Henry Billings Brown

“ What is the measure of the master's obligation in cases where the seaman is severely injured while the ship is at sea has been made the subject of discussion in several cases; but each depends so largely upon its own peculiar facts that the rule laid down in one may afford little or no aid in determining another, depending upon a different state of facts. ”

“ The real question in the case is: whether the master, knowing his ignorance of surgery, the serious nature of the libellant's injury, the poor accommodations for him in the forecastle, the liability of inflammation setting in, and of the bones not uniting, the fact that he was to be carried through the tropics, where, to an invalid confined in the forecastle the heat would be almost intolerable, he should not, even at the sacrifice of a week, have put into Valparaiso and left the libellant there in charge of the American consul. ”

“ Each case must depend upon its own circumstances, having reference to the seriousness of the injury, the care that can be given the sailor on shipboard, the proximity of an intermediate port, the consequences of delay to the interests of the shipowner, the direction of the wind and the probability of its continuing in the same direction, and the fact whether a surgeon is likely to be found with competent skill to take charge of the case. ”

“ The transfer of passengers from a ship to a boat, even in a moderate sea, is attended with considerable difficulty, and, to a person with a broken leg, with great danger, in view of the unequal rising and falling of a large ship and a small boat. ”

“ He is not absolutely bound to put into such port if the cargo be such as would be seriously injured by the delay. Even the claims of humanity must be weighed in a balance with the loss that would probably occur to the owners of the ship and cargo. ”

“ The probability of obtaining aid by this course, and the certainty of the limb being injured by the delay, would have made it highly inadvisable to adopt it. As there is no harbor in the islands, the various transfers from the ship to a boat and from the boat to shore, and the return to another ship in the rough water that might be expected at that point, would have been extremely dangerous to a person in libellant's crippled condition. ”

“ The duty to provide proper medical treatment and attendance for seamen falling ill or suffering injury the service of the ship has been imposed upon the shipowners by all maritime nations. It appears in the earliest Codes of Continental Europe and was expressly recognized by this court in the recent case of The Osceola, 189 U.S. 158, 47 L. ed. 760, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 483. Upon large passenger steamers a physician or surgeon is always employed, whose duty it is to minister to the passengers and crew in cases of sickness or accident. ”