Events

 Ship's Logs

Minutes of recent Passengers meetings:

Fran Zilio: Arthur Conant Doyle, Champion of Spiritualism, Adelaide 1920
28th April 2024 via Zoom

The first meeting of The Sydney Passengers for 2024 was attended by fifteen people including those Zooming in from New Zealand, the USA and the Czech Republic.

The meeting began with an interesting talk by Fran Zilio, Manager Archives, Library & Australian Polar at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. Together with a colleague Fran had researched Arthur Conan Doyle’s ten day stay in Adelaide in September 1920 as part of his Spiritualism tour, and she also subsequently curated an exhibition at the Museum on the subject. Fran’s talk covered all aspects of Doyle’s South Australian trip, including his visit to  T.P. Bellchambers’ nature sanctuary which was recently detailed by Matt Hall in an article for the Log on the same topic. Fran was able to illustrate her talk with images of primary documents and photos from the time.

Following the talk the traditional pre-amble part of the meeting took place in a reversal of the usual format. The Captain reminded Passengers that he had requested local members let him know their preferences for in-person vs online meetings. There’s also a poll about this on the members only Facebook group. The Captain thanked those who had responded so far.

In media news:

•         Sherlock & Daughter is a new TV series scheduled to launch in September. The premise is that a young American woman, seeking answers for her mother’s mysterious death, travels to England to get Holmes’ help, believing he is her father.  Holmes is played by English actor David Thewlis. The cast list includes Professor Moriarty but it appears that Dr Watson has been omitted.
•          The Watson TV series is set one year after Reichenbach. Dr Watson resumes his medical career at a clinic for the treatment of rare diseases. The only cast announcement so far is that Dr Watson will be played by black American actor Morris Chestnut.
•          The third Enola Holmes movie from Netflix remains “in development”. 

Anniversaries:

•        22 April – birthday of Arthur Conan Doyle.
•       23 April 1895 – ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist’ commenced.
•     24 April 1891 – Holmes visited Dr Watson in his consulting room to ask him to come away on a trip to the Continent for a week – a case that Dr Watson subsequently recorded as ‘The Final Problem’.
•    27 April 1890 – a notice appeared in The Morning Chronicle newspaper advising that there was a vacancy in The Red-Headed League, which had brought Mr Jabez Wilson around to consult Holmes.

In news from attendees, Stuart McMartin noted that the Arthur Conan Doyle estate had endorsed author Gareth Rubin to write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche about Holmes and Moriarty, and also planned further books involving Sebastian Moran. Stuart had also managed to lay his hands on a good quality copy of The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr.

The Captain noted that 2023 Montpellier Awards nominations were now being finalised and would be coming out shortly for Passengers to vote.

The meeting was recorded and is available on the Passengers’ YouTube channel (there is very little introduction when the meeting starts due to the presenter having communications issues)

Author Margaret Walsh: “What Interests Me As a Writer In the World of Sherlock Holmes”

15th October 2023 via Zoom

The October 2023 meeting of The Sydney Passengers opened 2:05pm with nine virtual attendees. In addition to local members, people Zoomed in from New Zealand, USA, and the Czech Republic, along with guest speaker, author Margaret Walsh.

 In latest Sherlockian news:

·         There has been no information from Netflix regarding the possibility of a third Enola Holmes telemovie.

·         Similarly, there has been nothing concrete regarding Sherlock Holmes 3 with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law.

·         A new production from the UK is on the cards, variously reported as being titled Sherlock's Daughter or Sherlock & Daughter, to potentially star English comedian Eddie Izzard as Holmes. The premise of the series is that after witnessing her mother’s mysterious murder, a young American woman discovers that her missing father may be Sherlock Holmes and travels to London to find him, but he is not what she expected. 

 
Anniversaries:

·         8th October 1855 – the ship Gloria Scott left Falmouth in the UK, carrying some people who would eventually make it to Sydney aboard the Hotspur with the rest of the original Sydney passengers.

·         9th October 1890 – Jabez Wilson turned up for work to continue copying the Encyclopaedia Britannica and found a notice on the door saying “The Red Headed League is dissolved”.

·         October 1886, 1888, 1889, 1897, 1899 or 1900 (depending upon which chronology you prefer) – the case recorded by Dr Watson as The Hound of the Baskervilles took place.

