The "A.E. Johnson" had been running unattended and struck another ship, the schooner "J. R. Mather", breaking the "Johnson"s main mast and bringing down her rigging. Hicks set out to sink the ship, with the evidence of the killings, by drilling a handful of holes through the keel. He then took the money, about $230, and the possessions of the murdered crew, and abandoned ship in a yawl, rowing for shore and landing about daybreak next to a farmer's field on Staten Island just above Fort Richmond (Battery Weed). Believing that he would not be caught, he made his way back home to Manhattan, stopping at saloons merrily drinking and making a spectacle of himself.