Morrison Waite

“ Sect. 4285 provides, that it shall be deemed a sufficient compliance on his part with the requirements of the act if he shall transfer all his interest in the vessel and freight to a trustee, appointed by the court for the persons who may prove to be legally entitled thereto. Any court, therefore, which gets actual possession of the things to be transferred, and about which the concourse of claimants is to be had, is a court of competent jurisdiction to try the questions that will properly arise upon the apportionment to be made. ”

“ It has the freight-money in its possession, and its trustee is in a condition to gather up the remnants of the vessel if it has not already been done. The jurisdiction of the court is not dependent at all on the amount, but on the rightful possession of that which is to be divided.
We cannot, on an application for a writ of prohibition, determine what shall be the effect of any judgment of the District Court while exercising its rightful jurisdiction neither are we to determine in this form of proceeding what persons, or what classes of persons, are entitled to the fund in hand. ”

“ As was said at this term in The Scotland (supra, p. 24) , our rules were not intended to prevent an owner from availing himself of any other remedy or process which the law itself entitled him to adopt, but to aid him in bringing into concourse those having claims against him arising from the acts of the master or crew. ”