·         October (dates and year unspecified) – ‘The Adventure of the Resident Patient’ and ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’ occurred.

 For the ‘show and tell’ portion of the meeting, Captain Bill Barnes showed the assembled company a book by guest presenter Margaret Walsh – The Adventure of the Bloody Duck and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes - and Margaret herself showed her latest work, The Adventure Of the Hellfire Heir. Navigator Erin O’Neill proudly showed her latest acquisition (a birthday gift from her husband) which was a first (British) edition of The Return Of Sherlock Holmes to add to her existing collection.

 The main part of the meeting was an interesting talk by author Margaret Walsh. Margaret lives in Melbourne and has a love of the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. She has written both pastiche novels and short stories about Sherlock Holmes, mostly released through MX Publishing from the UK.

 Margaret spoke about Sherlock Holmes from an author’s point of view, how he might mean different things to a writer and a reader, and how Holmes is an immortal character with an existence beyond his original Conan Doyle creation. She also pointed out how Holmes is a product of the Victorian era when the mass media was first becoming prominent in keeping people informed, and how it was a period of change or flux where people both looked forward to a better future but also backward in a somewhat conservative way.

 Margaret went on to speak about how Sherlock Holmes can be a challenge to write due to the level of observation used by the character, and how to retain his humanity rather than turning him into just a deductive reasoning machine. She also observed that Holmes has become iconic of the 19^th century.

 The question and answer session at the end of Margaret’s presentation covered a number of topics, including Margaret’s writing regime, how she came to start writing via fan fiction [Editor: I need to go through my collection of Blake’s 7 fanzines to see if I have any of her juvenilia] through to professional publication, how she was told there was no market for Sherlock Holmes in a bricks & mortar bookstore, and how Sherlock Holmes as the oldest fandom has increasingly moved online to become truly worldwide. She also explained how she had ended up publishing through MX, and the editing process that her books undergo. Margaret also answered a question on how real life crime might sometimes inspire her work but was not used to completely form her plots, particularly due to the effect this might have on any descendants of real people. Her tips for new writers were to know what you are writing about, to do research to find out about the era, and learn how to stretch an existing character like Holmes without making them into a caricature. When asked about the use of AI (e.g. ChatGPT) she explained that she doesn’t think it will replace real writers as AI cannot by definition have any imagination.

 Anyone interested in the full talk can find it on the Passengers' channel on You Tube.

John Hawkesworth and Conan Doyle:

When Master Dramatist Met Master Storyteller

30th July 2023 via Zoom

The meeting began at 2:05pm with twelve attendees ‘Zooming’ in from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, United States and Czech Republic.

 The Captain thanked those dialling in at unfriendly hours of the day and introduced guest speaker Mark Jones, attending virtually from York in Britain. Mark, along with Paul Chapman, presents the Doings Of Doyle podcast which each month does a deep dive into a different work by Arthur Conan Doyle

In media-related news, there is expected to be a third film in the Enola Holmes series of tele-movies but this has yet to be confirmed by Netflix. Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes 3 in the Robert Downey Jr/Jude Law franchise is allegedly “a priority” according to media reports, but has as yet not lined up “the right people….at the right time”. And despite occasional rumours to the contrary, it seems unlikely there will be further episodes of the BBC’s Sherlock.

 Anniversaries

• ·         26 July 1909 – “a “severe gale” along the Sussex coast blew the Lion’s Mane jellyfish into the tidal pool on the beach, as recounted in ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane’.
• ·         27 July 1880 – The Battle of Maiwand took place in Afghanistan where Dr Watson was severely wounded.
• ·         27 July 1898 – ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’ commenced.
• ·         30 July 1889 – ‘The Naval Treaty’ investigation began.
• ·         2 August 1914 – ‘His Last Bow’ investigation culminated.

 Captain Bill Barnes described his recent trip to Britain, which included a trip to Dartmoor National Park and ‘Hound Tor’.

Mark Jones presented a thoroughly researched and fascinating talk, packed with information about scriptwriter and television producer John Hawkesworth’s interest in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works.

Hawkesworth is probably best known to Sherlockians as producer of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for Granada Television in 1984 starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke, but Hawkesworth’s long career involved a number of famous television series, including Upstairs, Downstairs, The Duchess Of Duke Street, Danger UXB and Campion, amongst others.

