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THE MARINE RECORD 9: STaeaOesE_uarewewuws ns» eee MARITIME LAW. : Lowell, District Judge. The libelant in this case is the owner of the schooner James Baird, upon which a cargo of hard-pine timber and flooring was shipped from Pascagoula, Miss., to Boston, consigned to the respondents. The libelant contended in argument that the charter party provided expressly for a discharge at the rate of 25 M. per day, but in this I think he is mistaken, and that the express agreement relates only to the rate of loading, although a rate of loading, stipulated by the parties, may, in some cases, be evidence of what is a reasonable rate of discharge. The libelant further alleged a custom of the port of Boston fixing 25,000 feet per day asa reasonable rate for the dis- charge of this kind of flooring, while the respondents al- leged an established custom of less than 20,000, The evidence on both sides satisfies me abundantly that no customary rate, properly so-called, exists for the dis- charge of this kind of lumber. The appropriate office of a custom is to interpret the otherwise indeterminate intentions _ of the parties or to ascertain the true meaning of a particu- lar word. See The Reeside, 2 Sumn. 567, Fed. Cas. No. 11,657. To be valid, a custom must be not only established and reasonable, but certain and definite. One of the libel- ant’s witnesses, for example, testified that the custom calls for a discharge of 25,000 to 30,000 feet, one of the respond- ent’s witnesses, in like manner, testified to a customary rate of 17,000 to 20,000. Ido not think either custom is possible. There might be a definite rate of discharging lumber fixed by custom for the sake of convenience, as 100 tons a day, Sundays excepted, is said to be the customary rate for the discharge of coal. See Thacher v. Gas-light Co., 2 Low 361, 364, Fed. Cas. No. 13,850. A custom which fixes the rate at from 17,000 to 20,000 feet, however, is an impossibility, unless the minimum is the privilege of one party and the maximum that of the other, or unless the custom defines the circumstanoes under which every rate between the maximum and minimum becomes customary. Neither condition exists here, and the meaning attached to the words ‘‘custom’’ and ‘‘customary’”’ is well defined by “the witness Childs. The charter party in this case gave the respondents ‘‘one clear day’’ in which to provide a berth for the schooner. I need not here determine precisely what these words mean under all circumstances. In this case they bound the re- spondents to furnish a berth where the Baird could discharge throughout the whole of May 23rd. In fact, no berth was furnished until May 26th, and the libelant lost the use of May 23rd and May 25th, except so far as he employed them in discharging the timber, something less than half a day’s work. It is practically admitted that no discharge is to be expected on Sundays and holidays, and, so_far as kiln-dried lumber under deck is concerned, I think it is fairly estab- lished that no discharge is to be expected on rainy days. The libelant contends that the discharge was hindered at Mystic Wharf by its inconvenient arrangement and manage- ment, and by the inability of the surveyor properly to keep up with the stevedore. The evidence to this effect is not very definite. That Mystic Wharf is somewhat less conven- ient than other wharves in Boston appears pretty plainly, and the rate of discharge thereat seems to be somewhat lower than at some other wharves. I am not convinced, however, either by the evidence or by the argument, that a reasonable rate of discharge is necessarily the same at all wharves and under all circumstance. The wharves in Bos- ton are not, in fact, equally convenient for the discharge of every sort of cargo, and no custom has been proved which requires me to disregard the difference among them. Doubt- less a wharf may be so inconveniently arranged or con- structed that the consignee will be responsible for the delay in discharging thereat, but the reasonable convenience re- quired of a wharf is not the same thing as the highest degree of convenience either imaginable or actually existing. Tak- ing everything together, I think that the libelant was im- properly delayed at Mystic Wharf somewhat, but not very much. I allow a day anda half before discharge began and one day thereafter. The removal to the respondents’ wharf was by the orders of the respondents, and for the delay caused thereby they are responsible. The evidence does not show distinctly how much delay was caused by the moving and by the inability to bring the vessel immediately alongside. Evidently it was small, and I shall allow only an