The duke's influence finally opened the doors that money had kept shut. A small committee of naval officers agreed to compare the surviving technical records before considering whether the earlier inquiry should be reopened. Sir Lionel was invited to submit explanations and documents, and he did so promptly, accompanied by a solicitor and a confident statement that his firm's transactions had been entirely proper. He argued that all instruments required occasional replacement parts and that the disaster had resulted from a combination of weather and imperfect seamanship. James, who had lived through that weather, was unwilling to let Sir Lionel turn the dead into an excuse.
The hearing took place in an Admiralty committee room, not a ballroom. There were no chandeliers reflected in polished glasses, only a long table, several officers in dark coats, clerks with pens, and windows through which a pale winter daylight struggled. Clara sat beside the duke's solicitor with the watch on the table before her. Sir Lionel occupied the opposite end, his papers arranged with the neatness of a man who had rehearsed every defense. Captain Calder entered carrying the original log excerpts and Matthew's letter.
One officer asked Clara why she had brought a pocket watch to a hearing concerning a marine chronometer. She answered as her father would have, patiently and without apology. "Because the watch is dated before the instrument was made. Its regulator contains the design my father recorded, while the works attributed to him after the wreck lack those essential parts. It does not by itself prove a crime, sir. It proves that the two descriptions cannot honestly be treated as the same machine." Her voice held, although she had to grip the edge of the table to steady her hands.
Pritchard then testified to the original trials and identified his signature. Thomas Briggs described the removal of W-17's movement and his fear of losing the livelihood on which his family depended. Hester Lane gave her account of the warehouse page, and the committee's clerk compared its ink, handwriting, and sequence of entries with authenticated records from the same office. The paper did not answer every question, but it showed an unrecorded substitution at the very moment when Edmund's instrument had passed out of his control.
Sir Lionel objected repeatedly. He questioned Hester's education, Thomas's honesty, and Clara's right to pronounce on a technical matter. When the chairman asked whether he disputed Pritchard's measurements, he said only that measurements could be misunderstood. Then James stood and requested permission to correct the evidence he had given at the first inquiry.
"I testified that the Meridian relied upon a chronometer supplied under the name W-17," James said. "I did not personally verify the mechanism inside its case against Edmund Whitcomb's accepted design. I accepted the description provided by the company, and I did not understand that the movement might have been substituted before the ship sailed. My testimony was therefore less certain than I permitted it to sound. I ask that the record show that clearly." No one interrupted him. Clara looked down at her hands because if she watched his face she feared she might cry.