-drinking, hard-playing young
woman.
Present to give evidence was a Johannesburg-based
physician, Dr. Ina Schoub. Gay had consulted her the week before the Durban
Castle's had sailed from Cape Town; she wanted to be fitted with a
contraceptive device. Schoub had to examine her internally and she was adamant
that the young woman was not pregnant. Gay had told her that she had moved to
South Africa because she suffered from asthma. She also told her that she often
missed a period. Schoub, the wife of a theater director and someone who
therefore knew Gay's social history, suggested to her that her lifestyle the
partying, the drinking, the excitability might be a little hectic and it could
certainly upset her menstrual cycle, but she need not believe that she was going
to have a baby.
Gay's mother Ellen, called Daisy, described by the media
as "a pleasant, round-faced, middle-aged Englishwoman, just like millions of
other English mothers, with the same pride and the same loyalties; a tragic
figure in the witness box," said that her daughter had always enjoyed excellent
health. She dismissed Schoub's claims that her daughter had consulted her about
missing periods and asthma.
She also dismissed as rumors what had been reported about
her daughter's sex life. "She was not really keen on anybody. She was not
particularly interested in men or marriage. She had one interest in life and
that was a theatrical career."
As for a man having paid her daughter's passage, she said:
"She was going to pay him back. She was a hardworking conscientious girl and she
was hoping to become successful in her career."
Former lover, Mike Abel, was in court too and his evidence
contradicted that of Mrs. Gibson. In detail he described the sex he had had with
Gay. One act had taken place in his car and she had fainted. He described how
her lips had turned blue and she complained of a pain in her left arm.
Abel's testimony was backed up by Schoub, who said that
Able had told her, speaking of Gay, "She nearly died on my last night. I was
screwing her in my car and she passed out. I thought she was dead. Then she came
round."
Other witnesses spoke of how Gay used to pass out at
parties after having had too much to drink. Once they had found her lying
unconscious out in the garden. "I'm sorry," she apologized when they got her
back on to her feet.
Dr. Anthony Griffiths, the ship's physician, admitted that
he could not with certainty say that the scratches on Camb were caused by a
woman's long nails. Neither could he testify to their freshness. And he also
said that the scratches on Camb's wrist could have been caused by gripping
during a seizure.
It was Counsel Joshua Casswell's task to plead for Camb's
life.
On the first day of the trial he had addressed the jury by
saying that all that his client could be blamed for was having thrown Gay
Gibson's body through the porthole of her cabin. "We must remember that we are
not here to decide whether he ought to have disposed of the dead body, nor is
the charge that of having concealed a dead body. What he is charged with is
having murdered that girl, and it is for the prosecution to prove to your
satisfaction that he did murder her before you can find a verdict of guilty. It
is not a question of suspicion; it is not a question of probability. It must be
a question of certainty in your minds beyond reasonable doubt; not a flimsy
doubt, of course, but by bringing your minds to bear upon it as men and women of
the world. That is why you are here so that you may bring common sense to your
deliberations."
At the end of the trial he said: "In any case of this sort
which comes before a jury, there is suspicion. If there were no suspicion there
would be no trial, but you will realize that suspicion, and even probability,
falls short of what is required before you can return a verdict of guilty."
There were 12 jurors. They would be described by the media
as "predominantly male, middle-aged, middle-minded and middle-class." Only two
were female.
Forty-five minutes after they retired to consider their
verdict, they were back in the court room.
They did not look at Camb; to those in the public gallery
it meant they had found him guilty of murder. They had.
The judge, Justice Sir Malcolm Hilbery of the King's Bench, asked Camb if he had anything to say.
"My lord, at the opening of this case I was asked to plead
guilty or not guilty. I pleaded not guilty and I repeat that statement now," he
replied.
A clerk balanced a square piece of black cloth on the
judge's wig and then, all in the court room standing, the judge said: "James
Camb, the sentence of the court upon you is that you be taken from hence to a
lawful prison, and thence to a place of execution, and that you there be hanged
by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be buried within the precincts
of the prison within which you shall last have been confined before your
execution, and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul."
Camb did not react.
His Fate
Camb did not die on the gallows. At that time the British
Parliament was debating abolishing capital punishment and a moratorium was in
force so that his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Soon though the
death sentence was reinstated but the commutation of his sentence was upheld. He
would spend the rest of his life locked up and he would probably die forgotten.
(Capital punishment was abolished in 1965.)
But, James Camb would be in the news again.
In 1959, having served almost 12 years and 43 years old
and as handsome as before, Camb was paroled for good behavior.
Camb, now long divorced from Margaret, who remarried, took
a job as a waiter in Radcliffe, a town in his native Lancashire. Soon afterwards
he met a barmaid and married her; and he adopted her 6-year-old daughter.
In 1967, eight years later and 51 years old, he was back
in court for having made lurid gestures to a young girl, a friend of his adopted
daughter. He lost his job, but did not have to return to jail.
