Pacific Hunting & Fishing Co. v. United States

This is one of the “Sealing Cases” which upon a former appeal was reversed and remanded for a new trial. Bird et al. v. United States (C. C. A.) 24 F.(2d) 933, 938, 944 . The damage claimed is for interference by the United States with an alleged sealing voyage of the schooner Bessie Rutter to the Bering Sea in 1891. Upon the second trial a jury was again waived, and, after consideration of the evidence, the court found -that, though on June 29, 1891, when the schooner was in the North Pacific Ocean, officers of the United States vessel Thetis boarded her and warned her against sealing in the Bering Sea, no “interference” in the statutory sense was shown, for the reason that at no time during that year did she engage in or undertake a voyage to the Bering Sea for the hunting of seals, and accordingly there was a judgment of dismissal. The single question is of the propriety of this latter finding.

Upon the former appeal, in construing the statute, we said: “‘Voyage,’ as used in the Act, imports an actual voyage, as _ distinguished from one existing only in desire, or which might possibly or probably have been undertaken, but for the well-known opposition of the officers of the…