Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/275

 268 FEDERAL BSPOSTEB. �CoBwiN and others v. The Barge Jonathan Chase, etc. �(District Court, E. JD. New York., 1880.) �Admiralty — Salvage fhom Fieb. — A tug that had brought up to a pier and wilhin reach of the flre department a barge loaded with alcohol, upon whicU flre had broken out, held, entitled to ealvage, but not as upon dereliot property. �W. W. Goodrich, for libellants. �P. Cantine, for respondents. �Benedict, D. J. The barge Jonathan Chase, loaded with a cargo of 191 barrais of alcohol, on the twenty-eighth of Feb- ruary last was lying in one of the slips of the East river, moored by lines outside of the ship Montreal. At about day- light one of the men on board the barge, in passing over the cargo with a lantern, fell; the lantern was broken and the alcohol at once ignited. The fiames at once enveloping the man, caused him to jump overboard, giving the alarm as he went. The other man on board the barge was then aroused and he at once left the barge ; and the master of the ship to which the barge was moored cast off the lines and set the barge adrift. The tug Starbuck approaching at the time took hold of the barge, but the alarm being given that the cargo was alcohol and likely to explode the Starbuck cast off her lines, and thus the barge was left adrift in the stream with her cargo in full blaze. By the time that she was at a dis- tance from the piers variously estimated at 60 to 100 feet, the tug Niagara approached her. As she approached she was warned from the Starbuck that there was danger of an explo- sion; notwithstanding which she made fast to the barge, and being hailed by the firemen, who by this time had arrived with engines upon the pier, to bring the barge within range of their streams, she moved the barge up to the end of the pier and within range of the fire engines, which immediately began to play upon the fire. By this time the Havemeyer, a public fire-boat equipped and used for the sole purpose of putting out fire on the waters of the harbor of New York, ����