The Breakwater

Citations

• 155 U.S. 252
• 15 S. Ct. 99
• 39 L. Ed. 139
• 1894 U.S. LEXIS 2270

Syllabus

<p>In view of the large number of ferry-boats plying between NewJTork and the opposite shores, steamers running up and down the river should keep a sufficient distance from the docks, and hold themselves under such control as to enable them to avpid ferry-boats leaving their slips upon their usual schedules of time.</p> <p>Rule 19, (Rev. Stat. § 4233,) requiring, in the case of crossing steamers, that the one having the other on her starboard side should keep out of the way of the other, is applicable to an ocean steamer meeting a ferry-boat in the harbor of New York on her starboard side.</p> <p>Exceptions to the operation of the rule should be admitted with great caution, and only when imperatively required by the special circumstances mentioned in rule 24.</p> <p>The Pavonia was a ferry-boat, running at regular intervals between a slip at the foot of Chambers Street, New York, and the Erie Railway Station on the opposite Jersey shore, northwesterly from Chambers Street. As she was leaving her slip on the afternoon of December 1G, 1887, the steamer Breakwater, arriving from sea, was proceeding northward along the line of the New York docks and about 400 feet distant therefrom, and had arrived opposite Barclay Street, which is distant about 880 feet to the southward from Chambers Street. The Breakwater was on her way to her dock, at the foot of Beach Street, in New York, a short distance northerly from Chambers Street. She was then moving at the rate of about six miles an hour. The tide was strong ebb, the wind northwest, and the weather clear. As the Pavonia moved slowly out under a hard-a-port wheel, her bow was swung southerly down the river by the force of wind and tide: She sounded a single whistle, and the Breakwater replied with the same.- The Pavonia then put her engine to full speed, and made another single whistle, to which the Breakwater made the same reply. Meanwhile the Pavonia had recovered from her downward swing, and swung up the river on her course