Samuel Freeman Miller

“ It is the duty of the carrier to see that his barge is capable of resisting these forces without subjecting the carge to injury. She must be so tight that the water will not reach the cargo, so strong that these ordinary applications of external force will not spring a leak or sink her, so sound that she will safely carry the cargo in bulk through these ordinary shocks to which she must every day be subjected. If she is capable of this she is seaworthy; if she is not, she is unfit for the navigation of the river. ”

“ The necessities of river navigation require steamboats and barges to pass through narrow and crooked channels, and to vanture on very shallow water, a water which is constantly varying in its depth, and a channel which often changes its course in a few days very materially. The consequence of this is that both steamboats and barges often get aground temporarily and are soon got off and resume their voyage. Often they rub the bottom of the river for many feet on crossing a sand-bar at low water, and pass on without injury or interruption. ”

“ These large steamboats, having a barge or barges in tow, lashed to them loosely, as they must be, are often brought against their sides with much force. They land for the purposes of their ordinary business at every ten or twelve miles of their voyage at the towns and landings on the river, and in doing so must necessarily impinge with more or less force against the barge which is between the boat and the shore. These are the daily and hourly external forces to which the barge is subjected in the ordinary course of navigation. ”