Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/580

 508 FEDERAL REPORIER. �night of the 6th and the morning of the 12th in which the wrecking vessels could safely have corne inside of the breakers, and lain along- side of the ship and taken cotton from her. The same condition of the weather and sea made the process of delivering the baies of cot- ton from the hsted ship into the surf-boats, and conveying them many hundred yards across a wide Mne of breakers, a work of danger, both to life and to property, requiring for its avoidance much skill and care. It is difficult to read the wbole evidence in this case and then to question these facts as to the two storms, and as to the work of the surf-boats. �Three of the witnesses for the ship discredit their own testimony by statements signally untrue, and I have no choice but to reject it when it is in conflict with the evidence of the wrecking offieers ; and their testimony is the more open to distrust from the fact that the first mate of the ship was not examined on the principal points in dispute. �Although the reports of the weather and sea-swells made at the signal office at Cape Henry do not show during the whole period of this service as bad a condition of weather and sea as was testi- fied to by the wrecking offieers, still it is probable that this par- tial conflict of testimony is more apparent thau real. On that part of the ooast the wind and sea-swells are not necessarily simulta- neous. It is well known that often there are high winds witliout much swell, and, on the other hand, heavy swells in fine weather. Tiiat the reports from the signal station at Cape Henry, put in evidence by the defence, do not in some respects correspond with the testimony of mariners, speaking from their personal experience, is doubtiess owing partly to the fact that the observations at the signal station are made only seven times in 24 hours, at a point on the coast where the changes of wind and current are frequent and sudden ; partly to the fact that they are made by theoretical men on shore, whose position is essentially different from that of practical seamen actually encoun- tering the elements out upon the waters; and partly to the fact that the nomenclature of the signal service, which is purely scientific and arbitrary, differs from that of seamen, which is conventional. �For instance, the men of the signal station say that the wind is not "high" until it blows at the rate of 35 miles an hour; is not a "gale" until it attains a velocity of 45 miles; and does not become a "storm" until it exeeeds the rate of 50 miles an hour. Mariners, however, who buffet the winds, use a nomenclature which refers to sensible effects rather than to mathematical precision, and to veloci- ��� �