On the 10th of November 1839, the brig Dryad struck upon a reef off Cape Cruz. According to the seaman Benjamin Shooltz, the vessel made no water that night. The crew stood ready to attempt to heave her off, yet no order was given. Captain Edmund Loose went below. The sails remained spread. Two years later, at the Central Criminal Court in London, two merchants of the City, the brothers Patrick Maxwell Stewart Wallace and Michael Shaw Stewart Wallace, were called upon to answer an indictment arising from that loss: the prosecution contended that they had incited Loose to destroy the Dryad.
Loose was absent from the trial; Pelham writes that he was probably dead. The jurors heard instead the seamen who had reached shore, the payments made by the underwriters, and the resolutions taken during the voyage. The indictment set forth the alleged fraud against the owners of the vessel and those of the cargo. Twenty-six counts were preferred, yet a grave difficulty arose before the voyage itself could be examined: how were the two brothers to be tried if the captain, charged as the principal offender, did not appear?
On the 3rd of March 1841, counsel for the Wallaces submitted that they could not be arraigned as accessaries in the absence of Loose. The Attorney-General cited a statute of George IV enabling accessaries to be tried even where the principal was not amenable to justice. The court ruled that the trial might proceed as for a substantive felony, while reserving the point of law so that the prisoners might have the benefit of its fuller consideration. The Crown elected to sever the trials. Patrick was put forward first; the same proofs were subsequently renewed against Michael.
Before retracing the course of the Dryad, the jury were informed of the brig’s ownership and the reason so many policies had been underwritten. One-fourth of the hull belonged to the ship-brokers Howden and Ainslie; Michael owned the remaining three-fourths, purchased in 1838 for 1,600 pounds. The vessel was subsequently repaired and refitted at an expense of some 600 pounds. In July 1839, the merchants Zulueta and Company chartered her from Liverpool to Santa Cruz for 300 pounds. Michael, who acted as ship’s husband, requested Howden and Ainslie to insure the hull to the extent of 2,200 pounds and the freight for 300. Further insurances covered goods, the vessel, and her outfit with several distinct offices. Zulueta insured his cargo at Lloyd’s. Pelham asserts that the policies effected on the Wallaces’ behalf far exceeded the value of their true interest in ship and goods.
The Dryad laden with some three hundred tons of merchandise at Liverpool put to sea on the 7th of September. After her sailing, Michael confided to his agent Stott that he had shipped goods of his own, contrary to his charter-party with Zulueta. In January, a claim was preferred upon the underwriters for the total loss of the brig. The greater part of the insurance moneys was paid over to the brothers and credited to their accounts. When the seamen returned to London, their narratives gave substance to the lingering suspicions. In November 1840, Patrick was arrested. Michael had fled his house in Tredegar Square, left furnished but deserted; on the 16th of December, he was discovered in a small row of houses near Lancaster. According to his own account, as reported by Pelham, he had retired thither that he might not be compelled to give evidence against his brother.
Ronald Maxwell, the chief mate of the Dryad, recounted the earliest alarms. On the 17th of October, near Anegada, he descried breakers and warned Loose. Shooltz was at the helm. Maxwell ordered him to put the helm about to steer the brig clear of the reef; the captain came on deck, seized the wheel, and steered the Dryad straight upon the danger. Certain seamen stepped forward, protesting that they had no wish to be cast away. Shooltz resumed the helm, the vessel answered her rudder, and passed the breakers by the narrowest of margins. Maxwell deposed that Loose thereupon threatened him with a trial for mutiny.
Two days later, according to Maxwell, the Dryad drew near the Silver Keys, north of St. Domingo. A rock showed itself but a few fathoms on the larboard side. The captain declared he could not see it; the lookout at the masthead cried out that there were rocks under the bows. The brig struck, came off after a quarter of an hour, and then struck a second ledge. The rudder was carried away. The carpenter fashioned a temporary rudder. The crew soon packed their clothes in their bags, holding themselves in readiness should the vessel strike anew.
Off Cape Haytien, this rudder of fortune carried away. Maxwell advised making the harbour or lying to until morning to take a pilot. He testified that Loose refused to enter, alleging that having no pilot, he risked forfeiting his insurance. A large vessel appeared to the northward of the harbour. This ship, the Bencoolen, fired a gun to warn the Dryad that she stood into danger, hoisting a signal for a pilot. Loose refused to hoist his own. A pilot nevertheless boarded her toward eleven o’clock and brought the Dryad into port. She lay there nine to twelve days; the crew made complaint of Loose and sought, without success, permission to quit the vessel.
On the 5th of November, the Dryad once more stood out to sea. On the 10th, near Cape Cruz, she struck a reef again. Shooltz deposed that the reef had been sighted the previous day, yet the ship’s course had not been altered. The brig made no water that night. The crew were ready to work her off, but the captain gave no order, kept the canvas set, and went below. A canoe manned by Spaniards came alongside. Loose inquired whether a town lay near; he was informed it lay thirty miles distant across the mountains, and that a consul was stationed ashore. The captain went ashore, then returned. During his absence, the seamen perceived a cigar-box, weighted with an iron bolt, lying under the clear water under the stern. Shooltz testified that he fished it up by means of an oar from a depth of six fathoms. It contained letters and leaves torn from the log-book.
Before abandoning the vessel, Shooltz also discovered an auger-hole under the stern, visible from a locked cabin. He deemed it impossible that a rock could have produced it, yet admitted under cross-examination that he had not seen Loose bore it: it was his own conjecture. Upon the captain’s return on board, the crew made for Jamaica in the long-boat, where the marine protest was noted, recording the loss as accidental. The seamen, however, kept the papers. Shooltz stated that they confronted the captain with them two days after their arrival; Loose snatched them from Simpson and gave him four one-pound notes. The documents, in the deponent’s view, imported a design willfully to cast her away; he did not report any direct confession from the master.
This deposition formed the most contested piece of the evidence. Shooltz admitted having signed the protest in Jamaica, which initially declared the casualty accidental. To sustain his charge against the captain, he relied upon the tenor of the recovered papers. Other witnesses connected the sums insured with the Wallaces. Yet, if Loose was indeed dead, as Pelham believed, the defence could not cross-examine him. For Patrick, Mr. C. Phillips attacked Shooltz’s credit, brought back his initial account of the shipwreck, and maintained that multiple policies, however numerous, did not of themselves establish an intent to destroy the brig. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against Patrick.
On the following day, Michael was placed at the bar. Mr. Jervis renewed the arguments of the defence: the absence of Loose, the protest sworn in Jamaica, and the reliance to be placed upon the seamen’s oaths. The jury likewise found Michael guilty. Both brothers were brought up together to receive judgment. Chief Justice Tindal expressed his concurrence with the verdicts, enlarging upon the ruinous peril that such frauds brought upon marine underwriters, upon whom so great a portion of British commerce depended. He remarked further upon the reckless endangerment of human life, even though the prisoners stood indicted for inciting Loose to cast the ship away.
Tindal observed that the execution of the sentence must await the resolution of the point of law reserved. Reminding them that the crime was no longer capital, he passed sentence of transportation beyond the seas for the term of their natural lives. Pelham records no further particulars regarding the reserved point. The proceedings thus closed upon two convictions, a crushing sentence, and the lingering mystery that enveloped the absent master. The Dryad herself returned no more from the sea.