The first move was to evade the spirit of his own written compact: "Until May 3rd, I fix up nothing with the underwriters."
"Swirling Waters"
Max Rittenberg
The marine underwriters in those days used to reckon on a loss of at least one pilot-boat annually.
"American Merchant Ships and Sailors"
Willis J. Abbot
In the course of the trial, which afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate, and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating "that if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship, but that, if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters."
"The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Vol. I"
Thomas Clarkson