James Moore Wayne

“ In the first as well as in the second of these cases, the point was put on the interest which a consignee has in the consignment, as consignee, and not as owner of any part of it; that, from the nature of the contract of a bill of lading, the consignee had a right to sue, in a court of admiralty, for any breach of it. Whatever may be the uncertainty concerning the consignee's right to sue in a court of law, from the conflicting decisions to be found upon that right, there are none that he may sue in a court of admiralty in the United States. ”

“ Honolulu is in the latitude of 21° 19' north, longitude 157° 52' west. Nor are the temperatures such between Valparaiso and Honolulu as could have produced any change in the condition of the soap. From Honolulu the usual run to San Francisco is from fifteen to twenty days. As a general rule, the course of ships bound from the first to San Francisco would be to the northward of it, to be sure of good winds. ”

“ The difference between them will readily be recognised from the positive language of two other witnesses, who say they examined the seams of the deck below with their knives, and found them hard; one of them adding, it is impossible for a man to tell, after two or three weeks, whether a vessel is newly caulked, without trying her seams. Lowry, the stevedore who discharged the cargo, upon being asked if he had seen any traces of salt water in the top of the boxes of the soap, or on the ceiling of the deck, answers that he had not, but that he saw some places marked with chalk by some persons ”

“ It is true that the chemist who analyzed it says that it had been made of good materials, and was well saponified, and he says that sweat is a mere evolution of water in a state of vapor; and that the boxes could not have been stained in that way, and that they were stained by some external means. ”

“ Such is the whole of the testimony to prove bad stowage in this case, unless the opinions of other witnesses, expressed in the course of their examination, without any facts having been given by them to sustain their opinions, are taken as evidence. On the other hand, Nicholson, a man of more than thirty years' experience as a nautical man, who visited the ship by the invitation of the port warden, to examine the soap, and who went into the hold for that purpose, says, in answer to the question, 'How was the cargo stowed? ”