ANOTHER TICHBORNE STORY.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 191, 19 January 1875, Page 3

ANOTHER TICHBORNE STORY.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 20.) If a romantic story just published proves to be true, the Tichborne mystery will have received a solution worthy of its other marvels. An old sailor named George Claridge alleges that he was present at the death of Roger Tichborne at Sydney Island, in the South Pacific, in 1855, Claridge states that in the early part of 1855 a schooner named the Annie touched at Rotumah, an island whore he then was, and he got on board of her. The master of the schooner, a Frenchman, told him that off the River Plato he had picked up a boat containing two men in a famished condition, one of whom, he said, was an English gentleman “very sick, and who spoke French as well as himself.” On arriving at Sydney Island, Claridge, with some natives of Rotumah, went ashore to pursue the fishery, and the sick gentleman, “at his own re quest, was also put on shore, with everything the vessel afforded to add to his comfort.” This sick gentleman who made this remarkable request to be put on shore on a desert island was of course Roger Tichborne. Of course, too, the schooner sailed away, intending to return in a short time, but Claridge has heard no tidings of her to this day, and conjectures she was lost. Some time after landing the sick gentleman got worse, and requested Claridge to procure a quill from one of the wild birds that frequented the island. The bird was killed, and using one of its quills for a pen, his blood for ink, and a scrap of paper in which had been wrapped a piece of cheese, the dying man * ‘ wrote something” which he gave to Claridge, and told him to keep sacred, and on the first ship coming, to have it copied, to keep the original himself, but by all means to make it public whenever he got to a civilised land In the lucid intervals of delirium the dying man told Claridge the history of his life, which, of duurse, egress ■with that of Bti&t TJcfcbttrnfc. Clandgb Its

the paper in his possession soiled and dilapidated, the inscription almost faded out, but the signature, luckily, still legible. He has also recognised the portrait of Roger Tichborne in the Illustrated London Arms. Such is the story, which only needs the confirmation of the captain and crew of the Annie and of the other man saved with Sir Roger Tichborne. But the fatality which has always attended ships containing conclusive evidence in the Tichborne case has ruled supreme in this instance also, and this vessel has been lost.