By order of the authorities, James Stauncy was removed from Exeter to London, and lodged in Newgate. According to the law of those times, it was necessary for him to be tried before the Lords of the Admiralty; and on the 25th of February, 1755, the case came on in Justice Hall, at the Old Bailey.
The court was crowded, as is usual on such occasions, by worthless idlers, by men and women whose curiosity and morbid interest in criminal cases bespoke a low mental and moral standard, and by a large number of respectable persons interested in mercantile law, some of whom knew about Mr. Phillipson, and had heard the rumour that he was in fact the guilty man.
No pains or money had been spared by Mr. Phillipson to secure an efficient counsel; and when the prisoner was placed at the bar and the trial commenced, there was not a countenance in that motley company of barristers, jurymen, witnesses, and on that did not give evidence of intense excitement. The captain looked pale and careworn, but he answered when appealed to, with a firm voice, 'Not guilty;' for though he had determined to give his life rather than break his vow by betraying his tempter, he would not publicly confess to a crime, when in his conviction, mistaken as it was, he had only discharged a duty.
Jim Ortop, on being sworn, related the facts of the case in a straightforward way; but, becoming sadly bewildered by a severe cross-questioning, the general opinion went in favour of the prisoner. The next witness, however, most effectually turned the scale. He was a short, thick-set man, who described himself as a diver in the employment of the Government. He stated that, having sailed in a diving-bell ship from Plymouth to Lundy, he was ordered, in company with another man now in court, to look for and examine the Sarah Ann, and found her on a sandy bottom in seven fathoms water. He went on to say that they discovered a hole in the side of the ship, which had been purposely bored, no doubt; and that he was prepared to swear the brig had been scuttled. This worthy searcher of the seas and revealer of marine mysteries could neither be twisted nor shaken by the clever counsel for the defence; and when the augur was held up to view, there was a confused hum of many voices in Stauncy's disfavour.
Mr. Mogford and the cook were next examined, but they could not directly oppose the evidence of the diver. They lauded the captain as he deserved to be lauded, extolled his seamanship during the storm, and declared it was utterly impossible for him to be guilty of the charge. The latter was particularly eloquent in his defence, and, when drawn out purposely by counsel, unfolded all the secrets of his heart as to the criminality of the merchant. So clear and truth-like were his assertions, so fervid and telling was his declamation, that the tide set in strong again on Stauncy's side, and the sympathies of the people were his from that time forward. So general was the conviction that he had been a deeply injured man, and was but a scapegoat for the merchant, that he was requested, at the special desire of the jury, to throw some light on Pickard's evidence; but he declined. The judge summed up therefore, and the twelve arbiters of his fate retired to consider their verdict. A buzz of earnest voices increased to an unmistakable clamour; and the cook, freed from the restraint of the witness-box, defamed the merchant in the strongest language he could command, vowing vengeance in terms which gained the sympathy of a multitude by no means unwilling to make a demonstration on the captain's behalf.
The jurymen returned; the usual form was observed, and the fatal word 'GUILTY' was uttered by the foreman.
There were those then present who felt more than Stauncy did when the verdict was announced. A flush of emotion for a moment suffused his cheek, but it passed quickly away; and, whilst ot............