They were generally eliminated in the 1870s with the success of reforms championed by British MP Samuel Plimsoll.
There were over 2,000 cases of sailors who had signed on as crew for a ship being tried in court for refusing to board upon seeing its condition.
[3][4] Plimsoll stated in the British Parliament, "The Secretary of Lloyd's tells a friend of mine that he does not know a single ship which has been broken up voluntarily by the owners in the course of 30 years on account of its being worn out".
[5] In 1977, the ship Lucona sank in the Indian Ocean as a result of a time bomb, which had been planted by Udo Proksch, the owner of the cargo, so that he could fraudulently collect the insurance money.
The 1900 Dutch play Op hoop van zegen by the socialist playwright Herman Heijermans depicts a ruthless shipowner in a small Dutch village sending an unsound fishing boat out into a stormy sea, with the deliberate result that it becomes lost with all hands with the owner pocketing the insurance money.