Overview

The story of the most notorious murder in American nautical history--a uniquely grotesque triple murder for which guilt was never settled--and the long journey to truth The Herbert Fuller, a three-masted sailing ship loaded with New England lumber, left Boston bound for Buenos Aires on July 8, 1896 with twelve people on board: captain-owner Charles Nash, his wife and Maine childhood-sweetheart Laura, two mates, the mulatto steward, six crewmen, and one passenger. Just before 2 A.M. on the sixth day at sea, the captain, his wife, and the second mate were slaughtered in their individual bunkrooms with the ship's axe, seven or eight blows apiece. Laura Nash was found with her thin nightgown pushed above her hips, her head and upper body smashed and deformed. Incredibly, no one saw or heard the killings... except the killer. After a harrowing voyage back to port for the survivors, the killer among them, it didn't take long for prosecutors to charge, and a Boston jury to convict, the first mate, a naturalized American of mixed blood from St. Kitts. But another man on board, the passenger, a twenty-year-old Harvard quitter from a proper Boston family, had his own dark secrets. Who was the real killer, and what became of these two men? Not a Gentleman's Work is the story of the fates of two vastly different men whose lives intersected briefly on one horrific voyage at sea--a story that reverberates with universal themes: inescapable terror, coerced confession, capital punishment, justice obscured by privilege, perseverance, redemption, and death by tortured soul.

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9781549160042

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Reviews

Not a Gentleman's Work takes readers on several gripping journeys: a high-seas crime scene and a powerful courtroom drama. But it doesn't stop there. Gerard Koeppel peers deeply into issues of race, class, and money that were as relevant then as they are now. -- Brian Murphy, author of Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell about It

Not a Gentleman's Work takes readers on several gripping journeys: a high-seas crime scene and a powerful courtroom drama. But it doesn't stop there. Gerard Koeppel peers deeply into issues of race, class, and money that were as relevant then as they are now. -- Brian Murphy, New York Times bestselling author

Author Information

Gerard Koeppel is the author of Water for Gotham, Bond of Union, City on a Grid, and Not a Gentleman's Work. He has contributed to numerous other books, including the Encyclopedia of New York City, of which he was an associate editor. Before writing mostly about the past, he wrote, edited, and produced the present at CBS News. Daniel Thomas May is a native of Atlanta. For 15 years May focused his work on stage, both in Atlanta and across the country, but in the past 2 years May has turned his talent to the screen, with roles on the Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries, Drop Dead Diva, and a number of commercials and independent film projects.

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