Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/828

 UIDDLBSES QUASRÏ CO. V. SCHOONER ALBERT MASON. 821 ���The Middleseî Quaebt Company and othera u.'The Sohooneb Albert Mason. �{District Court, 8. D. New York. May 25, 1880.) �CoLi-TBiON — A.NCHOB LioiiT — BuRDBN OF Peoop. — In a case of eolliaîoQ the libellant must show, by a preponderance of the evidence, tiiat a necessary light was set and burning. �R. H. Huntley, for libellants. �S. H. Valentine, for claimants. �Choate, D. J. Thia is a libel to recover damages sustaîned by the schooner Eobert Smith, and her cargo, by a collision with the schooner Albert Mason, in the harbor of New Haven, on the evening of the eighth day of November, 1877. The Eobert Smith was bound on a voyage from Portland, Con- necticnt, to New York, with a cargo of about 90 tons of brown stone. Between 6 and 7 o'clock she put into New Haven for a harbor, the wind being S. S. E. to S. E., and blowing hard. She came to anchor about two miles inside the light, on the west side of the channel, as the libel states, in about eight feet of water, at low tide. When she came in it was the last of the ebb. �Between 8 and 10 o'clock the Albert Mason also came in for a harbor. She intended also to corne to anchor on the west side of the channel, and in fact proceeded directly to- wards where the Eobert Smith was lying at anchor, and to within a very short distance from her, when she undertook to round to for the purpose of anchoring, and just then her stem grounded. Eefore this she had taken in her jib and main- sail, under which she entered the harbor. Up to the time of 60 rounding to those on board of her had not seen the Eob- ert Smith. To work ofiF the bottom she hoisted the peak of her mainsail, intending to work off more to the eastward. While doing this her master and others of her crew discovered something to leeivard, and very near to them, which was in fact the Eobert Smith, but which, as they say, they took for a wreck or a sunken canal-boat. They approached it a little ����