DISTRICT COURT FOR THE, CANAL ZONE.

transaction on the strength of the charterer's credit. * The operation is very much like that of discounting a draft, we ma3, discount a draft for one man who is not very good on the credit of a second man, the man wefirst collect or draw on may not be as good as the man who sells to us, but we know we have one sound person in the transaction. Similarly, in financing ships, we look to the ship, and then if we have trouble in getting our money from the other fellow, we go right back to the ship, and that is what we have done in this matter.
That the advancement was made on the credit of the ship and not on the credit of either the owners or the charterers is testified to by him at pages 8 and 9 of his evidence in clear and unmistakable terms:
Q. What representation did he make in regard to payment of these tolls, and who was to pay them at the time he asked you to advance this money?
A. That I can not answer, because I was not present.
Q. You are unable to state whether or not he represented that the amount would be paid by C. Hannevig, Inc., or that it would be paid by the owners of the steamship Everest?
A. I am unable to state that, but it would not have made any difference what he had represented, it would not have altered the basis of our credit no matter what Stevens told us, we knew the ship was good for it, and even if he told us John Jones in Kalamazoo would pay us, we would still consider the ship liable and simply use the other gentleman as the quickest method of getting our money back.
Q. That is what you had in mind, you were holding the vessel as responsible for the money?
A. Yes, sir.
Q* Irrespective of any charter party?
A. Yes, sir.
Q And irrespective of your knowledge or lack of knowledge of that charter party?
A. We do not concern ourselves with the charter party.
Q. Even though you know such charter party was in existence?
A.' We had no knowledge, I can state, of the charter party.
In the South Coast case, above quoted, Mr. Justice Holmes, upon a writ of certiorari, 251 U. S. 519, went even farther than the lower courts in holding that the master may impose a lien in the absence of an express prohibition, thereby relieving the one making advancements from doing more than was done by the libellant in the present case. justice Homers said: '
But the authority of the owner to prohibit or to speak was displaced, so far as the charter went, by that conferred upon the charterers, who became owners pro hac vice, and, therefore, unless the charter excluded the master's power, the owner could not forbid its use. The charter party recognizes that liens may be imposed by the charterers and allowed to stand for less than a month and there seems to be no sufficient reason for supposing the words not to refer to all the ordinary maritime liens recognized by the law. The statute had given a lien for supplies in a domestic port and therefore had made that one of these ordinary liens. Therefore the charterer was assumed to have power to authorize the master to impose a lien in a domestic port, and if the assumption expressed in words was not equivalent to a grant of power, at least it can not be taken to have excluded it. There was nothing from which the furnisher could have ascertained that the master did not have power to' bind the ship.