Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/135

Rh the foresail, the effect of which was to make her pay off the other way, towards the west and north, and she brought up with her starboard side, at about the fore rigging, pressing against the corner of the ferry rack. While two men were standing by the starboard fore rigging, pushing or breasting her off from the rack, the master ran aft to order the stern-line thrown off the spile by the men on a schooner lying astern of bis vessel, but before he got aft, or the stern-line was thrown off, he was stopped by a cry from one of the men forward that the ferry-boat was running into them. Almost immediately afterwards the jib-boom of the schooner entered one of the windows of the starboard side of the ferry-boat aft of the paddle-box. The ferry-boat was then partly in her slip, her after part projecting out into the river beyond the end of the ferry rack. The first question to be determined is in what position the schooner was lying with reference to the rack when her jib-boom went into the window of the ferry-boat. It is claimed, on behalf of the schooner, and seems to be believed by those on board of her, that she was lying with her whole starboard side close up to the south side of the ferry rack. If this was her position, there could be no excuse for the ferry-boat running into her; but if this were her position, then the end of her jib-boom must have been at least 11 feet, or half the width of the schooner, southerly of the line of the southerly side of the ferry rack, and about 17 feet southerly of the line of its inner or northerly side. I am satisfied from the evidence that this cannot have been her position, but that when her foresail and jib had begun to draw sufficiently to bring her starboard fore rigging up again to the corner of the rack, her stern was still off from the rack sufficiently to make the end of her jib-boom extend crosswise in a north-westerly direction beyond the line of the inner or northerly side of the rack.

This is the position in which those on the ferry-boat testify that they saw her, with the two men breasting her off, at the corner of the rack, as the ferry-boat entered the slip. The evidence is satisfactory from both sides that, in entering the slip, the ferry-boat, to avoid the effect of the ebb-tide,