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for Captain Brooks , the bark was not as
easily scuttled as he supposed. During
the month of May she was fallen in
with , strange to say , by a specially fit
ted , salvage steamer , which towed her
to Norfolk , Va. There she was placed
in dry dock , and the reason for her con
dition was clearly revealed , even to the
most superficial observer. No less than
fifteen augur-holes appeared in her hull
below the water-line , and she would un
doubtedly have sunk had it not been for
her cargo of lumber.
*
The salvers were awarded five thous
and dollars to compensate them for
their labor and expenditure , and to pay
this the L. E. Cann was sold by order of
the United States district court. At an
auction sale only $8,000 was offered for
her , and after the sale this amount was
paid to the owners of the salvage
steamer. Brooks confessed that the
holes found in her hull had been bored
by him , and the shipper of the bogus
cargo , thinking that discretion was the
better part of valor , did not demand the
insurance money. The vessel herself ,
however , was insured for $5,000 , and her
managing owner asked for that sum
iipon the ground that she was "a con
structive loss , " which means that it
would cost more to recover her from the
salvers than she was worth before the
scuttling. He could not , of course , get
possession of her without paying the
balance due for salvage , whatever price
the buyers might want for the bark for
which they gave $8,000. His claim ,
therefore , against the insurers was that
his property was a total loss. They re
fused to pay for several reasons , but they
did not assert that the owners were in
any way connected with the scuttling ,
or were cognizant of their captain's
criminal intent. In two actions before the
Nova Scotia courts , the managing owner
secured judgment in his favor ; but on
appeal the supreme court reversed the
decisions , one judge , alone , dissenting.
Thereupon , the case was taken to the
judicial committee of the privy coun
cil , in England , according to the Canad
ian law , which upset the decisions of
J s the supreme court of Nova Scotia. As
Y a result , the underwriter's had to pay
! not only the amount of the insurance ,
| but , in addition , the heavy costs that
I had accrued.
Steel Vessels Not Exempt From Scuttling.
While wooden ships are , as a rule ,
chosen by those desirous of defrauding
underwriters by scuttling , yet iron or
steel vessels are not altogether free from
their attentions. In 1882 , the Falls of
A/ton , a new British ship , left Scotland
for Calcutta , India , with a valuable
cargo of iron , railroad ties and coal.
All went well , till news reached her
owners that their fine vessel of nearly
2,000 tons register had been picked up
derelict in the North Atlantic and taken
to Maderia by a French ship. She wag
found drifting around without anyone
aboard , and the fate of her crew re
mained , undetermined , for some days.
They had sought safety in a passing ves
sel and reached home in clue course. As
is usual in such cases , the British gov
ernment ordered an investigation to as
certain the cause of the abandonment of
such a well built vessel in the summer
and during fine weather. The court
cancelled the captain's certificate be
cause he had allowed , the sluice in the
collision bulkhead to remain open , had
cut a suction-pipe in the after end of the
ship , and had turned the water into the
hold , in order to scuttle her. As he was
not proved to be in collusion with any
body to defraud the underwriters , and
as no sane person would have acted as
he did , the court appears to have be
lieved that he was not responsible for
his actions.
A still more recent case of scuttling
was carried out on a Scotch ship. A
Dundee owner of the name of Hobbs
tried to beat the record in robbing the
underwriters. In the summer of 1891 ,
a small vessel named the Da Capo , of
160 tons , belonging to Hobbs , was lost
about twenty-five miles from Montrose.
Three days before Christmas of the
same year , another small craft , the
Grceljelina , also owned by Hobbs , met a
like fate not far from the place where
the waters rolled over the Da Capo. One
other ship belonging to this same mer
chant reached his favorite dumping-
ground in the vicinity of Montrose , and
also went to the bottom. Then the un
derwriters became suspicious , and care
ful inquiries were made as to the char
acter of the trade that caused so many
well insured ships and cargoes to be
sacrificed. They found that Mr. Hobbs
was in the habit of buying worn out
vessels of considerable age , patching
them up temporarily , sending them to
sea , well insured and inducing his em
ployees to scuttle them. No doubt , the
profits were large ; but the peculiar
nature of the business involved consid
erable risk. Hobbs and a confederate
were tried and convicted , and wore
sentenced to a long term of imprison
ment.
In September 1894 , the master of an
English trawler was charged with hav
ing "unlawfully and maliciously cast
away his ship. " She left port on Aug.
24th , and two days later water was
discovered in her hold. The men went
to the pumps , and one who had been
below testified that he learned that the
cause of the leak was two augur holes ,
near which he found an augur , as well
as signs that it had been used not long
before. The vessel was a new one , the
weather was fine , the sea calm and yet
the trawler went to the bottom. Her
master was tried and convicted.
Mary Washington Scuttling Case.
The latest case of scuttling that I find
f J
on record occured in 1895. The captain
of the schooner Mary Washington was
charged at Seattle with having scuttled
his ship with the object of obtaining
twenty-five hundred dollars , the amount
of insurance upon her cargo worth half
that sum. After the ship had been
taken to sea , a number of holes were
bored below the water-line in her hull ,
and upon removing a board temporarily
fastened over the holes , the vessel
foundered at the will of her captain ,
who eventually confessed.
Underwriters are necessarily longsuffering -
suffering , for competition among them
is so keen that they sometimes prefer to
pay when in doubt as to the honesty of
the insurer , rather than that their action
bo misconstrued and business driven
away. The system of ship-insurance is
by no means free from imperfections ,
and it occasionally verges upon gam
bling. A few of the great ship-owners
insure their own ships ; others do so to a
specified percentage of their value. In
some instances , no doubt , ships are in
sured beyond a liberal valuation , just as
some houses are insured against fire for
more than they are worth. Such cases
are uncommon. Underwriters might
consider the' wisdom of combining for
their own protection so as to make it
impossible to insure an undermanned
ship , but when we remember the enor
mous number of vessels afloat and the
rarity of loss by scuttling , such a plan
seems almost unnecessary.
Buffalo , N. Y. , August 7,1901.
A QUEER FRONTIER EXPERIENCE.
In narrating the frontier experiences
of "The First White Baby Born in the
Northwest , " in The Ladies Home
Journal for August , W. S. Harwood
tells of a queer experience that befell
the family in the first year after settling
on a farm far removed from the settle
ments. "The winter had been unus
ually long and severe , and their store of
provisions ran low. It was a long dis
tance to the nearest base of supplies ,
and communication with the outside
world had been cut off. Indians in the
neighborhood one night broke into the
granary where the wheat was stored
and stole a quantity. In doing this a large
amount of broken glass became mixed
with the wheat which the Indians left ,
so for many days , amidst much merry
story-telling and many a joke and laugh ,
in spite of the serious situation , the
family gathered about a large table in
their living-room and spent the short
winter days picking over the wheat ,
kernel by kernel , in order to free it
from the pieces of glass. For this
wheat stood between them and starva
tion , and none of its precious kernels
must be lost. Their stock of flour had
long since wasted away , as had most of
their food supplies , so they boiled and * { |
ate the wheat without grinding. Relief k , * > -v
reached them just in time to prevent a
sad ending to the experience. "
