Salmon P. Chase

“ Such a bond carries usually a very high rate of interest, to cover the risk of loss of the ship as well as a liberal indemnity for other risks and for the use of the money, and will bind the ship only where the necessity for supplies and repairs, in order to the performance of a contemplated voyage, is a real necessity, and neither the master nor owners have funds or credit available to meet the wants of the vessel. ”

“ In the absence of such proofs or circumstances, an apparent necessity for credit by bottomry must be regarded as established when the necessity for repairs is proved.
A more substantial distinction between the implied and the express hypothecation may, perhaps, be found in the greater diligence required of the lender on bottomry than of the material-man in inquiry concerning the necessity for repairs. ”

“ To support hypothecation by bottomry, evidence of actual necessity for repairs and supplies is required, and, if the fact of necessity be left unproved, evidence is also required of due inquiry and of reasonable grounds of belief that the necessity was real and exigent. ”

“ Necessity for repairs and supplies is proved where such circumstances of exigency are shown as would induce a prudent owner, if present, to order them, or to provide funds for the cost of them on the security of the ship. ”

“ Liens for repairs and supplies, whether implied or express, can be enforced in admiralty only upon proof made by the creditor that the repairs or supplies were necessary, or believed, upon due inquiry and credible representation, to be necessary. ”

“ Webb, [3] the authority of the officer holding possession for the United States to establish a provisional government was sustained; and the reasons by which that judgment was supported, apply directly to the establishment of the Provisional Court in Louisiana. ”

“ The evidence of these witnesses cannot be reconciled. The witnesses for the libellants are positively contradicted by the witnesses for the respondent. Clark, for example, says that on the last voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands and back to Rio, the Grapeshot leaked badly, and that she lost nine hundred bushels of salt by the water from the leaking. ”

“ It represented that the bark, when she left New York, was stout and staunch, well fitted, and supplied for her then intended voyage to Constantinople, and for the return voyage to New York; that, instead of returning from Constantinople to New York, the master, Clark, embezzled the freight earned in the voyage out, and engaged the vessel in voyages for his own benefit, until he caused her to be stripped at Rio of her copper, which was replaced by secondhand and indifferent metal, owned by Clark, and put on her in fraud of the claimant ”