The Admiral Schley

Citations

• 131 F. 433
• 65 C.C.A. 417
• 1904 U.S. App. LEXIS 4297

Syllabus

<p>1. Collision — Tug with Long Tow — Duty to Exercise Extraordinary Care.</p> <p>The rule reaffirmed that a tug with a long tow navigating the New England coast will be held to the exercise of extraordinary care, in the interest of common safety.</p> <p>2. Same — Dangerous Situation Created without Necessity.</p> <p>A vessel may be in fault for a collision in a fog which would not have occurred but for her being in the usual track of vessels leaving a port, where she was there without necessity, although, if it had been in the line of her voyage, she might have been within her right, and not chargeable with fault.</p> <p>3. Same — Contributory Fault — Presumption.</p> <p>The rule that where one vessel is shown to have been clearly in fault, without which a collision would not have occurred, the other vessel is to be presumed not in fault, is artificial and misleading unless very carefully applied. The rule may operate in reverse directions according to which vessel’s faults are first considered.</p> <p>4. Same — Right to Assume Obedience to Rules by Other Vessel.</p> <p>Also what is sometimes stated as a rule to the effect that a vessel which has come into collision had a right to proceed on the assumption that the other vessel would perform her duty has a limited effect, and is likewise misleading, unless very carefully applied, and it does not reach the circumstances of this case.</p> <p>5. Same — Maneuvering with Tow in Fog — 'Unnecessarily Dangerous Position.</p> <p>A steamer, with two coal barges in tow on a line, the whole 2,300 feet in length, deeming it unsafe to enter Boston Harbor because of a dense fog, continued to move slowly about with her tow between the lightship and the harbor entrance, crossing a number of times the usual path of steamers leaving the port, which was known to her master. While moving away from the harbor on a course nearly parallel to such path, and just as she had changed her cdurse across it, she heard the signals of a vessel com