The Sampson

21 F. Cas. 290 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Pennsylvania | 1854

GRIER, Circuit Justice.

By the decision of •this court in the case of Smith v. The Creole [Case No. 13,033], the remedy of the steamboat is to be sought against the schooner, and not against the tug employed to tow her. The tug was the servant of the schooner, and bound to obey the orders of her master, and if the master choose to follow the directions of the pilot or steersman, of the tug, and trust to his skill instead of his own, the acts of the pilot may be justly considered as his own, and adopted by him. The remedy of the owners of the steamboat (if entitled to any) Is therefore against the schooner, and not against its servant, the tug. Nor have we any evidence of any disobedience of orders by the tug that should render it liable to the schooner. Por if the master of the schooner gave no directions to the pilot or steersman of the tug, but submitted his own will to the pilot’s skill, he lias adopted his acts, and has no right to charge the owners of the tug for his own negligence. The tug Sampson and owners are therefore entitled to a decree in both cases.

Assuming the schooner to be liable for the acts of her servant, the contest between her and the steamboat remains to be considered.

The tug and schooner were hugging the shore. It was, under the circumstances, their proper place. When the tug saw the steamboat coming up the river she was bound by no rule of navigation, or common sense, to cross the channel to avoid a steamboat coming up the middle of the river. She had left eight hundred of nine hundred and sixty feet of the channel free to the steamboat. Knowing her own position at one side of the channel, the tug could not anticipate the gross mistake made by the steamboat with regard to her position, or that she would needlessly cross the channel, and run under the bows of the tug and schooner. Both were carefully keeping out of harm’s way. when the steamer suddenly comes down upon them by sheering out of her proper course, and the tug .escapes destruction the best way she can, in the sudden emergency produced by the mistake and reckless haste of the steamboat. Whether the tug turned to the right or left to save herself from destruction, is of no importance. It was the mistake or carelessness of the steamboat to put her to the necessity of turning either way. The rule of porting the helm where vessels are meeting in a line, should invariably be observed; but where vessels are in parallel lines, when one boat is working against tide, and with difficulty tugging a heavy vessel, keeps near the shore, and leaves a free channel to the other who is coming up in the middle of it, the rule of porting the helm can have no application.

If the tug had ported her helm on seeing the steamer, she would have thrown her long tow obliquely across the middle of the channel, up which the steamboat was coming. The steamboat by turning out of her course to run under the bows of a vessel hugging the shore, when a wide channel was left open before her wholly unobstructed, cannot now be heard to complain of the comparatively helpless and slow moving vessels for not exercising more skill in getting out of her way. It was the duty of the steamboat, moving with great power and momentum, with a tide in her favor, to keep out of the way of small and slow vessels, one of which was helpless, and the other slowly and painfully dragging behind her. The officer of the steamboat should have slackened her pace in order to have time to observe the difficulties of his position and to ascertain the correct situation of vessels, whether moving or stationary, in the harbor. With her huge mass and great momentum the steamboat cannot be allowed to dash as a triton or leviathan among minnows into the midst of smaller vessels in a port, calling upon them to take care and keep out of the way, or to learn at their cost the rule of “Port your helm.”

Every one knows the deception as to the relative position of bodies to which those od board a vessel, moving into port, after night are subject. Moonlight may extend the range of vision, but it will nevertheless subject the most sharp-sighted to great mistakes in a port where some objects may be moving swiftly, others slowly, and others be at rest. The headway or momentum of a large steamboat, moving at a velocity of ten or eleven miles an hour, cannot be so suddenly checked, on the discovery of an error, as to hinder disastrous collisions, and there cannot be á better rule of navigation, than that which will subject steamboats to all the damage occasioned by such reckless conduct in a crowded and-narrow port after night. The steamboat must therefore bear its own injury, and must also answer for the damage done to the schooner.

Decree reversed.