The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-05 00:00:00

Murders on the High Seas.

The five men who were brought home from
Montevideo in the Brazil mail steamer Parana, and
landed at Southampton on Saturday, charged with
the murder of the captain and some of the cre w of
the ship Flowery Land, and scuttling the vessel
were taken before the Southampton magistrates
yesterday for examination. There are in all ten of
the crew implicated in the crimes, five of whom,
with two witnesses, were sent away from Monte-

video in the steamer Uruguay for Liverpool, and
the other five, also accompanied by two witnesses,
came home in the Parana. The British consul was
afraid to send them all in one batch, they being
such a desperate set of characters, and offered to
send a file of soldiers to keep guard over them,
but the above arrangement was ultimately
adopted. The men brought by the Parana
were heavily manacled. Their names are Marco
Varto, a native of the lonian Islands ; Marciliano
De Lacroix, a Greek ; Miguel Lopez, a Malay ;
George Carlos, and John Williams, three of them
being men of colour. The magistrates on the bench
yesterday were Messrs. J. R. Stebbing, F. Perkins,
J. H. Cooksey, and R. Coles. The facts of the case
will be found detailed in the evidence of James
Early, whose examination was taken. This witness
stated that he was a sailor on board the Flowery
Land, which sailed from the Woat India Docks on
the 28th of July last, and the five prisoners, four of
whom could speak a little English, also formed
part of the crew. The captain's name was George
or John Smith, and the vessel was bound to Singa-
pore. All went on well for five or six weeks, but on
the 10th September one of the crew, a Brazilian,
not among these who arrived by the Parana, struck
the mate. Witneess was on the look-out house, and
spoke to the mate, when they struck him again, and
told Early to go into the deckhouse. He did so,
and called the carpenter, who was aleep in his berth,
and he went out. The mate was then lying on deck.
Some of the men struck the carpenter, who went
back to the deckhouse and stayed with witness all
night. Daring the night he heard a noise on deck,
but was afraid to leave the deckhouse. Between 5
and 6 o'clock in the morning witness went on
deck, and thence into the captain's cabin,
where he found the second mate and some of
the men. They were around the dead body of
the captain, which was covered with canvas, and
the prisoner Lopez put a rope round it and pulled
it up, and then they throw it overboard. There
was a good deal of blood about the decks and the
men washed it away. Witness also missed from
the vessel the chief mate and the captain's brother.
The sailors then got the money and the clothes
that were in the cabin. One of them took com-
mand of the ship, and the second mate navigated
it. They sailed the ship for 22 days, until they
arrived at the entrance to the River Plate, where
they determined on scuttling her. Witness
got into a boat with the steward, cook, and
second mate. The sailors ordered them to re-
turn, and they all did so, excepting the steward
at whom they threw bottles of wine, which struck
him several times. He remained in the boat till
he was very much cut about, and then he got out
into the water and was drowned. The sailors
threatened what they would have done with him
if they had had him on deck, and said it was
too easy a death for him to die. After the
steward was dead the men ordered Early to
go down and clear the bottles out of the boat.
The ship sank in about two and a half hours
from that time, and witness thought that the cook
and lamp.trinamer went down in her, for he
never saw them again. Some of the men stopped
on board till within a quarter of au hour of her
sinking. They placed in the boats some clothes,
bread, ham, and bottles of wine, and proceeded to
the shore, landing on the open beach, and went
into the country. The second mate managed to
escape from them and made his way to Montevideo,
from which place a maw of-war was immediately de-
spatched in search of them, and after a few days
they were all taken prisoners. At the termination
of the witness Early's evidence the magistrate re-
manded the five prisoners for a week, to afford time
for communication with the Board of Trade.

The Bordeaux journals announce the death in
that city of Madame Marbeau de Terrelonge, aged 100 years
and some months.