Silver Line v. United States

This is an appeal by the owner of the British motorship Silver Palm against the United States, the owner of the naval cruiser Chicago, and other libelants suffering injury or seeking recovery for wrongful death resulting from a collision in fog conditions between the Chicago and the Silver Palm, in a three-vessel maneuver in the coastal traffic lane pursued in the fog by merchant ships between San Francisco and San Pedro. The collision occurred on October 24, 1933, at or about 8:07 o’clock in the morning.

We accept the testimony (Tr. 125) of. the Senior Admiral on board the Chicago that, from shortly before 8 o’clock until the collision, the Chicago was steaming along the “edge” of a fog “patch” on her left. Whatever the density of the so-called fog patch was at 8 o’clock, at 8:05, shortly before the collision, it had become “thick” (Tr. 1295), and the Admiral says the Silver Palm emerged from it clear cut to the eye as to her bow, but indistinct as to her stern, still in the bank (Tr. 114).

The cruiser, on a northerly course, 350 degrees true, sought, by turning to her left, to avoid a merchant ship, the Albion Star, bound for San Francisco, emerging on a northerly but…

On Petition for Rehearing.

(A) The petition for rehearing seeks to justify the use of the deck log entries with their significant erasive alteration and final omission of the two-thirds ahead order at 0801 in the “measuring rod” test run of the Louisville. The Chicago contends that the deck log record of turbine room orders, not entered until at least 8 hours after the collision and made up from memory, unproduced writing on slips of paper, and another book’s record, also altered by erasure, should be the basis of the test run instead of the contemporaneous entries of the men operating the Chicago’s four turbines and actually supplying them the steam for their propulsion.

The contention we cannot accept. The contemporaneous entries of the four turbine *772 bell sheets were the proper basis for determining the Chicago’s maneuvers for the test run of the Louisville. The tabulation of these entries was made in proper form by the Chicago’s Navigating Officer Gray for the use of the Board of Naval Enquiry. True, he took the final entries over the erasures, but the long-established presumption is that what was erased would be even more unfavorable to the Chicago.

The diagram of the…