Peter Vivian Daniel

“ There can be no sound reason why they should be placed upon a ground of comparative disadvantage with reference to others. Why should there be placed under a species of judicial ban a mean of navigation and intercourse which, in regard to commerce, science, literature, art, wealth, comfort, and civilization, has, in a few years, advanced the world by more than a thousand years, perhaps, beyond the point at which the previous and ordinary modes of navigation would possibly have attained? ”

“ The evidence, correctly compared, so far from fixing upon the steamboat the fault of the collision, shows that collision to have been very probably, if not certainly, the result of delinquency on the part of the brig. It seems to have become a favored doctrine, that, in all cases of collision between steamboats and sailing vessels, the burden of proof, either for excuse or exculpation, is to be placed on the steamboat, because it is said that she is in a great degree independent of the winds and the tide, and possesses entire control of her movements. ”

“ Especially does it seem strange to me that there should anywhere exist a tendency to extend a system which, however attended with advantage when limited to the necessities in which it originated, must, almost in every instance, be attended with inconvenience, and not unfrequently with ruin to one side of the litigant parties, by operating the seizure and transmutation of property, and, of course, the suspension if not the destruction of all business in which that property formed a necessary instrument, and this, too, before an adjudication upon the rights of litigants can possibly be had ”

“ By the rule thus expounded-or if a steamer, merely because she is not propelled by the winds or the tides, is, under all circumstances, bound to avoid a vessel navigated by sails-it would follow, that should a vessel of the latter description wantonly or designedly place herself in the track of a steamer, or even put chase to her with that object, the steamer would nevertheless be responsible for the effects of a collision thus brought about.
Such an application of the rule cannot be correct. Steamers have their rights upon the waters as certain and entire as can be those of sailing vessels ”

“ With every proper allowance for the influence of selfishness, or alarm, or falsehood, it may be remarked that extreme opinions, like the one just stated, are themselves calculated to lead to error, and would often defeat the purpose which the diffidence or mistrust on which they rest would seek to attain. Collisions between vessels engaged in the navigation, either on the ocean or on rivers, rarely occur in the presence of spectators wholly detached from and indifferent to the events which really take place. ”

“ The scene of such events is usually on the track of the ocean, the course of rivers, midst the darkness of night, where and when there are none to testify save those who participate in the catastrophe; and if such persons, under the influence of a foregone opinion, are to be set aside as unworthy of faith, decisions upon cases of collision will, and indeed must, become so entirely the result of conjecture, or of an arbitrary rule, as to challenge but a small share of public confidence ”

“ There are no laws of the State, nor regulations of the port, inhibiting ingress and egress into and from the harbor during the night, nor prescribing the degree of speed at which these movements shall be accomplished; and any such regulation would be inconvenient, and, to say the least of it, useless, where the precaution of a light, such as that prescribed by the law and the regulation of the port, was used. ”

“ The guards which the wisdom and beneficence of the common law and equity jurisprudence of the country have thrown around the rights of property will tolerate no consequences like these; they require judgment before execution ”