Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/775

 THE D. M. ANl'HONY. 763 �a point off his port bow, and that he could see her boats oyer each bow. Two deck hands say the same. �From this testimony it is plain that, before adopting a course giv- ing a sufiicient margin for passing the tng aud tow in safety, the schooner had approached them to within about 100 yards, sonie-what to the starboard of the tug herself, and heading nearly directly upon her. I am satisfied that this near approach of the schooner in that position, and on the course she was pnrauing, was the primary and sole cause of the collision. According to the testimony of her own witnesses she was sailing by the wind ; the wind was variable and she was close-hauled; the tug and tow were about 130 feet wide, and if she could not corne into stays short of 300 yards, as her maie testi- fies, Buch near approach to the tug and bearing directly upon her was hazardous and unjustifiable. The tow presented so much breadth in front of her that at the distance of 100 yards the schooner must have followed a course at least two points nearer the wind than the tug in order to go clear to windward ; and if she were already close-hauled and sailing by the wind, as her witnesses say, she could not have luffed so much without coming nearly into stays, which her mate says would take 300 yards. �The very evident and egregious mistakes, to say the least, made by those on the schooner in their testimony as to her rate of speed, in which they all agree, detracts much from the weight to be given to their testimony in other respects. The tug waa going but about two knots per hour, and had the schooner been going but three knots, as they all say, the collision could not have happened anywhere in the neighborhood of where it occurred, nor, in fact, could it have happened at all. For the tug was seen from the schooner at half past 8 o'clock, says the mate, at 8:15, says the captain, some three miles off, when the schooner was in the Narrows ; and the schooner, if she was sailing at the rate of three knots an hour only, could not have overtaken the tug until she had passed the Battery; whereas the collision was some three miles below it. As the collision was between one and two miles below Bedloe's island, and took place, as the mate testified, when it was just 9 by their clock, the schooner had reached this point from the Narrows in from half to three quar- ters of an hour, and the distance is very nearly ^four miles. The schooner was, therefore, going from six to seven knots per hour. The tug had left Port Johnson at 7, and had made four miles at the time of the collision, or two knots per hour. The witnesses from the tug said there was an eight-knot breeze; and, as the tide was ebb. ��� �