The Eight-Three Men Who Gave Us Sherlock Holmes

 It's not often I feel compelled to write a blog post that's a direct sequel to someone else's blog post. One would expect that such a post would be an argument against points made in the earlier post, but in this case the inspiration comes from both the other new blog post and the fact I was rewatching Into the Spiderverse for a while this afternoon.

The post is Rob Nunn's latest "Interesting though Elementary," entitled "The History of this Terrible Business." Go give it a read, if you haven't already.

In his conclusion, Rob points out that the tragedy of the bloody breakout and mutiny that destroyed the prison ship Gloria Scott was part of the chain of events that led to Sherlock Holmes becoming a detective. Without all the horrible events of that dire place in Canonical history, Sherlock Holmes wouldn't have become the hero we know today.

The 2018 film Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse, which dealt with multiple universes where different Spider-man stories occurred, had a concept called "Canon events" which were moments that had to happen in every Spider-man's life, no matter what other circumstances surrounded him. Parts of his origin, later tragedies . . . the story of each depended upon certain events to keep them "Canon" and not destroy their entire world. (Ruining the story, one might say.)

So if the destruction of the ship Gloria Scott is a Canon event of importance to Sherlock Holmes lore, that means eighty-three people must die in every universe to create one Sherlock Holmes. We are given the full tally of people aboard the ship: 

"She was a five-hundred-ton boat; and besides her thirty-eight jail-birds, she carried twenty-six of a crew, eighteen soldiers, a captain, three mates, a doctor, a chaplain, and four warders. Nearly a hundred souls were in her, all told, when we set sail from Falmouth."

Nine people are known to have survived the tragic end of the Gloria Scott. The math is pretty straightforward. Eighty-three men died to create one Sherlock Holmes on November 6, 1855. And think about that for a moment . . .

There are those who would like us to believe that Sherlock Holmes was born on January 6, 1854, based on some party-animal's love of his brother's birthday and some suspect year calculations. But didn't we just say that the event that made Sherlock Holmes who he was occurred on November 6, 1855? A date which birthed a man whose utter fascination with crime and criminals, some criminality in his own soul, and a desire to fight against those same criminals. 

What if the Gloria Scott was releasing the souls of eighty-three soldiers, sailors, and criminals into the ether at the exact moment a baby came into the world needing some soul matter of his own, and through some strange and spooky spiritual event that would have been right up Conan Doyle's alley, Sherlock Holmes became the reincarnation of eighty-three men, with the strength in mind and body of multiple men and the desire to occasionally dress up like a sailor.

'Tis a pity that November 6 has already passed us by this year, for it might just have cause to be a new Sherlockian holiday. Thanks for that, Rob!