Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/357

 has elapsed in which a written engagement must be made, which is the moment before the anchor is weighed. Up to that time there is a locus penitentiæ. Section 4515 does not define the illegality, and I have sought in vain through the title to find any. The decision in The Grace Lothrop, ubi supra, did not turn upon this point. The statute of 1872 (17 St. 262) made many changes in the law of merchant seamen. Speaking broadly, but with sufficient accuracy for my present purpose, it required shipments and discharges of seamen for long foreign voyages to be conducted under the supervision of shipping commissioners, who had great powers and duties in this regard. It also made important regulations for all merchant seamen, such as that long-delayed act of justice giving them wages pro rata, though the vessel were lost, and many others. As to the contracts in coasting and West Indian voyages, it left the act of 1790 to deal with them. Section 13 of the act of 1872 (17 St. 265) provided that all agreements should be signed before a shipping commissioner, and the United States contended that this provision was applicable to every sort of voyage, and sued for a penalty because the contract in that case for a voyage to the West Indies was not so signed. The argument in favor of that construction was that the clause then and now sued on, (now Rev. St. § 4515,) making it penal to receive on board any vessel a seaman who had been engaged contrary to the provisions of that statute, must have a meaning. Another clause punished the act of proceeding to sea without making the articles required by that statute in the case of foreign voyages, and this appeared to be substantially the same offence; but the argument of the United States was that we could supply it with meaning through section 13, by holding that ail agreements, even those not made under the statute, but still governed by the act of 1790, must be made before a shipping commissioner, and that it was a breach of the act of 1872 to make any sort of contract without that formality. In other words, I was asked to put a forced construction upon section 13, in order to find an intelligible meaning for this