Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/768

756 Federal Reporter points of the compass; and one wonders that although it was not at all in the line of his duty he should have observed and be able to give the schooner's course to a quarter of a point. The fact that we find on the coast-survey charts the course for a vessel proceeding southward at the point of collision marked down as S. ¼ W. must give rise to suspicion. On a sailing-vessel of that humble class, used only in the bay traffic, with 200 tons of iron in her hold, it would be remarkable to find her compass agreeing to such nicety with the course marked on the chart. And indeed if it were true that her compass did so indicate, it would be by no means conclusive evidence that such was her true course.

There is another statement made by both steward and lookout which is difficult to account for. The schooner's crew consisted of the master, mate, and two seamen, and the steward; the latter not doing duty as a seaman and not being in either watch at the time of the collision. The only men, therefore, whose duties required them to be on deck were the mate and the lookout. The collision occurred between 10 and 11 o'clock, and the watch of the master and the other seamen did not begin until 12. The night was very cold. The weather had been so cold and the upper part of the bay so full of ice that the schooner had been four days getting from Baltimore, and had gone into harbor four times in making less than 200 miles. The testimony of these two witnesses is that every man had been upon deck for a long time before the collision occurred, and they are able to give no reason for it except the steward's statement that the captain came up about half past 9, saying he could not sleep, and the lookout's suggestion that they were all up, perhaps, because they were going to anchor under Sewall's Point, which was not less than three hours distant from the place of collision. That all hands should have been on deck on such a night without having been called up by notice of danger seems very extraordinary, and to need some better explanation.

The amount of the loss in clothes and money which the steward says he sustained appears to be very unusual.

With regard to the schooner's course, while the course marked on the coast-survey charts, and given by the steward with such exactness, is the course for a vessel intending to pass out the capes, it does not appear to me that it would be the course for a vessel of small draught at the place of collision bound for Sewall's Point or Portsmouth, Virginia. It would seem more reasonable that with a fair wind she should take as direct a course as possible, and it ap-