Opinion ID: 362881
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Via a Foreign Port Section 27 (Jones Act)

Text: 29 Two other points should be noticed in regard to our interpretation of § 27. The words either directly or via a foreign port 43 were inserted in the original statute 44 by the Congress in 1893, 45 after the decision in United States v. 250 Kegs of Nails. 46 In that case the Government sought forfeiture of 250 kegs of nails which had been transported in a Belgian vessel from New York to Antwerp, there unloaded and reloaded upon a British vessel, which then transported the same nails (I. e., the same merchandise) to California. The statute then in effect did not contain the phrase either directly or via a foreign port. Both the District Court and the Ninth Circuit found the statute inapplicable to the transportation of the nails, because (i)n the plain and ordinary meaning of the words, 'to transport goods from one domestic port to another' means to carry goods In one continuous voyage . . . . It does not mean to carry them in two distinct and separate voyages, or in two distinct vessels. . . . 47 Congress, seeing how easily the protection to American shipping would be vitiated by a simple transshipment of the same cargo, inserted the words either directly or via a foreign port to prohibit such simple transshipment. 30 The legislative history of the via a foreign port amendment shows the limited purpose of Congress, only to extend coverage to the type activity involved in 250 Kegs of Nails ; the debates did not even refer to merchandise that was to any degree processed in a foreign country. 48 No language in the statute indicates that the landing of the cargo in a foreign port for the legitimate purpose of manufacture or processing of the goods would not convert the goods to other merchandise or would not interrupt the continuity of the voyage. 49 The words either directly or via a foreign port have reference only to the Keg of Nails situation, I. e., the simple transshipment of the same goods in a foreign port, which under the amended statute does not break the continuity of the voyage. What we have here in the operations of the St. Croix refinery is a far different undertaking from simple transshipment of the same merchandise.