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Scotia, The U.S. 170 (1872)

handle is hein.slavery/ussccases0359 and id is 1 raw text is: 170                        THE SCOTIA.                    [Sup. (t.
Syllabus.
any such direction or to interfere in any manner with the
judicial discretion and judgment of the subordinate court.*
Viewed in the light of the return, the court is of the
opinion that the rule must be discharged and the
PETITION DENIED.
THE SCOTIA.
1. Although it is the clear duty of an ocean steamer sailing at night to
keep out of the way of a sailing vessel, yet if the course of the sailing
vessel, when first seen, is such, that compared with her own no collision
is probable, the steamer is not bound to change her course. She need
but watch and see that the courses of the two vessels are preserved. It
is only when the sailing vessel does change her course, so as to render a
collision possible, that the steamer must change hers also; and if she
then makes the proper manoeuvres to take herself from the sailing
vessel, and when collision becomes more probable slows, stops, and
backs, all as the best judgment that can be formed in the emergency
suggests, she is not liable for the collision.
2. The statutes of the United States and the orders in council of Great
Britain having each prescribed the sort of lights which, on the one
hand, their steamers are to carry at night, and the different sort which,
on the other, their sailing vessels are to carry, and both nations adopt-
ig is this form the same distinction in the sorts of lights for the two
sorts of vessels respectively, the court declares that where a British
steamer and an American sailing vessel are navigating at night in the
known path of vessels navigating between the United States and Great
Britain, so that there is a reasonable probability that vessels in that
path would be either American or British, a steamer may, in the ab-
sence of knowledge, act upon the probability that a vessel whose light
she sees while she cannot distinguish at all the vessel herself, is such a
vessel as her light indicates, and apply the rule of navigation common
to the two countries accordingly.
6 Under the existing statutory regulations of the United States and Great
Britain (stated more fully infra, pp. 171-2), both of which on the one
hand require sailing vessels to carry colored lights and not to carry a
white one, and both of which on another require steamers to carry a
white light at their mastheads,-when an American sailing vessel car-
ries in mid-ocean at night a white light hung at her bow, fastened low
Ex parte Crane, 5 Peters, 194; Ex parte Bradstreet, 7 Id. 634; Insur-
ance Co. v. Wilson, 8 Id. 304; Ex parto Many, 14 Howard, 25.

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