Life Salvage

by Twain Braden

RMS Carpathia recovered 712 of the Titanic’s castaway passengers from lifeboats.

On the 18th of March 1840, the schooner Emblem sailed from Apalachicola, Florida (in the Panhandle), bound for Havana. A few days out, when she was in the Straights of Florida, she was knocked down in a squall. She lay on her beam ends for about eight hours until the masts snapped — or were cut away by her crew — and the schooner snapped upright. Aboard were six crew members and five passengers, including a woman identified in subsequent legal proceedings only as Mrs. Judah. For four days the vessel lay ahull, the waves continually sweeping the decks.

To save themselves, the crew and passengers lashed themselves to the mast stumps to avoid being swept away. They ate and drank nothing. The storm, which began as a squall, raged unabated from March 25 until the 29th. One by one, the crew and passengers succumbed to exposure and died where they lay on deck or were lost in the waves. Mrs. Judah’s husband and two young children were among those who were swept from the deck and lost.

During these four days, numerous vessels sailed by, some of their crews even appearing on deck to inspect the carnage, and then sailed on without rendering aid. Mrs. Judah later reported that as many 23 different vessels came within hailing distance. “Some of them came so near, that the persons on board could be plainly and distinctly seen from the wreck. But none came to their relief,” the court later wrote in its opinion (The Emblem, 2 Ware 68 (D. Me. 1840).

Finally, on March 29th, the schooner Charles Miller of Portland, Maine, which had recently departed Havana, sailed up to the wreck. Her captain and crew made a quick survey of the damage, noticed the shipwrecked sailors, and launched rescue boats. They recovered Mrs. Judah and a few of her comatose companions. The vessel herself appeared to be a total loss and not worth recovery, so they sailed away.

Once aboard the Charles Miller, all of Emblem’s passengers and crew died, with the exception of Mrs. Judah, who rallied, and she related the above tale to Capt. George M. Hatch. Capt. Hatch also learned that aboard the vessel was a fair amount of specie and other potentially valuable property. He immediately turned around, relaunched a boat, and recovered a couple of trunks. Inside was the treasure. Capt. Hatch continued his voyage to Portland, where he promptly filed a libel for salvage against the recovered treasure.

What was of great interest to the court, however, were the heinous acts of the crew of the 25 vessels that had left the crew to die and also the heroics of Capt. Hatch and the crew of the Charles Miller. Unlike the other vessels’ crew, who appeared to only consider the wreck’s potential for salvage value, he had acted merely as a good Samaritan and acted even though he believed there was nothing of value on board. Yet he nonetheless responded, if only to save the lives of those remaining on board, expecting nothing in return. It was only when he learned from Mrs. Judah of the possibility of treasure did he return.

The court wrestled with this when it was deliberating over a possible salvage award for Capt. Hatch and the crew. This is because an admiralty court had (and has) ample case law to generously award salvors for recovering property in danger at sea, but not for the saving of lives. The court wrote: “Now, though the court is not authorized to grant a reward directly, for the discharge of this common duty of humanity [saving lives], yet when it has incidentally led to the saving of property, it will not exclude it wholly from its consideration, in determining the amount of salvage upon the property.”

In other words, the court acknowledged its hands were tied: If Capt. Hatch had only saved lives, he would be entitled to nothing, but since he had saved both lives and valuable property, he was entitled to enhanced value for also saving lives in the process. The judge awarded $380 for their efforts, two-fifths of the award to the owners of the Charles Miller and three-fifths divided among Capt. Hatch and the crew, proportional to their station.

Titanic’s passengers by the crew of Carpathia, who picked up 712 castaways from lifeboats. Carpathia’s crew would have only been entitled to a salvage award for the value of the lifeboats themselves, but nothing for the lives themselves. (They didn’t file a claim.)

But the story does not end there. In 1979, a law professor at Rutgers University School of Law, advocated in a law review article that a 1912 act of Congress modified an existing treaty to actually create a provision in the law to award “life salvors” such as the Carpathia crew (Friedell, Steven F., “Compensation and Reward for Saving Life at Sea,” 77 Mich. L. Rev. 1218 1978-1979). Prof. Friedell argues “that courts have given insufficient attention to the purposes” of the Act, and “courts should remain free to recognize all rights that life salvors possess[]” when deliberating over salvage awards.

This is true, he writes, even if there is no property saved in the process. “[I]f a case like the Titanic were to come before an American court today, the court should compensate the life salvors for their personal injuries and reasonable expenses and should have the discretion to reward them for extraordinary acts of heroism.”

The loose rationale for the current law is that awards for life salvage, tacked on to property recovery, is “honorary” and also “furthers the general interest of shipowners and cargo owners” — but only to the extent property is recovered.

Prof. Friedell offers one obscure case to the contrary. In The Mulhouse (17 F. Was. 962 (S.D. Fla. 1859)), a Florida admiralty court specifically described the “special service” that life salvors earned independently from recovering property. Friedell writes: “One ship, the Globe, saved the passengers of the Mulhouse, and another ship, the Tortugas, saved the crew and a small amount of property.” Importantly, both recovered an award in a subsequent salvage case. Describing the crews’ independent rights as life salvors, the court wrote:

“if any advantage in the salvage could be obtained by saving the property rather than the lives — a strong temptation would be held out to salvors, in many instances, to gratify their avarice at the expense of their feelings of humanity.”

According to Friedell, this case has been ignored (or renounced but not over-ruled) in subsequent case law. But, he argues, the time has come to recognize the obviousness of the Mulhouse decision:

“In all cases American courts should formally renounce the vestiges of a doctrine that denies those who save lives an award that is given to those who save property.”

Twain Braden is a partner at the Portland firm Thompson Bowie & Hatch, LLC, where he specializes in maritime and admiralty law: tbraden@thompsonbowie.com