Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/417

 *10 MiDBBAt BEPORTKB. �Nblsoh, D. J. ThiB iB a libel in rem against ressel and freight for f ailure to deliver goods according to the tenus of a bill of lading. It appears by the bill of lading and indorsementa thereon that in May, 1879, the schooner Centennial, then lying in the port of Cardenas, in the island of Cuba, bound for Bostbn, received on board, in good order and well condi- tioned, 500 hogsheads of sugar, to be delivered in like good order and condition (the dangers of the seas only excepted) to the libellants, at Boston, they paying freight for the same. On her voyage to Boston she sprung a leak, and a consider- able portion of the sugar was destroyed by the action of sea water. The question in the case is whether the loss arose from dangers of the seas, within the exception in the bill of lading, or from the unseaworthiness of the vessel. �The Centennial is a three-masted, two-decked, center-board schooner, of 654 tons register. Her length is 135 feet on her keel, her breadth of beam 35 feet, and her draft of water when loaded is 13J feet. She sailed from Cardenas May 27th. In her passage through the straits of Florida she encountered the cross seas usually met with in that region, which caused her to labor heavily, owing to her great length and breadth of beam as compared with her light draft, a peculiarity com- mon to center-board vessels of her class. Her after-pumps were regularly tried or sounded once in four hours, from the time she left Cardenas until she arrived off Cape Hatteras, Jnne 3d, without diselosing the presence of water, when ail at once it was discovered that she had seven and a half feet of water in her hold. As soon as this was known her course was immediately changea, and she proceeded to Philadelphia, her home port, where she was pumped out and her cargo dis- charged. She was then placed in a dry-dock and examined, and it was ascertained that she had suffered no strain in her timbers and planking, but that her seams were generally slack, and a space seven inches long was found in the seam next the garboard streak, at about the center of the huU, whero the oakum was entirely gone. She was then newly caulked througbout, her cargo reloaded, and she proceeded to Boston with what was left of her sugar. ����