The Northern No. 30

MEEKINS, District Judge.

This is a cause in admiralty, and the only question presented was the right of the libelant, a corporation, to recover contribution in general average. The law of general average is a part of the law of the sea, as distinguished from the law of the land. Perhaps the necessity for such distinction was that there are all shades of ferocity in the vast and cunning sea which Jean Bart called “the great brute.” It’s the claw’s scratch with intervals of velvet pawing. It’s never fiercer— the sea — than when a pond, a pool of liquid lead. Gloomy immobility: the prelude to…