Bean v. Oceanic Steam Nav. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 June 1885
• Citation: 24 F. 124
• Parties: BEAN v. OCEANIC STEAM NAV. CO., Limited.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

24 F. 124

BEAN v. OCEANIC STEAM NAV. CO., Limited.

United States Circuit Court, S.D. New York.

June 20, 1885

Herman H. Shook, for plaintiff.

Everett P. Wheeler, for defendant.

SHIPMAN J.

This is a motion by the defendant for a new trial of an action at law, the jury having returned a verdict for the plaintiff for $1,250.

The plaintiff, while employed in discharging cargo in the hold of the steamer Republic, a vessel of the defendant, was injured by the falling upon him of a draught containing boxes of goods that were being hoisted out of the hold. This action was to recover damages for the injury. In stating the facts I use, in part, the language of the defendant's counsel in his brief:

'The defendant employed a stevedore to discharge cargo, and he engaged gangs of men who were set to work at the different hatches; some being employed in the hold to get out the boxes and bails of goods and place them on the draught, and others being engaged on the deck in working the machinery by which they were lifted, and others again being employed in putting them onto the pier ready to be taken away. A machine called a winch was the means employed, in combination with block and tackle, to raise the cargo out of the hold. This winch was composed of a central shaft with a drum at each end. The shaft was made to revolve by being geared onto the shaft of a small donkey engine. It appeared that when there was a necessity for discharging cargo rapidly, and therefore discharging by the means of two whips at the same time from the same hatch, the rope running over the block of each whip was coiled around one of the drum-ends. On the other hand, when there was no necessity for haste, the rope was fastened to the center axle, and then coiled around that. In this case it was impossible that the rope should slip if properly made fast, because of the attachment to the axle. In the case of its being coiled around the drum-ends, it was possible that it should slip if the man employed to coil the rope around the winch, and by means of this produce friction between the rope and the drum so that the rope would not slip upon it, did not coil the rope around a sufficient number of times, or if one of the coils should slip off so that the adhesion of the rope to the drum was not sufficient to counterbalance the weight of the load.'

While the man at the winch was endeavoring to take an additional coil around the 'end' in order to hold the weight steadily, a coil slipped off, the rope slipped, and the weight dropped. The steam-ship lines in the city of New York have for the last eight years used the two drum-ends in the same way in which the defendant used them and no serious accident has happened. Slight accidents to the workmen at the winch from the slipping off of the coil have occurred, which indicate that the use of the two ends is more unsafe than the use of the barrel. When heavy loads are drawn from the hold the rope is attached to the center of the drum, because, in such cases, two or three blocks are used to divide the strain, and such an arrangement requires a greater length of rope than can be used upon...