additional half day’s de- ‘murrage therefor. The vessel having been thus delayed three working days by the fault of the respondents, it fol- lows that she ought to have finished her discharge by June I2th instead of June 16th, and there must bea decree for four days’ demurrage, as one Sunday intervened. THE HEAVENS FOR MARCH. Astronomical data for March, 1899, furnished by the Washburn observatory: Mercury is an evening star and reaches its greatest appar- ent distance from the sun on March 24th. ‘The planet will then set at a point of the horizon somewhat north of where the sun goes down at that time, and therefore may be readily seen soon after sunset. Venus is the brilliant morning star seen in the southeastern sky; but the planet is diminishing in brilliancy as its motion about the sun draws it farther from the earth. Mars is the bright, ruddy planet which reaches the meridian somewhat south of the zenith in the middle or early evening. Jupiter rises into view in the southeastern sky in the late evening and Saturn is seen in the same part of the sky in the early morning. The times of sunrise and sunset for the month at Milwau- kee are as follows: SUNRISE. SUNSET. IY Ech lo Lege ee aca cas Pee pa 6:28 5:41 Be RUN reat csi cie sn Satie cei et 6:11 5153 fone eae ee ene can ere ees ets 6:05 MS BL Rae na oes Racca ats 5:36 6:17 The sun in its apparent, northward motion, crosses the line March 20, 1:38 p. m. The times of the moon’s phases are: DhirdOQuarters 9, treo ee March 4, 10:07 p. m. New Moon oes, as eckin pea Oe may sol Hirst. Omanter we oce ca: ee cn ie LO. Oi 2dnp itl. Hull MoGne see eae ees S227, 1 2TOnp. il. The principal fixed stars visible during the month in the evening hours are: To the west, Capella, Aldebaran, the Pleiades, Sirius and the bright stars of the constellation Orion; near the meridian, Procyon, Castor and Pollux; to the east, Regulus. ae AMENDED STEAMBOAT RULES AND REGULATIONS. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE SUPERVISING INSPECTOR GENERAL, WASHINGTON, D. C., FEB. 15, 1899. To Supervising and Local Inspectors of Steam Vessels and Others : : At the regular meeting of the Board of Supervising In- spectors of Steam Vessels, held in the Lenman Building, Washington, D. C., January and February, 1899, in pursu- ance of section 4405, Revised Statutes of the United States, amendments were made to section 4, Rule I; sections 2, 14, 15, 21, 38, and 40 (new), Rule II; sections 1, 7, 10, 14, 15, and 26, Rule V; section 8, Rule IX; sections 8, Rule X; and section 6, Rule II, of Practice, of the General Rules and Regulations. The pilot rules for the Atlantic and Pacific coast inland waters were amended by adding thereto a paragraph for- bidding the use of cross signals. The resolution, printed on page 15, Pilot Rules, Atlantic and Pacific coast inland waters, and on page Io, Pilot Rules, Western Rivers, was amended by substituting, in the sixth line, second paragraph, the word ‘‘four’’ in place of the word ‘‘twelve,’’ where such word occurs. The Board, under the authority conferred upon it by sec- tion 4429, Revised Statutes, approved coil and pipe boilers presented by the following named persons and firms, when such boilers are constructed in all their parts of wrought iron, steel, or cast steel, in the manner as provided in the general rules of the Board: James Carnegie, New York, N. Y. (Type B); tug May- tham, Houghton, Mich. (copper fire furnace, special); Peter Cone, Jacksonville, Fla., A. D. Davis, Yonkers, N. Y.; Detroit Water Tube Boiler Co., Detroit, Mich.; F..W. Ed- wards, Bayonne, N. J.; Benjamin P. Emery, Kennebunk- port, Me.; F. G. Gibson, Dorchester, Mass.; Henry E. Hull, Clinton, Conn.; J. H. King, Daytona, Fla.; J. W. McQueen, Detroit, Mich.; Edward J. Moore, Philadelphia, Pa.; Jacob Ruf, Newark, N. J.; IT. W. Rucker, St. Louis, Mo.; Gas Engine and Power Co., and Chas. lL. Seabury & Co., of New York, N. Y. (Kanawha type); Robert White, Brooklyn, N. Y.; Samuel T. Williams, Baltimore, Md. (modification of boiler approved in 1894); Beder Wood, Moline, Ill. Jas. A. DuMoNT, Supervising Inspector General, President of the Board of Supervising Inspectors. Approved Feb. 15, 1899. O. l. SPAULDING, Acting Sec’y of Treasury. ——$——————————— rae TuE Chisholm & Moore Manufacturing Company (for- merly Moore Manufacturing Company), manufacturers of chain hoists, electric and air motor hoists, cranes and trolleys, have favored us with a copy of their new catalogue, neatly illustrated, and giving price lists, etc. NORTH-WEST COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. Nowhere has this law of commercial economy been more — completely illustrated than about the head of the lakes in northern Wisconsin, In