Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/934

 922 FEDKBAL BEPOBTEB. �the Craighill chaiinel it is more easily made on the outside of the curve. �The most experienced Chesapeake Bay pilota, in the habit of daily piloting the largest steamers, testify that there is no siich custom. The president of the board of pilots expressly denies its existence, and says that they understand that the vessel desiring to proceed contrary to the statutory rule must get permission of the other vessel, and if the other vessel does not give it the rule must be obeyed. �No doubt the fact that heaVy vessels do frequently ask for and obtaiii, by an interchange of signais, such permission, may haye lead to a;n expectfttion that they will usually ask it, and smaller craf t tnay, as a habit, hold themselves ready to accord it; but this isthe extent to which the practice extends. It seems to me that its further extension is to be deprecated. These channels are traversed by vessels of ail nations, and any attempt to depart from the well-known rules of mai'itime law, and to substitnte local oustoms, not founded upon actual necessity, but upon mere oonvenience, is likely to lead to tmeertainty and disaster. The dangers arising from a de- parture from settled rules of navigation have lead admiralty courts to hold that the local custom which is to justify such departure must be founded upon necessity arising from per- manent local peeuliarities, such as rocks, strong currents in crooked rivers, and the like, and that the exception should be as distinct and definite as the rule itself. Lowndes on Col- lisions, c. 3. �In the present case those in charge of the tug seem to have mistaken the Gulnare for a large steamer, and to have expected that she would want the eastern side of the chan- nel, and they gave her, at the distance of nearly a mile, two blasts of the whistle as a signal that they proposed to take the western side. They received no reply, as they state, but they steered for the western side and proceeded without any further signal until the steamer was within three lengths of them, when they signalled again. The vessels had then got into such proximity that a colHsioa was imminent if not unavoidable. ��� �