Court Opinion

ID: 9443195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:13:48.429296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:24.340704
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Concurring in the judgment and opinion, I wish to state more fully the reasons why I do not think the failure to put a light on the "Barge caused in any way the injury to it. A ■marine surveyor, A. A. Grant, inspected the ■sunken barge two days later, and after-wards superintended its reconstruction, and his evidence, backed by photographs, is that this steel welded barge, 80 feet long and 26 ‘feet beam, was struck nearly amidships, that the ship’s stem cut into its side four and a half feet and buckled the bottom entirely across, crushing the other side of the barge against the concrete pier and bending it into a crescent shape. In repairing it a section across the center about 25 feet long had to be removed and built new, the bow and stern ends being then joined to it, at a cost of about $20,000. This witness says: “It was struck head on, as near at right angles as it is possible to do it. * * * Oh, it was not glancing, it was head on. If they had tried to hit it they could not have hit it fairer. * * * It was a heavy blow”. The master of the ship says several times that she was going at an angle of 45 degrees, while an observer on the shore testifies that she was going down the river crosswise. The effect on the barge eloquently testifies in what direction the ship was going, and with what momentum.
I think what happened was this: Say there was 800 feet of water between the ships anchored on the east side of the channel and the pier heads, we must take off the width of the tug Mary and her barge, say fifty feet, and the length of the ship, 439 feet, leaving 311 feet or a hundred and twenty feet less than the ship’s length, to turn around in after she should get clear in the river. A strong ebb tide was known to be running down the river, and a tug was attached to the port quarter, facing the river, to push the stern up the river and so turn the ship around, as she backed out. But when the stern got out where the current was strong in the center of the channel the tug failed to push the stern up against the current, so that the backing ship was about to hit the ships anchored across the channel, being about 75 feet from them. So the ship had to go forward, but without space enough to get steerage and point down the river. She was in fact drifting all the time down the river sidewise. The master and pilot say they began to “back and fill” in order to straighten her out, and she came towards the tug Mary so close that the watch on her thought the tug would be hit and got off onto the barge between her and the pier. She passed below the Mary, but still backing and filling she hit the barge next below. It had been sighted by the ship’s lookout a hundred feet away, but he did not report it till asked by the pilot when within 40 feet. The pilot says he could not see a low lying barge be*743cause of the height of his ship’s prow. He knew the pier was there, but would have hit it, I think, if the yielding 'barge had not cushioned the blow, and stopped the ship. The ship was probably saved serious damage to herself. The lookout did not need a light on the barge for he saw it. The pilot could not have seen the light so low down for the same reason he could not see the barge. The absence of the light played no effective part. The truth is that the ship was out of control.
The tug was dismissed after the collision. It also departed without effort to find out the damage or report itself. Its failure to turn the ship had a part in getting the ship into trouble, but no witness from the tug was produced. The true and sole cause of the injury was the effort to turn a large ship around against a strong current in the river with insufficient space.