prehistoric times this was coveted territory, a battleground, where two most powerful and in- telligent tribes contended through long ages for its posses- sion. Professor Turner has called it the key to the conti- nent, for its small lakes and tributary rivers form connecting links between its great lake and every part of the continent to the east by way of the Sault to the Atlantic, to the south by the Brule or the St. Louis and St. Croix to the Missis- sippiand the Gulf, to the north and west by the Grand Portage to Lake Winnipeg, thence by way of' the Saskatche- wan to the Pacific, by the Severn to Hudson’s Bay, or by the valley of the MacKenzie tothe Arctic and across to Asia. Then the smaller streams and the trail through ‘‘forests primeval’? were the routes of an extensive interior com- merce. Of this there are many evidences. It has been estimated that the copper had been removed from the ancient mines along Lake Superior for an aggregate of one hundred and fifty miles in veins of varying thickness. Champlain found specimens of fine copper among the In- dians of the lower St. Lawrence, which they told him came from the land of the mighty water far to the west. But the greater portion of the ore was distributed throughout the south and west, even as far as Mexico; for the Mexicans used considerable quantities of the metal, and there appears to be no evidence that copper was mined in Mexico or Central America prior to the advent of the Spaniards. For two hundred years from the time of Nicollet’s visit to Wisconsin at Green Bay, in 1634, the fur trade was the almost exclusive object of commerce. The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence became the great highways of this trade and teemed with various craft carrying inland voyagers and equipments, or returning laden with peltry. The coureurs de bois threaded every stream and forest, a multitudious advance guard of civilization penetrating even to the Pacific. With the British occupation in 1763 came a change of policy. Instead of sending out an army of trappers, their plan was to trade direct with the Indians at their posts, and for this purpose the Northwest Company established emporia at Detroit, Macinac, the Sault, the Grand Portage, and at Fon du Lac near the head of Lake Superior. This change is significant to northern Wisconsin interests in several ways. The old trans-continental trails so frequently fol- lowed by the French from Lake Superior to the Pacific, with the intimate knowledge of the northern country, became forgotten; a fact which had its bearing in the loca- tion of the first Pacific railroad along a more southerly route, instead of by this shorter, cheaper, and natural route of the great northern valleys. It opened the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Erie route to the traffic, instead of com- pelling it to follow the more northerly route of the French by way of the Ottawa river, Lake Nipissing and the Georgian Bay. This latter fact, and the monopolization of the trade by the powerful Northwest Company, led to the first deep waterways improvement. Canals to overcome the Cedar cascades and the Couteau rapids were begun in 1779 and completed in 1781. These were six feet wide and two and a half feet on the sills. In 1797 the first canal at the Sault was begun, and was used by the Northwest Company to take up loaded canoes. These were usually about 30 feet in length and of about three tons burden. The Canadian government has from time to time enlarged the canals of its St Lawrence system to 5, 9, 12, 14 feet depth over sills. ro oo Gov. ROOSEVELT, of New York, has signed the bill to stop the use of ‘‘ Old Glory’ for advertising purposes. There is a strong public sentiment against making the American flag common or putting it to unseemly use in degrading places. We hope other states will-follow the example of the New York Legislature in adopting such a patriotic law. The law provides as follows: ‘‘Any person who in any manner, for exhibition or display, places or causes to be placed any in- scription, design, device, symbol, name, advertisement, words, characters, marks or notice whatever upon any flag, standard, color or ensign of the United States, or flag of this State, or appends them in any way to such flag, or pub- licly mutilates, tramples upon, or otherwise defaces or de- files any such flag, whether the flags are public or private property, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor. It is provided, however, that flags, the property of or used in the service of the United States or of this State, may have in- scriptions, names of actions, words, marks or symbols placed thereon pursuant to law or authorized regulations.’’