Captain William Codlin had directed that the longboat be kept clear and the rowlocks fitted for the oars. Thomas Cooper, a seaman aboard the brig Adventure, remembered these orders because they bore little resemblance to the customary preparations for sea. On Friday, the captain reportedly told him they would not remain forty-eight hours on board. On Saturday, he added that the vessel would never carry them as far as the Bay of Biscay. He then sent him below to fetch the makings of grog.
Cooper had shipped as a common foremast hand in the Thames. The vessel dropped down to Yarmouth, where she took on twenty-two casks of tobacco, linens, and fifteen tons of ballast. At Deal, the chief mate left the ship, crippled with rheumatism; Read and another man were subsequently shipped to replace him. Such alterations in the crew complicated the question of responsibility: not all had witnessed the same departure. Her stated destination was Gibraltar and thence Leghorn. In truth, according to witnesses examined at the Old Bailey, the voyage had been contrived to defraud the underwriters. Codlin and his mate, John Read, stood indicted for boring holes in the bottom of the vessel off Brighton; two of the owners, Macfarlane and Easterby, were charged with having procured the sabotage. The trial opened on 26 October 1802 before Sir William Scott, Lord Ellenborough, and Baron Thompson. It sat until midnight.
Cooper recounted that the captain went down into the cabin after bidding him take the helm. A quarter of an hour later, he called him down, bade him take an auger lying on the cabin deck, lift a scuttle, and bore two or three holes through the after-part of the hull, as low as possible. Cooper stated he found a brand-new auger bought at Deal. He drilled three holes with the aid of two augers and a gimlet, leaving the irons lodged in the timber to keep back the sea.
Even before the sinking, Cooper had emptied a bread bag to stow away his own effects. He spoke to no one of the captain’s warning. While the boring proceeded, the hands were sent aloft to take in sail: by his account, none but Codlin, Read, and himself were in a position to hear what passed below.
He went on deck to inform Codlin. The captain asked if the water was coming in freely. No, Cooper replied, for the tools still plugged the holes. They might remain so until daybreak. At dawn, Cooper drew them out. The water rushed in, yet not swiftly enough to satisfy the master. Codlin ordered him to widen the apertures with a crowbar. While the sailor applied himself to the work, the captain reportedly broke down lockers to give him room. The hold now bore a breach which the crew were told to treat as an accidental leak. The cabin boy, who was accustomed to take his breakfast in the cabin, was barred from going below on Sunday morning. Cooper noted as well that only one pump was kept working, though a second might have been rigged; the captain had refused to call for the necessary gear.
Read lay sleeping in the cabin, only a few paces away. Cooper affirmed that the mate turned in his berth during the boring, without uttering a word. He had not seen him near the holes. Once the boring was done, Cooper roused Read by the captain’s order. The mate went on deck, then returned to his bed; Cooper specified, however, that Read was upon deck whilst the crowbar was at work. At the trial, the inquiry turned not merely upon who had laid hands upon the timbers, but who had knowledge of the deed. Did the mere hearing of a noise, without intervention, suffice to establish complicity?
The signal of distress was hoisted. The boat was already swung out, and the crew crowded into her, save for Codlin and Cooper. Boats put out from the shore and offered to tow them in. The captain refused: the ship was his property so long as she swam, he declared. The Revenue cutter Swallow at last took the Adventure in tow. The hull, which lay over on her beam-ends, righted for an instant, then went down. Cooper ascribed the sinking entirely to the holes he had bored.
At Brighton, the men repaired to the Ship Tavern. Read remarked to a woman who came to see him that he had lost his all and was undone. When Macfarlane and Easterby arrived, Easterby inquired where the holes were situated and what was their size. The ship’s carpenters’ tools lay upon the floor; he compared their handles to the perforations. He then reportedly ordered Cooper to fashion a wooden plug to drive into them should the vessel happen to ground upon the beach. He went on to call Codlin a fool: he ought to have scuttled her near the French coast, whence they might have reached either shore in the boat under fair weather.
The owners, according to Cooper, dispatched him and the captain to London, cautioning them to keep close in private lodgings. Macfarlane paid their coach fares. Cooper received nine shillings in wages and an extra guinea. After two nights in town, having no money left and finding no ship, he set off on foot for his mother’s house near Saxmundham. Hearing that hue and cry had been raised and a reward proclaimed, he delivered himself up to the village constable and laid bare the whole transaction.
The remainder of the crew confirmed several particulars of his narrative. Morris, Kennedy, Lacy, and Welsh corroborated Cooper’s testimony. Storrow proved the fraudulent design of the voyage, and the policies of insurance were produced in court. Yet the jury did not return the same verdict against all the prisoners. The charge against Read rested upon his proximity to the holes and what he might have overheard. A witness testified that he was hard of hearing. The learned judge observed that it was well within possibility that he had not heard the conspirators conversing or the work going forward in the cabin. Read was acquitted.
Codlin was pronounced guilty. The jurors likewise found Macfarlane and Easterby guilty, but the legal exceptions raised by Mr. Erskine in their defense caused judgment to be respited for the opinion of the Twelve Judges. Borrow does not record the ultimate determination of these points of law, and their conviction cannot therefore be stated as a final sentence. Codlin received the verdict without parting with his outward composure. Read remained unmoved. Easterby looked about him with an air of indifference; Macfarlane’s countenance betrayed, according to Borrow, an agony of mind he struggled to conceal.
Sir William Scott passed sentence of death upon the captain. Borrow’s narrative depicts him taking leave of the court with profound respect, clinging until midnight on the eve of his execution to the hope of a reprieve. His wife had carried a petition to the King at Windsor, despite the faint hope he himself had entertained. To a Mr. Dring he unbosomed the circumstances of his guilt, affirming that at Brighton he had been given several guineas and urged to flee the country.
On 27 November, Codlin was brought out from Newgate in a cart, bound for the place of execution at Wapping Docks. Peace officers opened the procession; the Sheriffs and the Ordinary followed in mourning coaches. A halter was passed about his neck and shoulders. As he traversed the city, he read with great devoutness from the service book, Borrow records. Near the docks, the press of the multitude grew so dense that he was obliged to descend from the cart. He walked the remainder of the way on foot, his arms pinioned. Borrow notes a singular circumstance: he was observed to pick his steps with care, seeking the cleanest parts of the muddy road. He mounted the scaffold without any symptom of terror, according to the chronicle. After the body was cut down, it was delivered to his friends and carried away in a small boat upon the river.