Court Opinion

ID: 8630577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:37:01.233814+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:45.274780
License: Public Domain

BLATCHFORD, DistrictJudge.
Theanswer sets up that it was a fault in the Talisman to anchor where she did in the fog, it being claimed that her anchorage place was in the line of the usual path of the ferryboat. I do not think, on the evidence, that it was a fault contributing to the collision, in the Talisman, to anchor where she did, and keep such anchorage during the fog. I regard the Talisman as wholly free from fault, so far as the collision is concerned. The only question, therefore, is whether the D.' S. Gregory was in fault in coming into collision with this vessel at anchor; and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that she was. Her rate of speed was too great. No positive rate can be prescribed. What would be a moderate rate of speed under one state of facts, would be an immoderate one under another. A steam vessel must, in a fog, reduce her rate of speed to a moderate rate, or abide the consequences of an immoderate one, unless some special reason is shown for maintaining the rate of speed adopted. The fact that the D. S. Gregory, while under way in a fog, collided with a vessel at anchor, which used all proper precautions to give notice of her position (it being already known to the D. S. Gregory that she was at anchor there), is sufficient evidence that the speed of the D. S. Gregory was not moderate, there being no special circumstances existing in the case to justify her maintaining the rate of speed she did. And this is true, without regard to what her actual rate of speed was, and without regard to the question whether she did or did not slow, stop, and back before the collision, and without regard to the question whether the manoeuvres she made at the moment of collision were or were not correct. The collision resulted from her coming in contact, while under way, with the vessel that was at anchor, and was a consequence of the speed at which she was moving. In such a fog, her speed ought to have been as much less than it was, as would have been sufficient to enable her to avoid the vessel at anchor. She ought not to have gone so fast as not to have been able, by slowing, stopping, and backing, to avoid a collision; and, if the fog was so thick that, at the speed she had, with all the precautions she used, she could not avoid the collision, the conclusion is irresistible that her speed was not that moderate speed in a fog which is required by the well-settled rules of navigation.
There must be a decree for the libellants, with a reference to a commissioner to ascertain and report the damages caused by the collision.