The Express. — 1867-02-05 (London, England)

LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY G.  THE Central Criminal Court has been engaged five days upon a trial of which it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance to the commercial and maritime interests of this country. It would appear that a certain class of felonies may be regarded as a branch, an illegitimate branch, of our national industry. From the immense development and complication of our mercantile and shipping transactions, a new species of crime has sprung up, which demands a more than common ingenuity and audacity in its perpetrators, but which also fortunately requires a considerable number of accomplices ; so that the difficulty of detection which probably tempts unscrupulous men into conspiracies of this kind, is practically found unequal to the difficulty of keeping the secret. Men who will combine to destroy and cast away a ship for the purpose of defrauding underwriters and insurance offices may possibly be incapable of committing murder and robbery on shore, but it is not easy to understand where they would draw the line in felony. The risk of lives in scuttling a ship a thousand miles from land, may be comparatively a trifling element in the calculation, since that risk is shared by one or more of the actual conspirators. But it is by no means a trifling element in the case for the consideration of the seagoing portion of the community, who are accustomed to trust their lives as well as their goods and fortunes to ships on the faith of owners and brokers, of whom they know nothing but the names. Scuttling a ship for the sake of defrauding the insurance companies is not simply another form of the commoner crime of insuring a house and then burning it down. This shipmurder—for such it is—haa an ugly resemblance to frauds of a more heinous and terrible description. At any rate, it is a form of felony which it is all the more important to detect and punish with the utmost rigour of the law that it is one of the morbid growths of a great maritime and commercial system, and fatally injurious to the credit and confidence which are the life of a trading people. The protracted trial which resulted yesterday in the verdict of guilty against the four accused, was, it is to be feared, one among many which escape detection. Briefly, the facts of the case as they came out in evidence were as follows. Four persons named HOLDSWORTH, BERWICK, WEER, and DEAN, were charged with scuttling the ship Severn, for the sake of defrauding the underwriters and insurance companies to the amount of between fourteen and fifteen thousand pounds. Hotiviwourn was a professed insurance broker, having offices in Liverpool and London. BERWICK was a retired master mariner residing near Liverpool, who appears to have followed the  business of scuttling ships for some time past with an energy stimulated by success. It was stated that as many as fifteen vessels had belonged to BERWICK and HOLDEWORTH either jointly or separately, the whole of which had been lost at sea, and, as was believed, wilfully. WEBB, the chief mate of the Severn, had been specially engaged in that capacity by Brawn lc, and it was proved that ho had served before as the carpenter of a vessel called the Jane Brown, in which BnEwirs and Hotmiwoara were interested, and had been instrumental in sinking her. DEAN was acting as clerk to HotnsWORTH when the purchase of the Severn was pending, but afterwards appeared (taking a most honourable name in vain) as " ALLKOPP and ' " C 0.," and was employed under that designation in effecting large insurances on fictitious merchandise. As to Captain LEYLAND, who was the principal witness for the prosecution, the Judge regretted that the ends of justice had rendered it necessary that he should be made a witness, and that he could not be prosecuted. He was invited by HULDSWORTR to command the Severn, having previously commanded a vessel