Coffin ship (insurance)

A coffin ship is any ship that has been overinsured and is therefore worth more to its owners sunk than afloat. These were hazardous places to work in the days before effective maritime safety regulation. They were generally eliminated in the 1870s with the success of reforms championed by British MP Samuel Plimsoll.
Many overloaded overinsured ships in the days of wooden sailing ships were old ships riddled with wood rot and woodworm and shipworm, repainted and renamed and falsely stated to be new ships. There were over 2,000 cases of sailors who had signed on as crew for a ship being tried in court for refusing to board upon seeing its condition. Samuel Plimsoll stated in the UK Parliament that "The Secretary of Lloyd's tells a friend of mine that he does not know a single ship which has been broken up voluntarily by the owners in the course of 30 years on account of its being worn out."
In 1977, the ship "Lucona" sank in the Indian Ocean as a result of a time bomb which had been planted by Udo Proksch, the owner of the cargo, so he could fraudulently collect the insurance money. The cargo was claimed to consist of a disassembled uranium processing plant but in fact consisted of worthless scrap. 6 of the 12 crew members died.
In popular culture.
The 1900 Dutch play "Op hoop van zegen" by the socialist playwright Herman Heijermans depicts a ruthless shipowner in a small Dutch village sending an unsound fishing boat out into a stormy sea, with the deliberate result that it becomes lost with all hands, and with the owner pocketing the insurance money. The play is considered a classic of Dutch theatre and literature, and was adapted to film four times. 
Leon Uris also refers to coffin ships in his novel "Redemption".
"The Death Ship" (German title: "Das Totenschiff") is a novel by the pseudonymous author known as B. Traven which deals with sailors working on a ship which the owners want to sink.