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Legal Tips for Shipowners and Officers | | Specially Compiled for Marine Review By Harry Bowne Skillman Attorney at Law . terer without inquiry as to owner- ship or charter is not entitled to a lien therefor where, by the terms of the charter, the charterer was without au- thority to bind the vessel therefor, as could have been ascertained .by reason- able diligence—Hoxir, 291 Federal Re- porter 599, ee “The courts are accustomed to con- sider seamen as peculiarly entitled to their protection, and contracts for their services ‘will not be construed with the strictness which obtains at common law. The courts will scrutinize these con- tracts closely to ascertain whether any imposition is made on the seamen, and any obscurity, uncertainty, or ambiguity will be resolved in favor of the sea- men and against the master; and it is only when a given stipulation of their general contract of employment signifies such improvidence or ignorance on the part of the seamen as to make its en- forcement unreasonable, or is such as contravenes a settled policy of the law maritime, that it will be considered void or without obligatory force.’—McDon- ald v. United States, 292 Federol Re- porter 593. pues Under section 4526 of the United States revised statutes, terminating wages of seamen when service terminates by rea- son of loss of the vessel, seizure of a vessel by a British naval vessel as a prize terminates right to wages, though the vessel was subsequently released to her owners.—Epna, 292 Federal Reporter 640. * ok 2 It was decided in the case of SINALOA, 292 Federal Reporter 640, that where sailors were subjected to abuse, and one was assaulted by a mate, by orders of the captain, and he and another were ordered from the ship in a _ foreign port, whereupon they and others left to consult the vice consul of their country, and the vessel sailed without any signal or notification, wages were recoverable, and the assaulted seaman was entitled to recover for the assault. + Woe The provision of ship mortgage act, section 30, requiring endorsement on the ship’s docments of provisions of the mortgages relating to other property in- cluded, therein, are directory, it was held in the case of NANKING, 292 Federal Re- porter 642, and the failure to make such endorsement respecting other property pledged for the mortgage debt does not render the mortgage void. ‘+ «£ * Under section 4236 of the revised statutes of the United States, providing that the master of a vessel bound to a port situate upon waters which are the Or: making advances to a char- boundary between two states may employ any pilot duly licensed or authorized by the laws of either of the states bound- ed on such waters, such waters must be in a real and substantial way the bound- ary between two jurisdictions. Such statute, it was held in the case of Swirt Arrow, 292 Federal Reporter 651, does not apply to a port in Massachusetts situated on the waters of Narragansett bay; the boundary between Massachu- setts and Rhode Island there being an arbitrary line, crossing waters of the bay or its branches at certain places, but having no relation to such waters as a boundary. It was further held that a pilot’s offer of his services need not be made within the territorial waters of ‘his state or port. xe Provisions in a bill of lading that the carrier was not responsible for contents, weight, and quality of packages, nor breakage and fragile containers, did not relieve the ship from liability for dam- age resulting from negligence in stowage or in handling or care of merchandise, it was decided in the case of Ista DE Panay, 292 Federal Reporter 723. It was also held that the general rule is that, where a loss arises from an ex- cepted peril, the ship is prima facie excused, and can only be held liable on affirmative proof that some negligence on the ship’s part was the efficient cause of the loss. et eee If the overtaking vessel comes so close to an overtaken vessel that a sudden change of course by the latter may bring about a collision the fault is that of the overtaking vessel, as she should not have come so close without a_ signal. The overtaken vessel is not required to look behind ‘before she changes her course, however abruptly. Where the fault of one vessel is gross, and fully accounts for the collision, any doubts as to the contribution of the faults of the other, if any, should be resolved in her favor, and absence of a lookout is not entitled to wait in cases where the proof is satisfactory that the vessel in fault saw the other in time to have taken every precaution it ‘was its duty to take, and which, if taken, would have avoided the collision.—M. J: Rupoitpu, 292 Federal Reporter 740. * * * Delay in loading a cargo of coal, beyond the lay days allowed by the charter party, was not excused by delay in obtaining a necessary export license for the coal, the duty to obtain which rested on the charterer, though both par- ties knew of the necessity when the charter was made, where it could have been, and frequently was, obtained be- fore the making of a charter, and it did not appear that the shipowner knew 48 . consignee. that it had not been and especially where the delay was occasioned by the persis- tence of the charterer in naming a con- signee not acceptable to the government authorities. A charterer, who has agreed to load or unload within a fixed period of time, is answerable for nonperform- ance of that agreement, whatever the nature of the impediments, unless they are covered by exception in the charter party or arise through the fault of the shipowner or those for whom he is re- sponsible—Marprsta, 292 Federal Re- porter 957. i “Default,” as used in a charter party binding charterers to pay demurrage for each and every day’s delay caused by their default, means failure to perform whatever charterers were bound to do, with- out regard to how the failure came about, subject only to the doctrine of vis major, it was decided in the case of MARPESIA, 292 Federal Reporter 957. The court also held that in charter parties of vessels to carry cargoes of coal to a foreign port, for which export licenses were re- quired, but which named no consignee, there can be no implied condition that charterers shall be relieved of all lia- bility under the charters on their failure to obtain licenses to ship to a particular * * * Where the master of a vessel on the Great Lakes receives on board a cargo of grain loaded by the charterer, he is presumed to have known that the char- terer in due course, as agent for the ship, would issue bills of lading for ship- ments of the grain, and the ship is bound to make right delivery in accordance with such bills of lading—G. A. Tom- LINson, 293 Federal Reporter 51. ee The shipowner has no lien for demur- rage upon the cargo, unless such lien is given by the terms of the charter, and then only upon the cargo loaded upon the ship under the charter, in which the lien is reserved. Where the charter from owner to libelant authorized a lien on the cargo for demurrage, but the charter from libelant to shipper con- tained no such provision, the owner had no lien on the cargo for demurrage and payment of demurrage by the ship- per to the owner was not a forced payment, which the shipper is _ entitled to have credited on the freight charges due libelant—Southern Export Co. v. Bahamas-Cuban Co., 293 Federal Re- porter 66: 8 5.8 It is immaterial, on the question as to whether services are salvage serv- ices, in so far as the salvor is con- cerned, that a contract was entered into with the underwriter.