In the vice-admiralty court of the Bahamas., this first day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of our reign the twenty-seventh

In the vice-admiralty court of the Bahamas.

Decree.

On the 30th of May last, the confederate sreamship Margaret and Jessie, with a cargo of 760 bales of cotton, having been chased and fired at by a United States cruiser, received a shot, which perforating her below the water-line, and injuring her boiler, she was, to save the ship and the lives of those on board of her, run ashore on a reef near James’s Point, on the north side of Eleuthera. The vessel immediately filled with water. The passengers and crew went on shore; a boat was despatched to Nassau to obtain assistance. On the evening of that day the promoter Stirrup arrived on the beach opposite the ship, which lay, it is stated, from 150 to 300 yards from the shore, and having obtained permission from the captain of the steamer, Stirrup and his party, amounting, it is alleged, to 100 men, commenced to unload the vessel, having first laid out an anchor to prevent the ship from running on the reef. The weather was moderate and the sea smooth, but this body of salvors, having no boats or vessels, threw the bales of cotton overboard, and rafted them to the shore by means of lines attached to them. They worked all night, and by next day, Sunday, the 31st, they had discharged all the cargo from the deck of the steamer and most of that from the hold.

The engineers of the ship having stopped the hole in the vessel which had been made by the shot, a large body of the promoters were, placed at the pumps, and another party baled out the ship by means of buckets. By that time they had been joined by six wrecking schooners from Harbor island, and a general consortship was entered into by all the parties.

About 6 p. m. of that day the vessel had been freed of much of the water that was in her, and a heavy anchor belonging to one of the wrecking schooners having been carried out with a hawser, the capstan was manned, and they succeeded in hauling the vessel off the reef. Having properly secured her, they continued through the night freeing her from water. The promoters, say that from the peculiar rig of the said steamship, the promoters were convinced that they could not bring her to Nassau under sail, and they again availed themselves of the services of the engineers of the ship to stop the hole in the ship’s boiler, the promoters agreeing, if they succeeded in so doing, to reward them for their services. At about 1 p. m. the following day the vessel was so far clear of water that they were enabled to make fires in the furnaces, and soon after having got up steam they shaped their course for Nassau, and arrived here on the morning of the 2d instant. Not wishing to delay the steamship in so dangerous a place as the north side of Eleuthera, they did not put the cotton in her there, but brought it down in the wrecking vessels and others obtained for the purpose. They mention that, fearing the Raccoon, a steamer which had been sent from Nassau to assist the Margaret and Jessie, and which they saw on the passage from Eleuthera, was a federal vessel-of-war in chase of them, they brought the steamer through some intricate channels to avoid the supposed danger, and brought her down through the same passage.

The circumstance of the Raccoon being sent to the assistance of the Margaret and Jessie was mentioned by the attorney general to show that even without the assistance of the wreckers the vessel would have been got off. I know an argument frequently used on the part of salvors is, that without their assistance the owners would have lost the whole of their property. This consideration certainly ought to have the effect of reconciling the owners to a liberal salvage remuneration being paid, but I hardly think it would be fair to make any diminution in the reward to be given to salvors because other means of assistance, of which neither party were aware, were at hand.

It is averred in the act or petition that the promoters employed agreed to remunerate the engineers of the vessel for repairing the injury both to the side of the vessel and to the boiler; and it is answered by the attorney general that no agreement of the kind appears in evidence, and that without the assistance of the engineers the promoters could not have saved the vessel.

I am inclined to think that the shot-hole in the bottom of the vessel might have been stopped by the promoters sufficiently to have got the vessel off and brought her to Nassau; but I do not beliere they could have repaired the boiler and worked the engines. However, whether they could or not, I cannot consider the repairs as having been made by them, or by any person employed by them. The engineers belong to the vessel. They are the servants of the owners of the vessel, and it is their bounden duty, without any extra reward, to do all that may be in their power to save the ship to which they belong, as long as any part of her holds together. They could not; without a gross dereliction of duty, have refused to make these repairs. If the salvors think proper to make them any present out of their salvage reward, that is a matter with which the court have nothing to do. The repairs, then, were made by the servants of the owners of the steamship, and the work performed by the promoters was the unlading of the ship, pumping out the water, hauling her off the reef, piloting her to Nassau, and bringing the cargo in other vessels to this port. No doubt, where the steamer lay on the north side of Eleuthera, she was in a situation of much danger. Had any bad weather occurred, or a heavy surf set in, she would in all probability have been beaten to pieces. The salvors, therefore, deserved credit for. the promptitude and energy with which they unloaded and pumped her out, though that, of course, was as much for their own interest as that of the owners of the property.

It was stated by the counsel of the promoters that, under the circumstances of this case, reparation would no doubt be made by the American government for the injury done.

I express no opinion on this point, but I think it would manifestly be unfair to the owners in the slightest degree to augment the salvage remuneration on the bare possibility of their being reimbursed in the way alluded to. The value of the ship is estimated at £12,000. The cargo consisted of 760 bales of cotton. The value of this, as has been estimated by return of the commissioner of sales, is 6614,630 5s 0d, making a total of £26,630 5s 0d.

One hundred men are said to have been employed from the shore, and six vessels are named, but the number of seamen they contained is not mentioned, nor the tonnage given, by which I might have calculated the number of men in each crew. From the wrecking act, I have supposed the whole may have been about seventy. I consider this as but a case of ordinary salvage, under all the circumstances. On this amount I think twenty-five per cent, a fair remuneration. The wreck master did not arrive until a considerable portion of the cargo had been landed. I award him £10, costs as usual.

I would have made a distinction between the property saved by the shore people and that saved by the wreckers; but inasmuch as the saved by each party is not specified, and a general consortship was entered into, I do not think that now necessary. They must arrange their respective proportions among themselves.

In the vice-admiralty court of the Bahamas.

I, Joshua Anderson Brook, registrar of the vice-admiralty court of the Bahamas, do hereby certify that the foregoing contains a correct copy of the interlocutory decree pronounced in the above case by the honorable the judge on the twenty-ninth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.