28. James McClintock Died in the Midst of Committing a Crime – Or Did He?
In Boston, James McClintock and his partners in crime tried to repeat their New Orleans death ray con. In 1879, shortly before the public demonstration, however, McClintock was rowing towards the target ship in Boston Harbor with a 35-pound explosive mine, when it detonated. Nothing but splinters were left of the boat or McClintock, and his criminal co-conspirators promptly fled the city. That should have been the end of the story for the CSS Hunley’s designer, but it was not.
A year later, in 1880, a man claiming to be James McClintock visited the British Consulate in New York City. He stated that Irish Republican terrorists had hired him to build mines to sink British ships, and offered his services as a double agent. The British promptly hired and paid him, and McClintock – if that was him and not an imposter – proceeded to screw both the Irish and Queen Victoria’s agents. After collecting a small fortune from both sides, the double agent vanished. The Irish never got their explosives, and the samples delivered to the British turned out to be fake.