In 1971, he did go back to jail. He received a 12-year
sentence for "lewd, indecent and libidinous practices" towards three girls; two
were 11 years old and the other 10. He was working as a waiter in the bar of a
hotel and broke into the bedroom of the girls on a school outing. His second
wife then left him.
In 1978 he walked free for a second time. He was 62 years
old and ill with heart disease. He set off for Leeds in West Yorkshire, not far
from Lancashire, and despite his health took a job as a waiter at a golf club.
Gray, thin and not so steady on his feet, he was quickly popular with everyone;
they called him Jimbo.
He had only a few months to live though. He died behind
the golf club's bar of a heart attack on July 7, 1979.
An old aunt of his named Florrie had asked him when he was
on trial for murder: "In the name of God, Jimmy, why?" He had replied: "I must
have needed by head tested."
He had by his own confession only ever loved one woman:
his first wife Margaret.
After having been sentenced to death he had written her a
letter. "I do not know what I am going to say what can I say?" he began.
He wrote of the torment she must be suffering and what a
handicap his name would be to the future of their daughter.
He told her that whatever she decided to do he would not
oppose her.
"I beg of you to always be sure that you have been my one
true love and no matter what the future holds for me I shall go on loving you
and loving Tootsie, our sweet child."
He ended the letter: "God bless you both, my dear wife and
daughter. Jimmy."
Did he or
did he not kill her?
At the time of the trial the British and South African
public had little sympathy for Gay. People said that she was a bad girl and that
she certainly had not died defending her honor or fighting off a rapist.
James Camb on the contrary was liked. He was described as
intelligent and articulate and even as a "very debonair fellow."
His male supporters said that he had an open invitation to
Gay's cabin and that any man would have followed it through. They also believed
that Gay died the way he had described; so did his female supporters.
"Actress Had Fainting Fits," London's Daily Telegraph
headlined. The page-one headline of another London newspaper, the Sunday
Express, was, "Gay Gibson died in my arms says Camb. Doctor says: I think
that story is perfectly possible."
Eight years after the trial one of the defense's forensic
pathologists, Dr. Denis Hocking, made it clear in a letter to a colleague that
he also believed that Gay had died of natural causes: "I have always thought
that very odd fun and games went on in that cabin that night."
He mentioned masochism saying that Gay was probably a
sadomasochist. He also mentioned oral sex.
In some of the affidavits sent to Camb's lawyers it was
claimed that Gay indulged in both in South Africa.
"To an undoubtedly highly-sexed man like Camb, this may
have proved an irresistible attraction
," wrote Hocking in the letter.
In 1947 words like masochism, sadomasochist and oral sex
could not however be mentioned in a court of law; they could not even be written
in a newspaper. The jury therefore heard only that "sexual intercourse in the
missionary style" had taken place.
So why did Gay Gibson die?
Since Dr. Hocking's letter to his colleague, the case has
frequently been discussed in books about forensic pathology. The experts all
point out that sudden death during sexual intercourse happens more often than
one realizes.
One cause of such sudden death is ischaemic heart disease
(IHD) when the blood supply to the heart muscle is reduced or halted.
Another is cardiomyopathy, weakness of the muscle of the
heart due to an inadequate oxygen supply. Three of its symptoms are apnea
(interrupted breathing), fainting and hyperventilation. Signs of the latter are
lightheadedness and slurred speech with the sufferer consequently mistaken for
being under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.
But if Gay's death were due to one of the above, who
buzzed for assistance from her cabin? And what happened to her pajamas,
nightgown and slippers?
Today, British criminologists say that as both buzzers
sounded at the same time it means that it was Camb who had summoned help. A
woman's hand being smaller than that of a man, Gay could not have hit both
simultaneously. Also, if Camb had killed Gay either willfully or accidentally
during violent sex, he would certainly not have buzzed for help. He would have
had only one idea: to vacate the cabin.
But that the two buzzers were pressed simultaneously and
in such a way to make the two night-watchmen think that there was something very
wrong up on the Shade Deck, showed that all that Camb could think of at that
moment was to get someone, perhaps the doctor, to the cabin urgently. Then,
after one or two minutes of reflection while waiting for help to arrive, he
decided that it would be wiser to deal with the situation himself.
As for the pajamas, nightgown and slippers, the
criminologists say that Camb shoved those through the porthole as well hoping
that it would be thought that Gay had either jumped or fallen overboard.
The final word should perhaps go to Camb's old Aunt
Florrie.
Asked, after Camb's death, by a journalist to describe
him, she said: "I couldn't say he was a bad man. Apart from the women side, he
never did any thieving or robbery. Just women. Stupid, isn't it? All his trouble
because of the women thing."
The Durban Castle's Fate
The Durban Castle continued to sail between South
Africa and Britain until 1962 when it was sold for $288,000 (£200,000; €224,000)
to a German firm based in Hamburg to be broken up.
