[SPOILERS] What the hell is Henry Evans' deal?

[ephemeraltoast]

Here is some text to make the spoilers lower down for people who accidentally mouse over, blah blah blah wasting space wasting space.

Okay, Henry Evans:

1. Why does he have a magical death-observation pocketwatch? Is this like a standard-issue med school item in a world where mermaids are real or does he just have exceptional luck at garage sales?

2. Since he obviously knows how it works (he knows how to "use" the monkey to activate it) and appears to have it on board (I am pretty sure he's taking the case holding the book and watch with him on the lifeboat), why doesn't he use it to stop the execution of the wrong guy for the murder of the Italian passenger? Seriously my guy, you have a magical death watch and you don't use it to check on a murder? The executed guard's cause of death should be listed as "lazy ass doctor."

[cyberboy2000]

"Captain, the person who killed this passenger wasn't that other, foreign passenger who confessed, it was your trusted Second Mate! I know this because I have a magical pocketwatch which I used to go back in time and witness the murder!"
Yeah that totally would go well.

[ephemeraltoast]

He's comfortable enough telling a complete stranger at a insurance company "Use this magical pocketwatch to go back in time and witness the murders" so why not his captain, who could use it himself and see that it does in fact work?

This also assumes that magical items of this sort are rare in this world, which isn't clearly indicated one way or the other. Formosa seems familiar enough with them.

[Democracy Officer Gehenna]

Technically, he doesn't tell you to "use this magical pocketwatch", he gives it to you, you look at it, and only realize what it does with the first corpse. I at least interpreted that as the insurance agent only realizing it is magic after the fact.

[GutTyChaos]

It's basically a kept secret expensive rare magical item for his own personal uses to find out the cause of death of his patients to help out his surgeon and autopsy career in case of complications or much harder cases. Like how it helps the inspector on her detective-insurance job.

He could've use it on Pasqua to find out the murderer but he has no other convincing evidences but to brag out "my magic pocketwatch said so". In which I believe that no one on the ship even the Captain known of his pocket watch. And the body was wrapped and presumably thrown into the ocean afterwards. Henry wouldn't have time to use the watch privately by then. And it's not his job. Plus if he reveal out that he has cool stuff it would only ended up with him being robbed. It was kept locked inside his heavy box whole time too.

When Obra Dinn's journey went absolutely heck. Henry did tried to investigate around for a bit before Paul interrupted him and demanding that they must escape, Henry is cut short to the locked room where the sirens are inside. He decided to sacrifice his monkey for later use. Paul did asked him why did he do that and he only said "Nothing good."

After Obra Dinn finally shifted back into the shore, it is when Henry however got sick badly so he wasn't able to travel and investigate the ship himself. So that's why he mail the pocket watch to the Inspector along with the record book in last hope that you can help finding out what happened for him.

[Visuwyg]

Why does Henry Evans want to write a book about the Obra Dinn, and why does he need your help, since he was on board himself?

Is it coincidence that you had to inspect the ship for your job, and Evans' request to fill out his book?

[Mr. Moxie]

I think of two possible explanations to why Henry Evans didn't use the pocket watch in the Obra Dinn:

1. I have myself a theory about how to use the pocket watch. There was a little detail I noticed throughout the entire game. Every time you use the watch, your character uses gloves, even at the epilogue of the game, when you get the true ending and you're in your home receiving back the book, even there your character is using gloves, I mean, why use gloves inside your own house? I guess that means that no one can use it with bare hands or something really bad would happen to the person that uses it, even, death... So probably given how quick everything happened, he just didn't have time to check the death with the pocket because he didn't have gloves at that moment and then, the corpse was thrown immediately to the sea so he couldn't verify the death (also, probably he wasn't very interested in resolving that, that's not his job at the end of the day and none of the twisted things had happened yet)

2. He knew about the existence of the watch, but he didn't have the watch at that time, probably that's why he was on the ship initially. If you check the map, it seems like the route of the ship should have ended in South Africa. Probably he knew about the watch and that it was in some part of Afrika, so he was on an expedition to find it, so knowing about the watch when he was on the ship, he decided to sacrifice the monkey hoping to get the watch somehow and reveling what happened in the Lazarette when he got the watch

[DarkeSword]

Some good points here. I'll also add: the crew of this ship went ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy over a magic box and magic shells. If they knew the surgeon had a magic pocketwatch, he'd definitely be in trouble.

[Mithcoriel]

I suspect the real reason the investigator wears gloves is to hide their skin colour, so they can be as generic as possible. But yeah, we could decide there's an in-universe explanation for it too.