The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-06-08
How George Thompson Came Short Of
Completing His Fell Purpose.

The truth of the proverb that man proposes
and God disposes is brought home sooner or
later to the minds of most people, but persua-
sion to that effect must be especially vivid
just now in the mind of George Thompson,
er Mignonette, of Baltimore.
For reasons best known to himself George
Thompson came to the conclusion that it would
be we'll to make away, not only with the
schooner Mignonette, but himself excepted,
with all her crew. so that both vessel and mar
liners should be known to the earth or the wa
ters no more.
Having arrived at this conclusion Thompson
awaited his chance to carry it into practical Of
feet. "A week ago Monday nightthe Mignonette
was passing up the James River on her way
from Georgetown to Richmond. In the pitchy
darkness, Thompson, being at the wheel, first
deliberately ran the schooner aground. The
captain, Milton Frank, ran to the wheel, and
the mate, William w. Selby, leaped below for
red light As the latter1came up the hatch
way he was met by Thompson, who struck
him crushing blow on the head, probably
with Delaying pin, and knocked him sense
less. Thompson then attacked the Captain,
using pumpbrake, and speedily succeeded in
killing him. Finally the murderer went into
the fore-caste where the colored cook was
asleep, and Drained him with an axe,
So far as the crew of the Mignonette were
concerned, they were now, Thompson thought,
effectually disposed of. The next thing was
to dispose OF the schooner herself. Ii she
could be blotted out of existence there woul
disappear with her every trace of Thompson s
crimes. So he gathered large pile of oakum,
emptied upon it all the lamps he could find,
set fire to the mass and pitched it into the cab
in, where lay the prostrate body of the mate
Thompson then quickly run to the davits, low
cred the yawl that was suspended there, and
sculled away into the darkness.
Now, if ever an evil deed was roundly and
completely done, this appeared to be. All the
men ON board the Mignonette were knocked in
the head. The schooner herself was in flames.
In the lonely part of the river where she lay,
surrounded by woods and enveloped in night,
she was likely to burn to the waters edge be-
fore the flames were seen, and long before they
could in anylevent be extinguished. Black as
his intent was-black, he might say, with
Othello, as his own face, since Thompson is a
gigantic negro-the man had proposed" in
this case with most cunning and circumspect
eye to all the chances affecting his design.
But he proposed in vain; and to whatever
overrulng agency the defeat of this wholesale
scoundrel's plans may be imputed, the schemes
derfully frustrated and overthrown than they
were on the James river on Monday night.
When Thompson threw the burning oakum
into the cabin, the smoke, and perhaps the
noise of the flames, restored the mate, who
was stunned, not dead, to consciousness. He
staggered to his feet in time to hear Thomp-
son sculling away in the yawl. Mr.. Selby then
succeeded in putting out the fire. He next made
a raft of the BOBBY hatch and some boards.
While pushing on his raft for the shore, the
schooner being aground in six or seven feet of
water, the mate found the yawl which Thomp-
son had by this time abandoned. Mr. Selby
soon after made his way to Norfolk, at which
city, being badly bruised, he now lies in the
Hospital of St. Vincent de Paul. The au-
thorities were at once put in possession of the
facts The United States Marshal sent crew
up the river to take charge of the vessel; and
Thompson, who is well known, having shipped
| a short time ago in Baltimore, if not already
caught, is tolerably certain soon to be.
A tale like this, told in the pages of a
Charles Reade or Wilkie Collins, would strike
the ordinary reader as verging on the incredi-
| BILE; but the reality constitutes justification
| in this, as in many other instances, for both
| those wonder-loving novelists when they offer
plots or trains of incidents to their readers that
seem to present the artistic fault Of transcend
ing probability