This is a libel in admiralty by the owner, master, and crew of the steam tow-boat Joseph Cooper, Jr., for salvage on the ship Connemara and cargo. Louis Wurtz and Henry Holser, passengers on the tow-boat, and John Evers, a passenger on the ship, were permitted to file intervening libels. The value of the ship and cargo was agreed to be $236,637. The district court awarded as salvage 8 per cent. on that value, or $18,930.96, and the owners and claimants of the ship appealed to the circuit court.
The circuit court found the following facts:
On the fifteenth of April, 1879, the ship Connemara, being in the port of New Orleans, with her cargo on board, consisting chiefly of pressed cotton, and bound on a voyage for Liverpool, England, engaged the tow-boat Joseph Cooper, Jr., to tow her to the mouth of the Mississippi river, and was by her towed about 26 miles down the river, and came to anchor about 8 o'clock in the evening opposite the Belair plantation. About 11 o'clock at night the ship, with the tow-boat lashed to her side, was lying with her bow to the current and her stern to the wind, which was blowing stiffly, no watch had been set,--and the two mates and the boatswain set,-and the two mates and the boatswain fluence of liquor, but the captain and the rest of the crew were sober. Evers, a passenger on board the ship, being then asleep in the second mate's cabin, was awakened by a smoke of burning cotton, sprang from his berth, and gave the alarm to the officers and crew of the ship and of the tow-boat. The fire was not in the hold, but in the poop above the main deck, and near the door, which could be opened by raising the latch; and the fire, when discovered, was confined to three bales of cotton, a spare sail, and two coils of tarred rope. There were 127 bales of cotton stowed in the poop. The fire was not caused by the fault of the tow-boat, or by any defect in her equipment or management. The tow-boat had on her deck a pump worked by steam, and hose long enough to reach the fire on the ship. As soon as the alarm was given, and by the exertions of the tow-boat's officers and crew, of her two passengers and of Evers, the hose was laid from the pump to the deck of the ship, and by their use of this pump and hose the fire was put out in 15 or 20 minutes, without any damage to ship or cargo, beyond the burning of the sail and the two coils of rope, the partial burning of the three bales of cotton, and the charring of a part of the upper deck or roof of the poop. In extinguishing the fire there was no serious risk of loss or damage to the tow-boat, or of injury to life or limb of any of the salvors. No efficient effort was made by the officers or the crew of the ship to extinguish the fire. The ship had on her deck, within 15 feet of the fire, two tanks of water, holding 400 gallons each, one of which was full and the other half full, with six buckets near the fire and seven above, and a pump by which water could have been pumped upon the upper deck. At the time of the fire the steam-tug Harry Wright was lying about a quarter of a mile off; and there was a telegraph station on the Belair plantation, from which a dispatch could have been sent to the city of New Orleans for aid to put out the fire, and efficient aid might have reached the ship from the city in two hours and a half after notice. The agreed value, as aforesaid, of the Connemara and cargo, and the names and monthly wages of each of the officers and crew of the Joseph Cooper, Jr., were also stated in the findings of fact.
From these facts the circuit court made and stated the following as conclusions of law:
(1) The services rendered by the tow-boat Joseph Cooper, Jr., her officers and crew, and the three passengers, Wurtz, Holzer, and Evers, in the extinguishment of the fire on board the ship Connemara, were a salvage service; (2) a gross salvage on the ship and cargo of $14,198, or 6 per cent. on the value thereof, should be allowed; (3) this salvage should be equally divided, half to the owner of the tow-boat, and half to the salvors; (4) the moiety allowed to the salvors should be distributed among them in proportion to their monthly wages, the passengers Wurtz and Evers to rank as pilots, and Holser as a steersman.
A decree was entered accordingly, and the claimants appealed to this court. A motion to dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction was made and overruled at October term, 1880. The Connemara, 103 U.S. 754.