"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott ", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in April 1893, and in Harper's Weekly in the United States on 15 April 1893. It is chronologically the earliest case in Sherlock Holmes canon. This story is related mainly by Holmes rather than Watson, and is the first case to which Holmes applied his powers of deduction, having treated it as a mere hobby until this time. This is one of numerous Sherlock Holmes stories in which a protagonist is haunted by an old acquaintance for an old crime. The others include "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" "Black Peter", "The Sign of Four", "The Five Orange Pips", "The Resident Patient", etc. It is also one of his many stories that deal with the fate of characters who return to England after having spent time abroad in the colonies of the British Empire. Synopsis In his university days, Holmes spent a month with his friend, Victor Trevor, at Victor's father's estate in Norfolk. While there, Holmes amazed his host, Victor's father, who was a Justice of the Peace and a landowner. He had made his fortune in the goldfields in Australia. One of Holmes's deductions was that the elder Mr. Trevor was once connected with someone with the initials "J. A." whom he wanted to forget. His host then passed out on the table. Holmes had touched a sore spot, and possibly did not believe the old man's explanation once he had come back to himself that J. A. had been an old lover. Holmes perceived that he was making his host uncomfortable and decided to take his leave. The evening before he did this, another old man suddenly appeared at the house causing the elder Mr. Trevor to rush for a shot of brandy before greeting him. They had apparently been shipmates some 30 years earlier, and Mr. Trevor said something about finding him some work. Soon afterwards, Holmes and his friend found Mr. Trevor drunk. Holmes then left the Trevor estate and spent the next seven weeks at his chemistry experiments, suddenly receiving a telegram from the younger Trevor begging him to come back to Norfolk. Once he got there, Victor