The Maurice

• Decision Date: 07 February 1905
• Docket Number: 39.
• Citation: 135 F. 516
• Parties: THE MAURICE.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

135 F. 516

THE MAURICE.

No. 39.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

February 7, 1905

John F Lewis, for appellant.

Willard M. Harris and Harry T. Kingston, for appellees.

Before ACHESON, DALLAS, and GRAY, Circuit Judges.

DALLAS Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree in admiralty dismissing the libel of the owner of the barge Peter A. Rogers against the tug Maurice for negligent towage. The city of Philadelphia was made a party to the cause, under rule 59 of the Supreme Court, but the court below was clearly right in deciding that there was no ground upon which it could be held liable.

The Rogers, while being towed by the Maurice on the Schuylkill river, struck a part or appendage of the Gray's Ferry Bridge, and was so injured that she sank. The learned judge of the District Court held that the Rogers was alone to blame for the accident, and that the fault with which she was chargeable was her master's failure to give proper attention to the wheel during the quarter of a mile that intervenes between the draw of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Bridge and the draw of the Gray's Ferry Bridge. We are unable to concur in this conclusion. The hawsers which were used by the tug were much longer than they should have been and to that fact solely, we think, the occurrence of the collision must be attributed. They should have been shortened at or about the time when, passing from the Delaware river the Schuylkill was entered. The omission to do this was not only the initial fault, but was the direct and proximate cause of the catastrophe. There was no failure to steer the barge upon approaching the Gray's Ferry Bridge. Her captain testified that when about seven or eight hundred feet from that bridge he went to his wheel and stood by it, and that his boat followed the tug, and did not seem to be in any danger until it was within about 200 feet of the bridge, when he perceived that it was likely to strike the obstruction and that he never left the wheel until it did so. Of this testimony of the master of the Rogers, that of his brother, who was with him, and of the master of the other barge, which was being towed alongside the Rogers, is corroborative, and we perceive no sufficient reason for discrediting it. The account given by the tug's master of a conversation between himself and the captain of the Rogers, 'on the road back to Camden. ' was duly objected to, and the objection was...