1. While navigating the high seas between ports of the same
State, a vessel of the United States is, together with the business
in which she is engaged, subject to the regulating power of
Congress.
2. Sect. 4283 of the Revised Statutes, as limited in its
application by sec. 4289, is not unconstitutional.
Secs. 4283 and 4289 of the Revised Statutes are as follows:
"SEC. 4283. The liability of the owner of any vessel for any
embezzlement, loss, or destruction by any person of any property,
goods, or merchandise, shipped or put on board of such vessel or
for any loss, damage, or injury by collision, or for any act,
matter, or thing lost, damage or forfeiture done, occasioned, or
incurred without the privity or knowledge of such owner or owners,
shall in no case exceed the amount of the value of the interest of
such owner in such vessel and her freight then pending."
"SEC. 4289. The provision of the seven preceding sections
relating to the limitation of the liability of the owners of
vessels shall not apply to the owners of any canal boat, barge, or
lighter or to any vessel of any description whatsoever used in
rivers or inland navigation."
Sec. 4283 was one of the seven sections referred to in sec.
4289.
Page 102 U. S. 542
The steamship
Ventura, owned by the defendant in error,
the Goodall, Nelson, and Perkins Steamship Company, was employed in
navigation between San Francisco and San Diego in the State of
California, touching at the intermediate ports on the coast. In
making her voyages, she ran a distance of four hundred and eighty
miles on the Pacific Ocean. She formed part of a transportation
line which was largely engaged in foreign and interstate commerce,
but was herself only employed on her own route, and neither took on
nor put off goods outside of the State of California. While on one
of her regular voyages from San Francisco to San Diego, she was
totally lost, with all her pending freight and cargo, on the coast
of California without the privity or knowledge of her owner. This
suit was brought against her owner as a common carrier to recover
the value of the goods lost. The cargo was mostly owned by retail
merchants in San Diego and other places in California who had made
purchases for their business from wholesale merchants in San
Francisco and was in transit from there. The steamship company
pleaded its exemption from liability as owner of the vessel under
sec. 4283 of the Revised Statutes. On the trial, the court
instructed the jury
"that if the jury believed that the said losses occurred solely
by reason of the negligence of the master of said ship and without
the privity or knowledge or neglect of said defendant, that said
sec. 4283 of the Revised Statutes fully exonerated the defendant
from liability for any such losses, notwithstanding the goods when
lost were being transported on a journey, the final termini of
which were different points in the State of California."
To this charge an exception was duly taken. The jury found in
favor of the defendant, and judgment was rendered accordingly. To
reverse that judgment the present writ of error was sued out.
Page 102 U. S. 543
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE, after stating the facts, delivered the
opinion of the Court.
The single question presented by the assignment of errors is
whether Congress has power to regulate the liability of the owners
of vessels navigating the high seas, but engaged only in the
transportation of goods and passengers between ports and places in
the same State. It is conceded that while the
Ventura
carried goods from place to place in California, her voyages were
always ocean voyages.
Congress has power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations
and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes" (Const.,
art. 1, sec. 8), but it has nothing to do with the purely internal
commerce of the states -- that is to say, with such commerce as is
carried on between different parts of the same state, if its
operations are confined exclusively to the jurisdiction and
territory of that state, and do not affect other nations or states
or the Indian tribes. This has never been disputed since the case
of
Gibbons v.
Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1. The
Page 102 U. S. 544
contracts sued on in the present case were in effect to carry
goods from San Francisco to San Diego by the way of the Pacific
Ocean. They could not be performed except by going not only out of
California, but out of the United states as well.
Commerce includes intercourse, navigation, and not traffic
alone. This also was settled in
Gibbons v. Ogden, supra.
"Commerce with foreign nations," says Mr. Justice Daniel, for the
Court, in
Veazie v.
Moor, 14 How. 568,
"must signify commerce which, in some sense, is necessarily
connected with these nations, transactions which either immediately
or at some stage of their progress must be extraterritorial."
P.
55 U. S.
573.
The Pacific Ocean belongs to no one nation, but is the common
property of all. When, therefore, the
Ventura went out
from San Francisco or San Diego on her several voyages, she entered
on a navigation which was necessarily connected with other nations.
While on the ocean, her national character only was recognized, and
she was subject to such laws as the commercial nations of the world
had, by usage or otherwise, agreed on for the government of the
vehicles of commerce occupying this common property of all mankind.
She was navigating among the vessels of other nations, and was
treated by them as belonging to the country whose flag she carried.
True, she was not trading with them, but she was navigating with
them, and consequently with them was engaged in commerce. If in her
navigation she inflicted a wrong on another country, the United
states, and not the State of California, must answer for what was
done. In every just sense, therefore, she was, while on the ocean,
engaged in commerce with foreign nations, and as such she and the
business in which she was engaged were subject to the regulating
power of Congress.
Navigation on the high seas is necessarily national in its
character. Such navigation is clearly a matter of "external
concern," affecting the nation as a nation in its external affairs.
It must therefore be subject to the national government.
This disposes of the case, since, by sec. 4289 of the Revised
Statutes, the provisions of sec. 4283 are not applicable to vessels
used in rivers or inland navigation, and this legislation therefore
is relieved from the objection that proved fatal to the trademark
law which was considered in
Trade-Mark
Cases,
Page 102 U. S. 545
100 U. S. 82. The
commerce regulated is expressly confined to a kind over which
Congress has been given control. There is not here, as in
Allen v.
Newberry, 21 How. 244, a question of admiralty
jurisdiction under the law of 1845, but of the power of Congress
over the commerce of the United states. The contracts sued on do
not relate to the purely internal commerce of a state, but
impliedly, at least, connect themselves with the commerce of the
world because in their performance the law of nations on the high
seas may be involved and the United states compelled to
respond.
Having found ample authority for the act as it now stands in the
commerce clause of the Constitution, it is unnecessary to consider
whether it is within the judicial power of the United states over
cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction.
Judgment affirmed.
