Owners or masters may ship seamen in certain cases.
Any person other than a commissioner under this Title [R. S., 4501-4613], who shall perform or attempt to perform, either directly or indirectly, the duties which are by this Title set forth as pertaining to a shipping-commissioner, shall be liable to a penalty of not more than five hundred dollars.
Nothing in this Title [R. S., 4501-4613], however, shall prevent the owner, or consignee, or master of any vessel except vessels bound from a port in the United States to any foreign port, other than vessels engaged in trade between the United States and the British North American possessions, or the West India Islands, or the republic of Mexico, and vessels of the burden of seventy-five tons or upward bound from a port on the Atlantic to a port on the Pacific, or vice versa, from performing, himself, so far as his vessel is concerned, the duties of shipping-commissioner under this Title. Whenever the master of any vessel shall engage his crew, or any part of the same, in any collection-district where no shipping-commissioner shall have been appointed, he may perform for himself the duties of such commissioner. (R. S., 4504.)