Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/872

836 836 HARVARD LAW REVIEW take possession of it there without paying any freight, although the ship owners may wish to take it on to its original destination.^ A curious question regarding the application of this rule lately arose in Bradley v. Newsom, Sons b" Co.,^ in which the judgment of the Court of Appeal was reversed by the House of Lords. The steamship Jupiter, on a voyage from Archangel to Hull with a cargo of timber, was attacked by an enemy submarine while crossing the Firth of Forth. The Germans by threats of sinking the ship compelled the crew to take to their boats, and then placed bombs in the ship, and explosions on board were after- wards heard. The submarine towed the boats about five miles and cast them adrift, and in the growing darkness of the evening the ship was lost sight of. Soon afterwards the crew were picked up by a trawler and taken to Aberdeen, where they arrived on the following morning. The master, supposing that the steamship had sunk, telegraphed to the owners to that effect, and they sent the information to the charterers. In fact, the ship was floated by the cargo and was found by a patrol boat and taken into Leith three days after and beached there. The charterers, having learned this, claimed possession of the cargo at Leith, and the ship owners in- sisted on the right to take it on to Hull and so earn the freight. A majority of the House of Lords held that, as the crew in leaving the ship only yielded to force, there was not an abandonment without any intention of returning to her, but merely a temporary interruption of the voyage by the enemy submarine, and that the ship owners were en- titled to carry on the cargo to Hull. Lord Sumner dissented, on the ground that, although the master was induced by duress to quit the ship, yet after the boats were left free by the enemy he did not put back to look for the vessel, and after he had been picked up by the trawler he did not try to induce her commander to go back. "The real point of the case is the fact that the Jupiter was left for good at sea to fare as she might, and that the master and crew came ashore." ^ The master believed the Jupiter had sunk, but that did not prevent his action from being voluntary. "What is clear about the whole story is that in fact he then had neither animus nor spes revertendi, and if he left the ship to her fate for good and all, he did so all the more decidedly because he did actually think that she was no longer on the surface but was at the bottom." * In the court below, Pickford, L. J., also said,^ " There is no doubt that he and the crew thought this to be the fact and that they had no intention of rejoining her." It is remarkable that not one of the four law lords constituting the majority says anything as to the intention not to return to the vessel that was shown by the conduct of the master and crew after the Germans left them adrift in the boats. It is said that they were dispossessed by violence, and that it would be extravagant to impute to them the inten- tion of leaving the ship for good. Lord Finlay says, "If a British de- stroyer had appeared on the scene and driven off or sunk the submarine, they would gladly have returned to the vessel." But they showed no 1 The Amo, 72 L. T. 621 (1895); The Cito, 7 P. D. 5 (1881); The Ehza Lines, 199 U. S. 119 (1895). " [1919] A. C. 16; [1918] I K. B. 271. ' [1919] A. C. 16, 36.
 * IbU., 44- ^ [1918] I K. B. 271, 274.