Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/860

 THE ISAAO BELL. 845 �Eepplier had also had her proper light at that time burning it -would not have been seen and the collision avoided. �The only witness on the part of the libellant to the contrary is the colored lad, Eoy, He testifles that at 3 : 30 a. m., and about half an hour before the collision, he heard a sort of roaring, which woke him up, and that he then went forward in the schooner; that he next attended to his fire, then went back and remained watching the ap- proaching steamer and seeing her red light only ; that he appre- hended no collision ; that he did not call the captain, because it was not his business to call him, and that he did not bail the steamer or exhibit any torch. He testifies that the light whioh he had set the evening before was at this time still burning .brightly. One of the wHnesses testified that Roy had stated the morning after the collision that he was asleep at the time. His manner upon the stand was peculiar, and his answers to every question were given with a delib- eration and delay altogether unexampled, His quickness of appre- hension, exhibited in other ways, forbids the supposition that this was the resuit of any lack of intelligence or of comprehension of the ques- tions, and, in the face of the testimony of the witnesses from the Isaac Bell and of fhe captain of the, Norfolk, — a wholly disinterested person, — I feel bound to reject Eoy's testimony on this point. The captain of the Eepplier testified that his lamp was a new one, and Eoy said that it gave a better light than the White Shoal light. The captain admitted that it had sometimes gone out after an hour or two's burning, and that its continuanco depended upon its being properly trimmed beforehand; and, although they testify that it ha-d been properly trimmed the afternoon preceding, I feel bound to hold that the weight of testimony decidedly shows that the lamp was not burning after 11 o'clock, when the Norfolk passed. Unless, therefore, the Eepplier was at a place of anchorage where she was legally ab- solved from the duty of keeping any anchor light, she must be held in fault. �It bas been held by the supreme court that "the absence of a light from a sailing-vessel will not excuse a steamer from coming into col- lision with her, whether at anchor or sailing, in a thoroughfare out of the usual track of the steamer." N. Y. etc., v. Calderwood, 19 How. 241, 246 ; The Granite State, 3 Wall. 310, 313; The Clarita, 23 Wall. 1, 13. In the last case cited the facts did not call for any applica- tion of this principle ; in the second, the barge was fastened to the end of the pierj and in the first case the schooner was out of the steamer 's uBual track — "as near the eastern shore as possible;" she ��� �