At the instigation of the first mate, who was placed in charge by the captain, some of the crew, Alexander Holmes among them, forced 12 of the adult male passengers out of the boat.
[1][2][3][4] Under the command of Captain George Harris, the ship departed from Liverpool on March 18, 1841, for Philadelphia with 17 seamen and 65 passengers, mostly poor Scottish and Irish emigrants.
At about 10 p.m. on the night of April 19, William Brown struck an iceberg 250 miles (400 km) southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland and sank.
[5] Before the two boats parted ways to increase their chances of being found, Captain Harris placed the first mate, Francis Rhodes, in charge of the crowded, leaking longboat.
A grand jury before Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin refused to indict him on that charge, so it was reduced to manslaughter.
In the 1842 case of United States v. Holmes,[5] Associate Justice Henry Baldwin, who presided the case as circuit justice, instructed the jury about the legal relationship between the crew members of a ship and the passengers, pointing out that it is the sailor who is expected to be responsible for the safety of his or her ship and face the dangers associated with sea voyages, which cannot change during a disaster during which a seaman is expected to maintain his duty and protect the passengers, whom (in the case of the William Brown) the crew decided to sacrifice.
[5] The 1937 film Souls at Sea, with Gary Cooper, George Raft, and Henry Wilcoxon, is somewhat based on the disaster, changing the cause of it to a fire accidentally set by a little girl.