The District Court of the United States for the Northern
District of Illinois, as a court of admiralty, has jurisdiction of
a suit
in rem against a steam canal boat to recover
damages caused by a collision between her and another canal boat
while the two boats were navigating the Illinois and Lake Michigan
Canal at a point about four miles from its Chicago end, and within
the body of Cook County, Illinois, although the libellant's boat
was bound from one place in Illinois to another place in
Illinois.
Petition for a writ of prohibition to restrain the judge of
the
Page 109 U. S. 630
District Court of the United States for the Northern District of
Illinois from exercising jurisdiction and entering a final decree
in a suit in admiralty in that court growing out of a collision in
the Illinois Canal.
MR. JUSTICE BLATCHFORD delivered the opinion of the Court.
The owners of the canal boat
Brilliant and her cargo
filed a libel in admiralty in the District Court of the United
States for the Northern District of Illinois against the steam
canal boat
B & C in a case of collision. The libel
alleges that the
Brilliant is a vessel of more than 20
tons burden, and employed at the time of the collision in the
business of commerce and navigation between ports and places in
different states and territories of the United States upon the
lakes and navigable waters connecting said lakes; that the
B
& C is a vessel of more than 20 tons burden, and was at
the time of the collision enrolled and licensed for the coasting
trade, and employed in the business of commerce and navigation
between ports and places in different states and territories of the
United States, upon the lakes and navigable waters connecting said
lakes; that in August, 1882, the
Brilliant, while bound
from Morris, Illinois, to Chicago, Illinois, towed, with other
canal boats, by a steam canal boat, and carrying the proper lights,
and moving up the Illinois and Lake Michigan Canal, about four
miles south of the Chicago end of the canal, was, through the
negligence of the
B & C, struck and sunk, with her
cargo, by the
B & C, which was moving in the opposite
direction, to the damage of the libellants, $1,500. The owners and
claimants of the
B & C answered the libel, giving
their version of the collision and alleging that it was wholly due
to the faulty navigation of the
Brilliant, and that it
occurred on the Illinois and Michigan Canal at a place within the
body of Cook County, in the State of Illinois. In November, 1883,
the district court made an interlocutory decree, finding that both
parties were in fault, and decreeing that they should each pay
one-half of the
Page 109 U. S. 631
damages occasioned by the collision, to be thereafter
ascertained and assessed by the court. The owners of the
B
& C have now presented to this Court a petition praying
that a writ of prohibition may issue to the judge of the said
district court, prohibiting him from proceeding further in said
suit. The ground alleged for the writ is the want of jurisdiction
of the district court, as a court of admiralty, over the waters
where the collision occurred.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal is an artificial navigable
waterway, connecting Lake Michigan and the Chicago River with the
Illinois River and the Mississippi River. By the Act of Congress of
March 30, 1822, c. 14, 3 Stat. 659, the use of certain public lands
of the United States was vested in the State of Illinois forever
for a canal to connect the Illinois River with the southern bend of
Lake Michigan. The act declared
"That the said canal, when completed, shall be and forever
remain a public highway for the use of the government of the United
States free from any toll or other charge whatever for any property
of the United States or persons in their service passing through
the same."
"This declaration was repeated in the Act of March 2, 1827, c.
51, 4 Stat. 234, granting more land to the State of Illinois to aid
it in opening the canal. We take judicial notice of the historical
fact that the canal, 96 miles long, was completed in 1848, and is
60 feet wide and 6 feet deep, and is capable of being navigated by
vessels, which a canal of such size will accommodate, and which can
thus pass from Mississippi River to Lake Michigan and carry on
interstate commerce, although the canal is wholly within the
territorial bounds of the State of Illinois. By the act of 1822, if
the land granted thereby shall cease to be used for a canal
suitable for navigation, the grant is to be void. It may properly
be assumed that the district court found to be true the allegations
of the libel, before cited, as to the character and employment of
the two vessels, those allegations being put in issue by the
answer."
Within the principles laid down by this Court in the cases of
The Daniel
Ball, 10 Wall. 557, and
The
Montello, 20 Wall.
Page 109 U. S. 632
430, which extended the salutary views of admiralty jurisdiction
applied in
The Genesee
Chief, 12 How. 443,
The Hine
v. Trevor, 4 Wall. 555, and
The
Eagle, 8 Wall. 15, we have no doubt of the
jurisdiction of the district court in this case. Navigable water
situated as this canal is, used for the purposes for which it is
used -- a highway for commerce between ports and places in
different states, carried on by vessels such as those in question
here -- is public water of the United States, and with the
legitimate scope of the admiralty jurisdiction conferred by the
Constitution and statutes of the United States, even though the
canal is wholly artificial, and is wholly within the body of a
state, and subject to its ownership and control, and it makes no
difference as to the jurisdiction of the district court that one or
the other of the vessels was at the time of the collision on a
voyage from one place in the State of Illinois to another place in
that state.
The Belfast, 7
Wall. 624. Many of the embarrassments connected with the question
of the extent of the jurisdiction of the admiralty disappeared when
this Court held, in the case of
The Eagle, ubi supra, that
all of the provisions of § 9 of the Judiciary Act of September 24,
1789, c. 20, 1 Stat. 77, which conferred admiralty and maritime
jurisdiction upon the district courts, were inoperative, except the
simple clause giving to them "exclusive original cognizance of all
civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction." That decision
is carried out by the enactment in § 563 of the Revised Statutes,
subdivision 8, that the district courts shall have jurisdiction of
"all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction," thus
leaving out the inoperative provisions.
This case does not raise the question whether the admiralty
jurisdiction of the district court extends to waters wholly within
the body of a state, and from which vessels cannot so pass as to
carry on commerce between places in such state and places in
another state or in a foreign country, and no opinion is intended
to be intimated as to jurisdiction in such a case.
The prayer of the petition is denied.