Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/594

 582 FEDERAL REPORTER. �her go, and she came herself into the port of Baltimore. The value of ship and cargo togethar was $125,000. There was no damage; everything was saved. Here the owners could well have afforded the allowance of a liberal bouiity, in addition to a fair remuneration for actual service, if the case had contained the ingredients which make up every true salvage service; but it did not contain those ingre- dients. The danger of the ship at 2 o'clock, whatever it might have become 12 hours later, after night had supervened, was in fact very ineonsiderable ; and the service of the two tugs was very little more than that of towage. The salvors were in absolutely no risk. The skill shown was no more than what the rudest tugmen who had never seen a wreck might have exhibitod. The time was but three hours; for the tugs were already out there in the course of their regular call- ing, looking for tows. The judge thought that the ship was only in prospective peril, because, at the time the tugs went to work with her, the wind and sea were increasing, and that part of the coast was dangerous, and liable to sudden storms. This peril was the only sal- vage ingredient in the case, and it was prospective. But for it the service would have been strictly one of towage. And so the judge says, as if apologetically for admitting the element of bounty in bis award at all : �" The allowance in such cases is intended to be sufflciently liberal to make every one concerned eager to perforai the service with proinptness and energj-, and also to encourage the maintenance of steam-vessels sufflciently powerful to make the assistance effective. It would be contrary to the spirit of the maritime law to reduce the salvage compensation below the standard of liberal inducement, and it would equally f rustrate its purposeif the allowance should be so large and so out of proportion to the services actually rendered as to cause vessels (in critical situations) to hesitateor decline to receive assistance because of its ruinons cost." �And so, rejecting the demand for $eO,000 as exorbitant, the judge awarded the sum of $2,500. �In the case of The Blackwall, 10 Wall. 1, where a ship on fire at anchor in the harbor of San Francisco was saved by city firemen, aided by a tug, there was mucb damage by the fire, and the water thrown by the firemen ; but the ship and cargo, after the extinction of the fire, were valued at $100,000. The firemen were at work 30 min- utes. Though the ship was in great danger, neither the firemen nor their engine, nor the assisting tug, were in any serious danger, if any danger at all, during the service. The case was wanting in some of ��� �