Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ If we cannot take the blockading aquadron or the battleship Indiana in account as part of the capturing force, we cannot take them into account as motives. If the master was a timid man, who would not have dared to fight under any circumstances, there would have been the same certainty of surrender to one who knew the whole situation, but the law would have looked only to the force, and would not have gone into psychology. ”

“ The claims of the New York and the Wilmington fall with that of the Indiana. If she was not within signal distance of the Mangrove they were not, and, as we are about to show, can make no claim on the ground that the Indiana was a joint captor and that they were within signal distance of her.
A part of the argument for the United States also is disposed of by what we have said. If none of the other vessels were within signal distance of the Mangrove, none of them were 'vessels making the capture' within the meaning of § 4630, U.S.C.omp. Stat. ”

“ We may admit, with regard to the question just discussed and that to which we now address ourselves, that it is impossible not to feel that the prize law had in mind a different kind of case from this. To catch a blockade runner or a vessel not even informed of the blockade, in either case a vessel not expecting to fight and having shrewd ground to velieve that to do so would be to bring down upon herself an overwhelming force, is not the desperate venture which the statute was framed to encourage. ”