Lowndes v. The Ernest M. Munn

TOWNSEND, District Judge.

This is a libel in rem for salvage. At about 7 o’clock on the morning of November 28,1893, the libelant, Stanley H. Lowndes, with a crew of six men, started in his oyster steamer, the J. Howard Lowndes, from Norwalk harbor, to go to work on his oyster beds in Long Island sound. When they got outside they saw the steam barge Ernest M. Munn adrift, about a mile and a quarter from the east end of Oopp Island. They went up to her, bow on, and one of the crew jumped aboard. She had been abandoned. Her heavy hawsers had parted, and she was waterlogged. There had been a hard…