Alistair Lauderback's blackmail predicament

Alistair Lauderback’s blackmail predicament is built around a trap in which paperwork, reputation, and a ship become weapons. Francis Carver does not initially demand money: he persuades Lauderback that a man seeking vengeance for a murder will come for him as well, then constructs a second threat from a year of shipping records, Lydia Wells’s dresses, and undeclared gold. Lauderback gives up the Godspeed to avoid a legal and personal risk he believes he cannot survive. The later dispute over the wreck shows that the transfer has not ended the scheme; it has shifted the costs and liabilities into another legal arena.

The threat behind the blackmail

Carver first presents himself to Lauderback as a murderer. He says that a companion of the man he killed is pursuing him, but does not identify either the victim or the reason for the killing. Lauderback recalls that Carver delivered this information in a controlled, even polite manner. The disclosure is unsettling in itself, but its force comes from what Carver adds: Lauderback has been marked as his associate, and the avenger will come for him after Carver is caught and killed. Lauderback cannot say exactly how Carver claims to have marked him. He suspects that his visits to a gambling house and his appearances with Lydia Wells may have made him observable.

The story Carver tells thus makes Lauderback’s association with him seem dangerous before any direct demand is made. When Lauderback later recounts the episode to Thomas Balfour, Balfour initially regards the murder and pursuit as another man’s quarrel. Carver’s assertion that Lauderback has been implicated changes the stakes: the threat is no longer merely about Carver’s safety, but about what an avenger might do to Lauderback. This first pressure prepares him to take seriously the more elaborate trap that follows.

A paper trail and a planted cargo

Lauderback discovers that shipments of personal goods have repeatedly travelled west across the Tasman aboard the Godspeed under his name. The receipts identify Danforth as shipper, the Godspeed as carrier, James Raxworthy as master, and Lauderback as the person who has paid. The recorded balance is zero, and the payments were made in cash. Lauderback checks his own finances and finds no corresponding outflow; the shipping fees, which he estimates at eighty or ninety pounds, have not been taken from his accounts. He concludes that someone has arranged and funded the shipments while making the records point to him. He recalls that the Virtue was also used on occasion.

He goes to Dunedin to investigate and boards the Godspeed while it is at anchor beside the wharf. He finds Carver alone in the forecastle, holding a pistol and a policeman’s whistle. The open hatch and the harbour master’s office nearby make the threat of calling for help immediate. Carver tells Lauderback that a crate in the hold bears his name and that the records connect him to the recurring shipments. Inside, Carver says, are women’s gowns. The shipment can be made to look like Lauderback has been secretly buying fine Melbourne fashions for Lydia Wells, with the records supplying apparent proof of a relationship he would have reason to conceal.

The dresses are not the whole of the setup. Carver says that the case also contains a fortune in gold, stolen from Lauderback and intended to be shipped out of the country. He claims the gold comes from a Dunstan mining claim and has not been declared. Lauderback understands how the planted evidence could be read against him: as adultery, theft, conspiracy, and an attempt to evade customs duties by exporting undeclared gold. The five gowns are last season’s fashions, consistent with the story that they are being sent to a dressmaker in Melbourne. The gold is sewn into their seams, so an ordinary examination of the clothes might not reveal it. The shipment’s design makes innocent-looking cargo and incriminating cargo one and the same.

Surrendering the Godspeed

Carver’s intended use of the crate completes the trap. If the Godspeed sailed on schedule, Carver planned to act as though he had only just discovered the dresses, take the case to Raxworthy, and demand that the law be brought against Lauderback. The ship would be stopped before leaving the harbour, and the documentary trail would make it difficult for Lauderback to disprove the shipments. He fears that the undeclared gold could bring especially serious charges and a prison sentence. Accusing Lydia Wells might not save him: she and Carver could appear to turn against one another at trial, allowing Lydia to claim repentance and win sympathy while Lauderback remained exposed.

Carver wants the ship, not an immediate payment. He is working under Raxworthy and intends to have the master removed. His plan requires Lauderback to dismiss Raxworthy that night, cancel the crew’s contract, and transfer the vessel to Carver without encumbrance. Lauderback resists and laughs at the demand, but Carver has the whistle and pretends to summon the harbour master. Lauderback recalls that Raxworthy is away at the gambling house, where Lydia is with him. Worn down by the threat, Lauderback signs the Godspeed over to Carver. The surrender is therefore not a simple commercial sale: it is the outcome of a false cargo narrative made credible by real shipping records and the prospect of prosecution.

The wreck and the continuing liability

After the Godspeed is wrecked, the ownership transfer creates a further dispute over who should pay for removing it. Carver tells Aubert Gascoigne that dealing with the consequences is costing him money and that he expects to be a thousand pounds out of pocket. Gascoigne raises protection and indemnity, or P&I: a shipowners’ mutual fund that can meet certain liabilities, including wreck removal, which ordinary insurance may not cover. The cover is not simply protection for cargo; it pools shipowners’ contributions against specified costs.

Gascoigne’s inquiries establish that Lauderback had P&I protection for his vessels through the Garrity Group, a small shipowners’ cooperative. Each ship carried credit of nearly a thousand pounds, and Carver could legally seek to draw on the funds for wreck removal, provided he filed before the middle of May. After that point, a year would have passed since the transfer and Lauderback’s legal obligation connected with the Godspeed would end. Gascoigne has checked shipping records, newspaper archives, the harbour master’s office, and the Reserve Bank. His discovery belongs to a separate investigation into links among George Shepard, Lauderback, and Crosbie Wells, but it also reveals the practical afterlife of the ship transfer.

Lauderback tries to prevent Carver from accessing the P&I funds, insisting that the ship’s transfer was obtained through a fraud planned from the outset. Gascoigne replies that, on the evidence available, Carver appears to be settling matters as proxy for Crosbie Wells, who is dead, and that no law appears to have been broken in the claim itself. Lauderback objects that Wells never bought the ship and that Carver signed the contract under another man’s name. Yet Gascoigne considers that forgery difficult to prove. The predicament thus persists in altered form: Lauderback sees the transfer as coercion and fraud, while the documents allow Carver to present himself as a lawful shipowner dealing with a wreck and its costs.