Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1888 — CRUELTY ATSEA. [ARTICLE]

CRUELTY ATSEA.

Acts of Shocking and Fatal Brutality Charged Against Officers of the Ship Macedon. One of ths most atrocious cases of cruelty ever known in the annals of the sea has been disclosed by the finding of a naval courtof inquiry in connection with the voyage of. the British ship Macedon from Philadelphia to Hiogo, Japan. The Macedon left Pbila delphia, on May 19, 1887, in command of Jesse Willis Jones, master, and after a protracted voyage of 218 days reached her destination on Dec. 22, with her crew reduced in number by death and disease, and the survivors half dazed from the brutal treatment to which they had been subjected at the hands of the ship’s officers. The crew were all shipped at Philadelphia, several of them having been American seamen. F ive unfortunates succumbed to their tortures and were thrown .overboard, to be devoured by a school of sharks that followed in the wake of the ship. The list of the dead included Edward Grant, John Miller. James Armstrong, Alvin Chapel and Angelo Banchio. On the arrival of the Macedon at Hiogo, out of a total surviving complement of' seventeen persons on board thirteen were suffering from scurvy, only the master, mate, cook and steward having been exempted from the symptoms of that dreaded disease. Charges of gross tyranny were formulated at Hiogo against Clarence N. Cox, the mate, and Charles F. Beveridge, the boatswain, and a naval court, with James Troup, British counsel, as president, was organized to investigate the complaints which had been entered by surviving members of the crew. Oi the five men who died at sea the evidence showed that Edward Grant’s death occurred on Sept. 25,1887, of scurvy, after having been the victim of a wanton act of cruelty on the part of the mate. Eight days before his death, Grant was triced up to the mainmast by Cox and was kept at work until the morning of the day before he died. John Miller was lost overboard on Oct. 7 f and the master allowed the man to sink without making any effort to rescue him, not even causing aboat to be lowered when the accident occurred. On Nov. 19,while suffering from scurvy, James Armstrong was sent aloft on the mizzen-mast by the boatswain to scrape the mast, a task that was not of an urgent nature. While performing the unnecessary duty Armstrong fell to the deck and died of his injuries the following day. Alvin Chapel and Angelo Blanchie died of scurvy, the former on Dec. 13 and the latter six days after. Bianchio received the most shocking acts of cruelty, he having bean dragged along the deck on several occasions by Cox and Beveridge while in a dying condition. The outbreak of scurvy on board the ship was shown to be due to a gross violation of the English statutes requiring the use oi lime or lemon j uice. and to a deficiency in the quantity of other antiscorbutics in the food supplies for so long a voyage. Daring the voyage of the Macedon one of the steward’s feet was bitten off by a shark when the ship was thrown on her beam ends by a sudden squaUr