The El Monte

252 F. 59, 164 C.C.A. 171, 1918 U.S. App. LEXIS 2037
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedJune 18, 1918
DocketNo. 3097
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 252 F. 59 (The El Monte) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
The El Monte, 252 F. 59, 164 C.C.A. 171, 1918 U.S. App. LEXIS 2037 (5th Cir. 1918).

Opinion

• WALKER, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree which adjudged the steamship El Monte liable for damages resulting to the steamship Clematis and its cargo from a collision between the two vessels which occurred near one of the docks in the port of Galveston. Each of the vessels, which had been on opposite sides of the same pier, the Clematis on the east side and the El Monte on the west side of it, started on a voyage during the afternoon of February 10, 1916; the Clematis getting under way in the channel about half an hour before the El Monte, both going east. The weather was fairly clear when the Clematis started, but a heavy fog came up ahead while it was still in the harbor of Galveston and was passing the docks on the city’s water front, and the pilot and the captain -of the vessel concluded to berth it until the fog lifted. The pilot on the Clematis, who had passed along the water front a short while before, knew that there was a vacant berth at Pier 21, and it was determined to put the vessel in there. When it was approaching that pier, to be berthed there, and was near enough to it for attempts to be made .to get a line to shore, which was on the vessel’s starboard side, the El Monte collided with it on its starboard quarter.

In behalf of tire El Monte it is claimed, first, that that vessel is not liable for any of the damage sustained by the Clematis and its cargo; and, second, that, if the El Monte was so at fault as to make it liable, faults chargeable against the Clematis were such as called for a division of the loss occasioned by the collision.

A large volume of evidence was adduced, some of it being depositions of witnesses examined out of court, but a considerable part of it on both sides being the testimony of witnesses examined in the presence of the trial judge. The court did not set out its findings of facts. The evidence adduced by the opposing parties was very conflicting. It would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for an appellate court to reach satisfactory conclusions from an examination of the record as to many material matters, if there existed no basis for presuming in favor of the correctness of findings which the decree rendered, in the light of the evidence, indicates were made by the trial court. But we are not to be unmindful of the fact that, so far as conflicting versions [61]*61o£ occurrences were given by witnesses examined in the presence of the trial judge, there may have been evidences disclosed to him, but not found in the written report of the testimony made a part of the record on appeal, of the verily of one version and of infirmities in the opposing one, justifying the conclusion that a preponderance of the evidence sustained such findings as would support the decree appealed from.

[1] The record is not such as to justify tts in concluding that the El Monte is not liable for any of the damage caused by the collision. The distance by way of the channel traversed from the starting place of the two vessels to where the collision occurred is about a mile and a half. Kong before the El Monte was in dangerous proximity to the Clematis, it was obvious to those in charge of the former that there ■was a dense fog ahead, preventing objects within it being seen until they were too near to be avoided by a vessel moving at such speed that it could not be maneuvered with great promptness. The space covered by the fog was one within which other vessels were likely to be. There was much’ testimony tending to prove, that while the El Monte was gaming on the Clematis repeated fog signals, and also danger signals occasioned by the presence of small vessels near the Clematis, were given by the latter, which must have apprised those in charge of the former, if they were duly watchful, of the presence of a vessel in the fog ahead. Though the testimony in behalf of the El Monte was to the effect that such signals were not heard by any one on that vessel, the record does not enable us 1o say that the trial court was not justified in finding that the signals were given by the Clematis, as testified to, ami must have been heard by those in charge of the navigation of the El Monte. While the witnesses for the El Monte denied that the fog signals testified to were heard, its pilot, who was a witness in its behalf, admitted that, as that vessel backed out of the berth from which it started, he “heard a whistle down the channel, blew maybe two or three whistles/' and that afterward he heard “a ship blow two long and one short,” the signal for a tug, but that “he did not know where the vessel was that blew the whistle — whether it was at the wharf or at sea.”

Other testimony made it plain that the signal for a tug which the El Monte’s pilot admitted he heard was given by the Clematis, and that it was heard and the direction oí it, apparently without difficulty, located by the captain of the tug Kelly, which at once proceeded towards the Clematis, according to the testimony of the Kelly’s captain, who was a witness for the El Monte, having the El Monte right behind it as it went down the channel, and getting within seeing and speaking distance of the Clematis just before the collision occurred. The Kelly had assisted the Clematis to get away from the dock from which it started, and, according to the testimony of its captain, then went east, stopping at Pier 39 for fuel oil, and, just as it was leaving that place, it heard, and immediately started in response to, the signal of tiie Clematis for a lug. The evidence was such as to support a finding that a proximate cause of the collision was the nonobservance by the El Monte of the requirements of the following explicit statutory regulation, prescribed to prevent collisions:

[62]*62“Every vessel shall, in a fog, mist, falling snow, or heavy rainstorms, go at a moderate speed, having careful regard to the existing circumstances and conditions. A steam vessel hearing, apparently forward of her beam, the fog signal of a vessel the position of which is not ascertained, shall, so far as the circumstances of the case admit, stop her engines, and then navigate with caution until the danger of collision is over.” Article 16 of Regulations for Preventing Collisions in Harbors and in Inland Waters. 3 U. S. Comp. Stat. 19-13, § 7889 (Comp. St. 1916, § 7889).

When the Clematis first could be seen through the fog by those directing the navigation of the El Monte, the latter was moving, with such speed that it could not be kept-from running into a vessel directly ahead, which was stationary or slowly moving in the same general direction in which the El Monte was going. Just prior to and at the time of the collision, the El Monte was moving past and not far from the docks along the water front of a busy port, where other vessels were likely to be met or overtaken; a dense fog rendering objects ahead not visible until they were so near that a vessel moving as the El Monte was could not avoid colliding with another vessel in its path, which was not moving towards it or across its course, and not, long before having been apprised that another vessel was near enough for a signal from it to be heard, whether the location of such other vessel was or was not disclosed. Considering where the El Monte was and the attending circumstances and conditions, we think the conclusion was warrantéd that it was not maintaining the moderate speed required by the first paragraph of the above-quoted regulation. The Nacoochee, 137 U. S. 330, 11 Sup. Ct. 122, 34 L. Ed. 687; The Umbria, 166 U. S. 417, 17 Sup. Ct. 610, 41 L. Ed.

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Bluebook (online)
252 F. 59, 164 C.C.A. 171, 1918 U.S. App. LEXIS 2037, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/the-el-monte-ca5-1918.