Covert v. The Wexford
| Citation | 3 F. 577 |
| Parties | COVERT and others v. THE BRITISH BRIG WEXFORD, etc. |
| Decision Date | 21 August 1880 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
J. A Deady, for libellants.
F. A Wilcox, for other parties.
In Admiralty.
CHOATE D.J.
This is a libel by the master and seamen of a British vessel for balance of wages due upon the termination of the voyage which ended in this port. The libellants also claim extra wages under section 187 of the British merchant shipping act, (17 and 18 Vict.c. 104,) which provides that when the master or owner, without sufficient cause, refuses or neglects to pay the wages of the seamen within the time fixed by the statute, which, as applicable to this vessel, was within five days after their discharge, he shall pay them a sum not exceeding the amount of two days' pay for each of the days, not exceeding 10 days, during which payment is so delayed. The vessel has been sold under a decree of the court, and the proceeds, amounting to $2,075, have been paid into the registry of the court. Various parties have appeared, claiming liens on the vessel for materials and supplies. The amounts due them have not been adjusted, but the fund in court is insufficient to pay in full the seamen, the master, and these other parties, if their claims shall be established. A mortgagee has also appeared as claimant of the surplus proceeds of the vessel. The amount due the seamen for wages and extra pay is not contested, but it is objected, on behalf of the mortgagee and the other parties who have presented their claims, that the seamen have no lien for their extra pay, and that the master has no lien for his wages; or, at any rate, that he has not a prior lien to that of those who have furnished materials and supplies.
I think the extra pay due to the seamen is to be treated as wages for which they have a prior lien on the vessel. The statute provides that it shall be recovered as wages. This clearly means by the same methods or modes of procedure. The customary mode of recovering wages is by libelling the ship. The language, therefore, necessarily implied that the ship is holden for this extra pay. And, aside from this particular language of the statute, I think that, from the nature of the provision, and the purposes it was intended to subserve, the extra pay may be properly regarded as an addition or increase of wages in the event of the neglect of the master or owner to provide for their prompt payment. We have a similar provision in our own act. These statutes are designed for the protection of seamen; to prevent the abuse of withholding their pay, and thereby keeping them in port at expense and out of employment while waiting for a settlement. It is a liquidated indemnity for such enforced expense and delay. It is limited to ten days, perhaps upon the theory that the summary powers of the admiralty courts, everywhere exercised for the protection of seamen, can, within that time, be brought to bear for their relief, and to...
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...it on the same plane as a liability for wages, and has said that the two shall be enforceable together"); cf. Covert v. The British Brig Wexford, 3 F. 577, 578-79 (S.D.N.Y. 1880) (interpreting British merchant shipping act's penalty wages provision as providing lien for penalty wages with s......
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