as a slave ship captain to be unprofitable. John Lee responded by saying that the slaves "perished just as a Cargo of Goods perished" and were jettisoned for the greater good of the ship. The insurers' legal team replied that Lee's argument could never justify the killing of innocent people; each of the three addressed issues of humanity in the treatment of the slaves and said that the actions of Zong crew were nothing less than murder. The historian James Walvin has argued that it is possible that Granville Sharp directly influenced the strategy of the insurers' legal team. At the hearing, new evidence was heard, that heavy rain had fallen on the ship on the second day of the killings but still a third batch of slaves was killed. This led Mansfield to order another trial, because the rainfall meant that the killing of those people, after the water shortage had been eased, could not be justified in terms of the greater necessity of saving the ship and the rest of the slaves aboard. One of the justices in attendance also said that this evidence invalidated the findings of the jury in the first trial, as the jury had heard testimony that the water shortage resulted from the poor condition of the ship, brought on by unforeseen maritime conditions, rather than from errors committed by its captain. Mansfield concluded that the insurers were not liable for losses resulting from errors committed by Zong crew. There is no evidence that another trial was held on this issue. Despite Granville Sharp's efforts, no member of the crew was prosecuted for murder. Even so, the Zong case did eventually gain both national and international attention. A summary of the appeal on the Zong case was eventually published in the nominate reports prepared from the contemporaneous manuscript notes of Sylvester Douglas, Baron Glenbervie and others. It was published in 1831 as Gregson v Gilbert (1783) 3 Doug. KB 232. Mansfield's motives Jeremy Krikler has argued that Mansfield wanted to ensure that commercial law remained as helpful to Britain's overseas trade as possible and as a consequence was keen to uphold the principle of "general average", even in relation to the killing of humans. For Mansfield to have found in favour of the insurers would have greatly undermined this idea. The revelation that rain had fallen during the period of the killings enabled Mansfield