1786 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



coast. We have long since got beyond these mercantile pursuits, and 

 we therefore now put up lights warning and helping vessels who 

 pass us in the dark, and from whom we can get nothing; but when- 

 ever that vessel comes into port distress or no distress we make 

 her pay light dues; and we make that charge on every vessel pursuing 

 its career for profit. For instance, take the vessel that comes in in 

 distress. It is not to be treated like the human being who has broken 

 his leg and cannot walk along the street, so that we carry him to the 

 hospital. The vessel comes in not injured, but in order to avoid 

 injury; and we have enabled it to avoid injury; and it then pursues 

 its way, making its profit. Well, under these circumstances, that is 

 exactly the kind of a vessel that ought to pay most gladly. I do not 

 think at all it is the sort of a vessel that is entitled to put up a plea 

 and say : " Do not charge me anything. I am only making 25 per 

 cent, on my year's trading, and I am doing it by your help, because 

 you have put a light up and saved me from being wrecked ; but 

 1080 don't charge me anything, because it is such a shame to charge 

 persons whom you are saving from wreck." That is not the 

 maritime way of looking at the thing. 



Take a parallel case, of which I have had considerable experience 

 cases of salvage. There you get salvage where the vessel is actually 

 not merely in distress, but on the high seas helpless, or it may be 

 abandoned. And then another vessel, passing, comes and takes it in 

 tow, takes hold of the vessel, which may be half-wrecked, or injured 

 by going on the rocks, or something of that sort another vessel comes 

 and tows it away. That is a very fine act, which is performed by 

 that vessel, perhaps even at very great risk; but the English Ad- 

 miralty Court allows the saviour of that vessel to come into court and 

 claim compensation known as salvage, and very large sums are given. 



I remember it was once my duty to argue a case for a lifeboat, 

 which was stationed up in the Pentland Firth, amid very stormy and 

 dangerous seas, and this lifeboat had, at the peril of the lives of the 

 men on it, gone out to attend upon a large ship which was suppo-cd 

 to be in danger. The great ship got out of danger. It had never 

 invited the attendance of the lifeboat, but the lifeboat, through two 

 days and nights a very fine display of endurance and courage 

 stood by, as it is called in nautical language, the big ship, kept near it, 

 followed it, so that in case of accident it should be ready to take the 

 crew off the ship. Well, the Court of Admiralty gave that lifeboat, 

 for whom I appeared, 1,700Z. They said : " This is a very fine acr. 

 Ship-owners must not suppose that they have a right to avail them- 

 selves of such a splendid service as that, and then go on their way. 

 making enormous profits, and leaving the hardy seamen to go back to 

 their cottages with no compensation except the satisfaction of having 

 done a noble act for a great ship-owner." So they gave those men 



