William T. Gardner v. The Tugboat L. N. Danzler, Her Engines, Tackle, Etc., in Rem, and Norfolk Dredging Company, in Personam

281 F.2d 719, 1960 U.S. App. LEXIS 3796, 1960 A.M.C. 1915
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedAugust 26, 1960
Docket8088_1
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 281 F.2d 719 (William T. Gardner v. The Tugboat L. N. Danzler, Her Engines, Tackle, Etc., in Rem, and Norfolk Dredging Company, in Personam) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
William T. Gardner v. The Tugboat L. N. Danzler, Her Engines, Tackle, Etc., in Rem, and Norfolk Dredging Company, in Personam, 281 F.2d 719, 1960 U.S. App. LEXIS 3796, 1960 A.M.C. 1915 (4th Cir. 1960).

Opinion

HAYNSWORTH, Circuit Judge.

In accordance with the standard practice in the dredging industry in Norfolk and on the Eastern seaboard, a dredging company deducted from the wages paid one of its seamen, employed in various capacities aboard its dredges and other vessels, the sum of $1 for each day when rations were furnished by it. The seaman challenges the legality of the deduction. He seeks to recover the total of such deductions during a period of more than four years, together with statutory penalties for delay in payment of seaman’s wages.

The District Judge filed an opinion 1 in which he held that the deduction was not prohibited by the statutes. Subsequently, he filed formal Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, in which he found that Gardner, the seaman, had assented to the deduction 2 and concluded he had no right to recover the amount of the deductions. We agree with his conclusion.

Norfolk Dredging Company does dredging work in inland waters as far north as the District of Columbia and as far south as Charleston, South Carolina. When it obtains a contract for dredging work, it sends to the job site a dredge in tow of a tug and such other barges, scows and launches as may be required. Some extensive operations require that a dredge and her supporting vessels remain at the same job site for extended periods. When the work is done, however, the vessels are moved to some other job site or returned to the company’s yard in Norfolk.

Gardner, the complaining seaman, worked for extended periods as launch-man or launehman-tankerman on the dredges, Florida and Atlantic. For relatively short periods, he worked as deckhand on the tug, Virginia, as mate on the tug, Egbert H., as captain, or yard captain, of the tug, Danzler, and as a mechanic in Norfolk Dredging Company’s yard.

When living and working aboard a dredge or tug away from the company’s yard, Gardner and other members of the crew were furnished meals for *721 which a charge of $1 per day was made and deducted from wages. A total of $1,133 was thus deducted from Gardner’s wages during a period of more than four years. When he was working in the company's yard or aboard a vessel moored there, no meals were furnished but, apparently, were procured by him at his expense.

The seaman rests his case upon the statutes pertaining to merchant seamen, relying particularly on those sections now codified as 46 U.S.C.A. §§ 713, 665 and 596.

Section 713 contains a “Scale of Provisions to Be Allowed and Served out to the Crew During the Voyage” and provides for certain permissible substitutes. Section 665, 3 with some exceptions, gives a seaman a right to an additional wage allowance if the rations served him are deficient in quantity or quality. Section 596 4 requires that wages of seamen on coasting voyages be paid within two days after termination of the agreement under which he was shipped or when he is discharged, whichever first happens. Section 596 also imposes a penalty of two days’ pay for every day’s delay in the payment of wages due.

His theory, therefore, is that he was entitled to rations when serving on board the dredges and tugs, that the deduction for board was unlawful, and that he is entitled to recover the deducted sums as wages together with the penalties imposed by § 596.

The boat and the dredging company rely on 46 U.S.C.A. § 544. That section excepts sail or steam vessels engaged in the coastwise trade, not in- *722 eluding intercoastal trade between Atlantic and Pacific ports, from the provisions of §§ 713, 665 and 596, upon which the seaman relies, as well as from other sections of Title 46.

The seaman does not contend that the diesel powered tugs and the dredges, which have no motive power of their own, are not “sail or steam vessels” within the meaning of § 544, if that section is in force. Rather, he contends that the Act of June 9, 1874, 5 from which § 544 is derived, was repealed by implication when the Shipping Commissioners’ Act of 1872 was extensively amended by the Act of Dec. 21, 1898. 6

The Shipping Commissioners’ Act of 1872 7 contained comprehensive provisions for the protection of seamen. Among other things, it made provision for Shipping Commissioners and required that the crews of ships sailing foreign or between Atlantic and Pacific ports be signed on and discharged before Commissioners. For such seamen, written articles, having the form and content fixed by the statute, were required for each voyage. Appended to § 68 of that Act is a scale of provisions, which was required to be stated in the written articles and which is the antecedent of the table in current code § 713. A right of action was created for short rations of proper quality by § 39 of the Act, from which current § 665 is derived. The wages of seamen required to ship under written articles were required by § 35 to be paid within specified times and the penalty of two days’ pay for each day’s delay was imposed, which section, in amended form, survives as § 596.

The requirement of § 12 of the Act of 1872, 46 U.S.C.A. §§ 564, 574, of written articles was limited to the crews of ships sailing foreign or on inter-coastal voyages. By the Act of June 9, 1874, 8 from which § 544 is derived, the Congress declared that none of the provisions of the Shipping Commissioners’ Act of 1872 was to apply to “sail or steam vessels engaged in the coast-wise trade,” except on intercoastal voyages. Referring to the Act of 1874, the Supreme Court declared it to be “an explicit declaration that Congress never intended that the original act should apply to vessels engaged in any part of the coasting trade * * 9

In Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company, Limited v. Byrne, 239 U.S. 459, 462, 36 S.Ct. 132, 134, 60 L.Ed. 382, the purpose of the exemption of vessels in the coasting trade was stated to have been “the relief of vessels making relatively short voyages, with frequent opportunities for reaching ports, from burdensome requirements not then deemed essential to the welfare of seamen employed thereon.” It must have been recognized, too, that it would be quite impractical to apply to most of the small craft and vessels on inland waters the basic scheme of the Shipping Commissioners’ Act — that Commissioners supervise the signing on of each crewman for each voyage and his discharge upon termination of the voyage. If the employment of seamen on small craft on inland waters was to be regulated, it was hardly to be approached through a requirement that the crews be reshipped before Commissioners prior to each “voyage.”

Such considerations do not apply to all vessels making coastal voyages. In 1886, therefore, Congress made the services of Shipping Commissioners available to coastal vessels when requested by the owner.

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Bluebook (online)
281 F.2d 719, 1960 U.S. App. LEXIS 3796, 1960 A.M.C. 1915, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/william-t-gardner-v-the-tugboat-l-n-danzler-her-engines-tackle-etc-ca4-1960.