This case is of interest because the ship, Gen. Parkhill, after the murder of its Captain and arrest of the sailors, set sail again under a new Captain and was subsequently captured in attempting to run the blockade at Charleston.
LAW REPORTS
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United States Circuit Court
Before Judge Nelson.
MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS.
Samuel Collins, Lewis Featherstone, John Dunlevy and John Kelly, were put on trial charged with murdering Geo. W. Pike, the Captain of the ship Gen. Parkhill. Before commencing the trial, Mr. Smith, the District Attorney entered a nolle prosequi against Kelly, proposing to use him as a witness. One of the crew named Smith was put on the stand and testified that the defendants were sailors on board the ship, which left Liverpool in the morning of Feb 25, 1861; there seemed to have been same difficulty during the day between the Captain and the men, as he as he heard some of the men crying out; in the evening the men were together, and Dunlevy said they were going to stop this work, (by which he understood the Captain’s sulking the men,) and that if they struck him be would strike back, and would serve any one who would not join them in the same way, but witness declined to join them; that after that, about halt-past eight o’clock, the men and the Captain had a fight on deck, and he heard, the Captain cry out, “I am murdered,” and he staggered to the cabin; the mate came up at the noise of the affray, and was stabbed and fell, but refused to go into the cabin, when Dunlevy came up with a handspike and knocked him down, saying that the mate had tried to kill him, and he would kill the mate; one of Dunlevy’s eyes was almost closed at the time, as by blow; the mate then went into the cabin, and the men called for three cheers, and when the second mate came out they, insisted, upon the ship’s going back to Liverpool, and she was put back.
One of the police force of Liverpool testified to arresting the men on board the ship and searching them, and finding knives on all of them, there being blood on Collins’ knife; that the captain’s body was lying on the cabin floor, and the mate was lying his bunk, with pen-knife wounds in his body; witness told Dunlevy, after he was arrested, what he was charged with and he said he did not deny it, and wished he had finished the other; he also told the others what they were charged with, but they said they knew nothing about it.
The clothes taken from the captain’s body were shown in court; the stab in them was shown to fit Collins’ knife, which was smaller than the others.
The mate was also examined and testified to the same facts nearly. He also said that he had seen no cruelty on the ship; but that the Captain told him during the day that he gave a man an order, and the man, called him a son of a bitch, and the Captain struck him; that the mate himself struck one of the men with a piece of rattling stuff, in consequence of the same epithet being applied to him. The steward also testified to what he knew of the transaction, and to his finding the Captain lying on the floor of the cabin where he had fallen on entering, and that he raised the Captain up, but he only breathed two or three times.
The case is conducted for the Government by Mr. E.D. Smith, the District Attorney, with Mr. Walcoxson and Mr. Wood, and for the prisoners by Mr. Howe.
The case is still on.