Alpine forwarding Co. v. Pennsylvania R. Co‪.‬

The plaintiff owned a barge which it orally demised to the defendant from day to day on a per diem hire, the bailor to furnish a bargee, the bailee to pay him and use her at its pleasure, and to return her at the end of her service. There was no express promise to return in good condition. Nine months later the defendant was towing her, lightly laden, on the starboard side of a tug with a lighter outside, and two lighters on the tugs port side, from Greenville, New Jersey, to Brooklyn. The tug had put the lighters at their several slips, and with the barge alone was coming to her destination, when, less than two hundred feet away, for some unknown reason she suddenly began to settle and sank. When raised, it was found that of the thwartships planks which formed her bottom, that nearest the stern "mud log" was gone. On the side of one of the fore and aft bilge logs there was a nine inch bruise or gouge, just above one end of the missing plank, about three inches wide and a half inch deep, which could have been made by a descending blow that, if carried below the bilge log, would strike the end of the plank, and might loosen it from its seat. The barge had been repaired fifteen years before, but it did not appear how old the plank was; it was spiked to the bilge-log and had been torn away, leaving some of the spikes in position. Nobody could explain how the plank had been loosened, or whether it was torn off in raising the barge, though obviously she had suffered some damage before she settled and sank.