CAPTAIN OF THE LINER BRUSSELS.

SHOT BY THE GERMANS.

FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. ROTTERDAM, Friday Afternoon. Captain Charles Fryatt, of the Great Eastern Railway steamship Brussels, which was recently captured and taken to Zeebrugge, was yesterday morning taken before a Naval Court-martial at Bruges and sentenced to death for an attempt to ram a German submarine on March 28. In the afternoon the sentence was carried out, the brave captain being thus murdered for having taken a most natural precaution in self-defence when attacked by the undersea pirates. In Rotterdam, where the captain is very well known, the greatest indignation is expressed in shipping circles, for every sailor using the port knows that scarcely a single English ship has made many runs from England to Rotterdam since the war began without having suffered a murderous attack from submarines or aerial craft dashing out of Zeebrugge to assail, without the slightest warning, unarmed crews. When in March Captain Fryatt arrived here and reported an encounter with a submarine every sailor felt he had but done the only possible thing under the circumstances, and in shipping, as well as circles not engaged in oversea trade, a strong opinion is already expressed that the Germans have committed a deed only equalled by the Nurse Cavell case. In a statement officially issued here the Germans confess that the attempt at ramming was not successful, but declare that Captain Fryatt admitted that he had acted according to Admiralty orders. The statement ends unctuously: “One of the many illegal franctireur actions of English merchant shipping has found here late but righteous punishment.’’ The question asked here is: “Is this but another proof, if such were wanting, that the Germans claim absolute immunity to shoot peaceful traders at sight, whether they attack them from the air, as they have often done in the cases of boats belonging to the Cork Line of steamships, or launch torpedoes at them, as they have done at sister-ships of the Brussels itself, and then, when the attacked turn upon them, they are held, according to German law, to have violated all law of right and are to be shot?” In announcing the news, the Germans calmly point out that Captain Fryatt, his first mate and first engineer, received gold watches from the Admiralty for their deed, “and the captain was praised in the House of Commons.” From private information it appears that no such equally stringent measures are to be adopted in the case of the other officers taken on the Brussels. I understand they have already been sent to Ruhleben and treated as ordinary prisoners of war.