owners in their intercourse with the United States. I, therefore, trust that the Board of Trade may be induced to use its best efforts to obtain as soon as possible a convention, whereby our ships frequenting the ports of the United States may, so far as regards responsibility, be placed upon the same footing as we have now placed in all our courts the vessels belonging to that country.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
W. S. Lindsay.
To the Assistant Secretary,
Marine Department, Board of Trade.
(M. 1766.)
Board of Trade, Whitehall,
6th March, 1867.
Sir,
I am directed by the Board of Trade to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th ultimo, stating, with reference to the question of the liability of British Shipowners in the United States, that that liability appears to be practically unlimited, and trusting that this Board may take steps to obtain complete reciprocity.
In reply, I am to point out to you that the principle of limited liability has been adopted in the Federal Courts, and is applied in all the Federal Courts of the United States—i.e. in all Admiralty and Vice Admiralty Courts, to foreign as well as American ships.
It seems true, however, that an injured person may possibly maintain an action against the owner of an offending vessel in a State Court, and it must depend on the law of each State in that case, whether the measure of damages would be limited. But not to mention the difficulty of first ascertaining, and procuring the alteration of the law of each State, it is to be observed that to maintain such action the owner of the offending vessel must be found within the jurisdiction of the State Court. This, in fact, amounts to a practical limitation, seeing that he has all the advantages of limited liability so long as he keeps away from the United States, or is not to be found within the jurisdiction of the court in question.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Thomas Gray.
To W. S. Lindsay, Esq.,
Manor House, Shepperton, Middlesex.
