The Rebecca R. Douglass

HAZEL, District Judge.

The libelant herein seeks to recover damages for breach of an oral charter party. The respondent, however, contends that there never was a meeting of the minds of the parties, and that the negotiations at Mobile, Ala., in the early part of December, 1915, did not eventuate in a charter party, but merely in an incompleted agreement that the schooner Rebecca R. Douglass should thereafter be chartered in writing for three trips from gulf ports to Cuba or San Domingo, at option.

The evidence shows that the parties met and discussed the conditions of a charter party,…