Court Opinion

ID: 8639886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:51:27.628867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:56:03.951604
License: Public Domain

LOWELL, District Judge.
This is a clear ease for salvage. No bargain was in fact made, and Captain Cromwell was not bound to make any in the dark, after he had come out so far to render a salvage service. Whether Captain Smith could properly and prudently have refused to employ him unless he would make one is another question not important here, though I do not see how he could well refuse. The only question then is of the amount to be awarded, and this is always a difficult and delicate question, and one in which it has been said that courts can hardly hope to do more than to give satisfaction in the long run. There is and can be no market value or fixed standard for the reward of services which are in themselves unusual, and of which the reward is not expected to be based merely on the value of the services in the particular case, but is to include a gratuity or premium for the encouragement of promptness, skill, and gallantry in future. The only standard that ever was set up, that of a moiety in eases of derelict, is found unsuited to modern times, and has been abandoned.
The parties differ pretty widely in their views of this matter. The claimant has offered eight hundred dollars, and the libellants think they should have three or four times that sum. Nearly all the facts which must be considered in arriving at a judgment were disputed, but the trial has cleared up most of these disputes. It is now agreed that the value of the property saved shall be taken as eleven thousand dollars. The work in the afternoon of the next day was towage, and was worth about one hundred dollars. What the salvors did is not the subject of much doubt. They started out promptly and spent some five hours in reaching the schooner, and during a part of this time the wind was boisterous and the sea rough, so much so that there was some hesitation in proceeding; the steamer as I suppose not being well adapted to sea work; the navigation between the Vineyard and No-Man’s-Land is intricate, insomuch that the master of the schooner seems to consider it the only real difficulty he was under. Excepting this, the towage from No-Man’s-Land to Tarpaulin Cove was not difficult. In distance it was about sixteen or seventeen miles, and the steamer was employed in all in the strictly salvage service seven or eight hours. She did not lose her regular trips between Edgartown and New Bedford, but performed the salvage in the interval, and the subsequent towage in another interval, between two trips.
The main discussion at the last upon these subordinate points was concerning the degree of peril from which the schooner was rescued. She was safe while the wind was at the northwest, but a gale from any other quarter would drive her ashore or to sea, and in either case her situation would be very bad. With fair weather she might probably have been worked to some leeward port, and it would depend on the direction of the wind what port she could make; or her crew with the aid of the fishermen and pilots on the island, might have rigged a jurymast; or the tugs at New Bed-ford might have heard of her. Making allowance for all contingencies, and taking the chances of the weather at that season, I cannot but consider 'the schooner to have been in considerable prospective danger and in urgent need of the services of a steamer when the Monohansett arrived.
I do not think the offer of eight hundred dollars was large enough. It is said that Captain Cromwell would probably have been glad to contract to do precisely what he did; for that sum or even less. 'This is not admitted by the libellants; but even if it were, it is not conclusive, because he did not make any contract. It was perhaps Captain Smith’s misfortune or want of enterprise in the first instance which prevented a bargain being made; *850for if lie bad got oyer to Chilmark he could have gone to Edgartown, and might have bargained with somewhat more leisure; but as he did not, and as Captain Cromwell started without any certainty of finding the schooner, or of being employed if he did find her, he is entitled to whatever the service is worth as a salvage service. As I have had occasion to say before, the salvors cannot be held to receive only what the work was worth to them, any more than the owners are bound to pay all it was worth to them, which may have been immensely greater; as an argument and consideration tending to enlighten the court both can be shown, and where the benefit received will warrant it, the salvors will be entitled to share to a greater or less degree in that benefit. ,
Upon the whole, considering the great value of the steamer, the promptness and efficiency of the service, the benefit conferred, and all the other elements of the service. I think that I ought to award the sum of seventeen hundred dollars. It should not be paid over until it is certain that the crew of the steamer are entirely satisfied with their shares. Salvage awarded.