Glasgow Courier. — 1857-04-16 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

BRUTALITY ON BOARD AN AMERICAN SHIP.  At the Cheater Assizes on Friday, Peter Campbell, aged 28, sailor, was found guilty of shooting James Chrystie at Birkenhead on the 19th January, 1857. It will be remembered that the prisoner was second mate on board the James L. Bogart, an American ship, and that several sailors who were engaged for the Robin Hood were taken by mistake on board the James L.Bogart, the people on board the latter having purposely deceived them by hailing as the Robin Hood. On finding out their mistake next morning the sailors naturally protested against it. After breakfast, when the boatswain came on deck to count them, Chrystie, the prosecutor in the case, and the boldest of the remonatrente, told Peter Campbell, the second mate, that he did not ship for that vessel, and that he would not work. 'Campbell,' he continues, 'then laid .hold of me and said, " What did you say ?" I repeated what I said before, when Furber, the chief mate, cried, "Put the —in irons."' Furber flung • billet of wood at him. Campbell caught hini by the neck. Chrystie flung him offend escaped into the rigging. Campbell followed him with a six-barrel revolver. Eh shot three times at Chryetie without effect. Vanderpole. another of the kidnapped seamen, then joined his comrade. The two 'mates again came towards them. Campbell then said, 'Will you work?' the reply was, 'We will, if you treat us like men.' Campbell thereupoisfired at Vanderpole, but did not hit him. '1 hearth' s* the witness, 'the ball whistle past.' Hie fifth ebot4ol4 with deadlier aim. The prisoner then fired at Chryabe, *twirled out, '0 God, I'm shot I' Then began a gfineral and rarious onslaught. The chief mate wits struck down by the infuriated seamen with • handspike; the pilot and steward ran up a signal of distress; the polies officers boarded the vessel, and Campbell was taken into custody to abide the trial which has just terminated in his conviction, not indeed on the capital charge of shooting with intent to kill, but on that of shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm. The judge, Mr. Baran Watson, in sentencing the prisoner, said—. Peter Campbell, for several hours your life has been at stake. I have never heard such a case in all my life. You, with a murderous weapon in your hand, went about the decks of your vessel firing upon your crew. There is no kind of excuse to be found in the evidence for this conduct. God's mercy alone prevented you from murdering this man, and then you would have been tried for the most fearful crime. 1 must mark your crime with such a punishment as will be a warning to all others. This is a land in which such things are not to be tolerated. I shall mark your crime with the highest punishment allotted by the law. The sentence .f the court upon you is, that you be transported beyond the seas for the term of your natural life.' The extent to which atrocities of tido kind in American vessels, arising out of kidnapping, have been iwo carried in the particular serelg between the United States and Liverpool is no tern i e, that it has actually engaged the attention of a ben lent society in the latter place, which occupies Ruff with the relief of ' Foreigners In Distress.' It is to be hoped that the above sentence will have a salutary influence in repressing these brutalities.