It must be admitted, that the same cause which prompts these villanies, operates in some measure as an antidote. The underwriters at Lloyd's and the different marine insurance offices, act in a certain degree as the police force of the seas. Their agents are as plentiful and ubiquitous as flies, and there is no port of the old or new world without one or more of them. Through the medium of these marine sentries, whose eyes are always upon the ocean, disasters at sea are speedily made known to the underwriters, and in those cases where the telegraph is at hand, a ship has scarcely broken up or come ashore, before hundreds are reading the account of the disaster upon the "Board" at Lloyd's. With this spider-like web of intelligence spreading from port to port and from ocean to ocean, the chances of wreckers either on shipboard or on land must certainly diminish. The acuteness of the underwriters, sharpened by self-interest, is brought to bear upon the distant point, and all the resources of a powerful corporation are put in force to detect fraud when suspected, and to punish it when confirmed. A singular instance of the vigour and ingenuity displayed by their agents in pursuing the marine robber was afforded by the case of the American ship _W. T. Sayward_. This vessel was reported by her skipper to have been lost off Loo Choo, on her voyage from San Francisco to Shanghai, and the sum claimed of the insurers in this country was £50,000, the value of the cargo, which was reported to have comprised, among other things, 50,000 Carolus dollars. It struck the gentleman engaged to settle the claim that it was very unusual to ship such a quantity of this "Pillar" dollar, and on inquiring of the money-changers, he learnt that there was not a tithe of that number at present in existence out of China. This discovery at once aroused suspicion, and agents were sent to the spot where the ship had been lost, when it was found that the sailors, suspecting some roguery, returned to the wreck after the captain had departed, dived into her hold and discovered that she had been wilfully scuttled. They lighted, by happy chance, upon some of the boxes in which the "dollars" were shipped, and they were found to contain only iron nails and leaden bullets. The nails were selected for the sake of the chink. The assured, having heard of what had occurred, never ventured to repeat their claim.