Writing Sample
This extract from Chapter 1 – Beginnings, tells the story of Heg and Xen, two ancient Greeks who attempted to lodge the world’s first fraudulent insurance claim.
Bottomry was a precursor to insurance, but also to insurance fraud. In 300 BC two local Athenians named Hegestratos and Xenothemis (let’s call them Heg and Xen) hatched a scheme they hoped would bring them riches but instead brought them immortality as the world’s first recorded financial fraudsters. They arranged with a financier in Syracuse, today’s Sicily, for a bottomry contract to cover a shipment of corn to Athens.
However, when the ship left port there was no corn in the hold, as our pioneering fraudsters had stored it in a warehouse and instead rented the space to paying passengers. The plan was to sail for three days and then sink the boat along with the passengers, thereby avoiding the bottomry loan. Heg and Xen then planned to swim ashore, report their misfortune to the financier, and proceed to sell the corn at a handsome profit.
Heg and Xen were not exactly criminal masterminds. Three days after they set sail, the passengers were woken by loud hammering noises coming from the hold. On investigating, they discovered Heg trying to knock a hole through the bottom of the boat. The passengers unanimously resolved to remain afloat and instead lightened the payload by throwing the hapless Heg over the side, whereupon he promptly drowned (the whole “swim to shore” plan had clearly not been thought through).
Heg’s co-conspirator Xen was allowed to remain on the ship until it docked in Athens, presumably because he was the only one who knew how to sail. However, on arrival in port he faced the tender mercies of the Greek financier who had issued the bottomry contract, and who by now knew he had been defrauded. We do not know what fate befell Xen, but suffice to say that his name makes no further appearance in the historical record.
