Court Opinion

ID: 8629504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:35:27.334656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:43.150438
License: Public Domain

NELSON, Circuit Justice.
This vessel was •captured off the port of Savannah, Georgia, •on the 6th of December, 1861, by the steamer Augusta, one of the blockading vessels. She was on a voyage from Liverpool to Nassau, N. P., with directions, from the shipper of the cargo and agent of the owner •of the vessel and cargo, to call at the port of Savannah and inquire if the blockade had been removed. The vessel sailed from Liverpool on the 10th of October, 1861, with a cargo of coffee, salt, tin, blankets, &c. She was owned by Joseph Battersby, and the cargo was owned by him and his brother William, both of them merchants of Manchester, England, and British subjects. The firm had an agency at Savannah, Georgia, where they had carried on business several years. The vessel had been purchased from a house at Savannah, the previous winter, by J. Battersby, and carried a cargo from Liverpool to Savannah and back, leaving the port of Savannah in May, 1861.- It is quite apparent, from the testimony in the case, that all parties concerned in the present shipment were aware of the blockade of the port of Savannah at the time the vessel left Liverpool, October 10, 1861; and, unless the right existed to call at the blockaded port, and inquire there for the purpose of ascertaining if the blockade was still in force, the condemnation of the vessel and cargo is unavoidable.
I agree that, as no official notice of the. blockade was given to England, the condemnation in this case must be upheld, if at all, on the footing of the violation of a blockade de facto, in which case the master may have been justified in making the inquiry at the port if the owners and master were ignorant of its existence at the time the vessel sailed from Liverpool. This principle is, I think, well settled. But the difficulty lies in the fact that all the parties concerned were fully advised of the existence of the blockade, and no ground or reason is furnished for a belief that it had ceased. If the master, under the facts and circumstances of this case, could be justified in making the inquiry, he would be in any imaginable ease. I lay aside the testimony of the boy, Thornton, as unworthy of credit, and see no ground for the condemnation of the vessel or cargo as enemy’s property. But, within the case of the Hiawatha, in the supreme court, the decree below is correct, on the ground of an attempt to violate the blockade of the port of Savannah. Decree below affirmed.