He also adapted a series of non-Holmes short stories for the BBC in 1967, titled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The series is mostly sadly lost to posterity, yet another victim of the BBC’s policy of wiping programmes in order to re-use the video tape (expensive at that time), although the production files and scripts exist in the BBC’s archives.

With regard to the Granada series (the files for which, previously believed lost, have also recently become available from ITV) Hawkesworth prepared detailed notes on all the Holmes stories, including which would be suitable for adaptation, and establishing his own chronology. The papers reveal many gems of information including that Hawkesworth believed the first meeting of Holmes and Watson to be “pretty unmemorable”, that the first story to be scripted was The Sign Of Four, even though it wouldn’t be filmed until much later. It was also Hawkesworth who pushed to include ‘The Blue Carbuncle’ and ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ in the series, despite doubts from Michael Cox.

The attending Passengers greatly appreciated Mark’s talk, and would have gladly heard more.

The meeting concluded at 3:05pm. The meeting was recorded for those unable to attend.

2023 Film Festival

19th March 2023, Oxford Hotel Drummoyne

The bells were run at 1:05pm as ten attendees gathered for the first assembly of Passengers since the March 2020 trip to the Genesian Theatre, and first formal in-person meeting since October 2019. Although Zoom was a good substitute for keeping in touch and also meeting farther flung members, it was good to see everyone in a more traditional meeting setting.

Anniversaries around the date of the meeting:

• ·         March 1897 – ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’ took place.
• ·         17 March 1905 – The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published by George Newnes Ltd.
• ·         20 March 1888 – ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ commenced, according to Dr Watson’s narrative.
• ·         21 March1900 – Arthur Conan Doyle arrived in South Africa to do his bit in the battle against the Boers.

There had not been a lot of Sherlock Holmes in the news of late, but there were a few small items:

• ·         Although there are occasional news reports about them, there is no actual movement on any new iterations of BBC Sherlock or instalments in the Robert Downey Jr film franchise.
• ·         CBS is reportedly making a television series about Watson resuming his medical career a year following Holmes going over Reichenbach Falls.
• ·         Netflix is developing a Sherlock Junior series.
• ·         Next Passengers’ Log should be posted in the coming week and will include articles by both new and old contributors.
• ·         The Genesian Theatre is going to stage a version of The Hound Of the Baskervilles.
• ·         Australia’s Silent Film Festival will once again show William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes in June at the State Library

The Captain announced the upgrading of Navigator Erin O’Neill to the status of First Class Passenger (life member) on occasion of the beginning of her twelfth year as Editor of The Passengers’ Log, along with management of the Society’s website and as keeper of the Passengers’ archives. The Navigator gives grateful thanks to the Captain and the rest of the crew for this honour, and hopes it means an extra ration of rum.

Brian Walls showed his latest Sherlockian related graphic novel called Moriarty!, noted another available about Irene Adler, and also a graphic novel adapted from Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s novel Mycroft Holmes. Brian will be giving a talk at the Mechanics’ School of Arts later this year for their ‘Murder on a Monday’ reading group about ‘the tough guy’ genre of detective fiction (https://www.smsa.org.au/events/murder-on-a-monday-reading-group-2023/).

The main business of the meeting was the Passengers’ 2023 Film Festival, beginning with a short travelogue Sherlock’s Switzerland (the information panels featuring Expedition Artist Phil Cornell’s illustrations could be seen in the background in a couple of shots in Meiringen).

This was followed by a compilation of clips from various adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles portraying Watson’s examination of Dr Mortimer’s walking stick and his incorrect deductions thereof. The clips used all the same material from the original novel, and yet all were different in one way or the other.

The first half of the programme concluded with three short videos: costumed fans gathering for Holmes’ birthday celebrations in Riga, Latvia; a trailer for the one person stage show Watson: The Final Problem; and Basil Rathbone appearing in a commercial for Prudential Insurance in the 1940s.

After a short intermission, the main feature began. This was a Canadian production called The Doctor’s Case, a non-canonical story about the only time Doctor Watson solved the crime before Sherlock Holmes (partly due to the Great Detective’s  previously unknown allergy to cats). The telemovie was filmed on location at Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada (https://thecastle.ca/), which is the closest one gets to a stately home in the former colonies! There were mixed reviews of the telemovie from the attending Passengers.

The meeting closed at 3:15pm with promises of further meetings later in the year