Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/214

 202 FEDERAL REPORTER. �injury to the erippled barge, and they expected to be able shortly to resume their voyage. �Soon after 4 o'clock next morning, and before daylight, the eteam tow-boat L. W. Morgan left Pittsburgh, with a tow of eight barges loaded with coal, bound for Cincinnati. The to-w was of the usual size for a boat like the Morgan, and was made up in the customary manner, to-wit : Six barges were in front of the tow-boat, lashed together in two tiers of three barges each, and on either aide of the tow-boat was a barge extending back on the boat some 40 feet. The entire length of the tow from the front end of the forward barges to the stem of the steamboat was about 360 feet, and the extreme width was 72 feet. The barges were drawing about six feet of water, the ordinary draft. When the Morgan reaehed the head of Brunot's island the pilot at the wheel and the other pilot, who also was in the pilot-house, discovered the lights upon the Boaz and her barges. Both these pilots then sup- posed the lights to be those of an ascending boat; and this was a reasonable conjecture, for the bow of the Boaz was up stream, and she was then either in the act of moving from the lower end of the shore barges to a place below the bar, where the stranded barges lay, or she had just taken the lat- ter position. No one on the descepding tow had heard of the misfortune which befell the Boaz the evening before, and the pilots of the Morgan were entirely ignorant of the then con- dition of affairs at the foot of the island. When the lights were first seen the Morgan was about a mile up stream ; but she had approached within about 400 yards of the foot of the island before her pilots discovered, or were able to discover, that there were barges aground on the bar at the right of the channel, and barges a short distance below to the left at shor«, The Morgan's engines had already been reversed to check her headway, and she continued so to work them, put- ting on full steam-power. When she reaehed the foot of the island she backed her stera strong into the island and threw the head of her tow out to avoid the barges. But the best efforts of the Morgan failed, and the larboard side of her tow fitruck the outside of the libellants'; upper outside batge near ��� �