Volume Eleven - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - some more aspects - A Dispute at Yokohama -  1889 . . .

In the case of our last ship we had no agreement whatever as in this, and in that case the captain made no objection whatever. The charter parties were identical but the amount was at per ton, not in a lump sum. The captain never objected to the 37¼ tons shortage of coke. After the coke had been weighed the captain said he could not account for it. He never said it was hurriedly weighed; on the contrary he said it was too slowly done. He said he could not account for the shortage. He did not at any time dispute his liability to pay for it.

When I paid him the balance on the account current he only objected to the question of the cost of the coal and coke meaning freight and insurance. He told Mr. Henson that he had agreed for Cardiff price. The captain came afterwards into my office and said he thought he was to pay Cardiff price, and I said certainly not. I told him if he had mentioned it I would have contradicted him at once.

Cross-examined — The deficit of coke was I think reported to me by the captain first on the completion of the weighing, and on sending for the Chinaman he confirmed it. It must have been completed some days before the accounts current were made up — at least a week before the 4th Dec.

The captain thought then there must have been robbery, and I at his request sent to the police to see if any coke had been offered for sale. It was a larger shortage than I expected, but coke had been so uncertain previously that I was not greatly surprised.

The coal was weighed into the godowns. It was weighed by our Chinese. Our head godown man reported to me the weight. He did not present to me any account; he simply told me the number of tons. He reported to me the amount of coal that had been roughly weighed into the godown. I told the captain when he asked me how much it was, 135 tons.

The arrangement with the captain was for 1 per cent. allowance; we acted as the captain's stevedores and charged him on the quantity that we weighed into our godowns. When the captain asked me how much we had weighed into the godown about a day or two before the accounts current were made up I told him of the deficit.