Every master who engages any seaman in any place in which there is a consular officer or commercial agent, otherwise than as required by the preceding section, shall incur a penalty of not more than one hundred dollars, for which penalty the vessel shall be held liable.
Every master of a vessel in the foreign trade may engage any seaman at any port out of the United States, in the manner provided by law, to serve for one or more round trips from and to the port of departure, or for a definite time, whatever the destination; and the master of a vessel clearing from a port of the United States with one or more seamen engaged in a foreign port as herein provided shall not be required to reship in a port of the United States the seamen so engaged. (R. S., 4518; June 26, 1884; sec. 20; Mar. 3, 1897; sec. 3.)
Crew list.
Before a clearance is granted to any vessel bound on a foreign voyage or engaged in the whale-fishery, the master thereof shall deliver to the collector of the customs a list containing the names, places of birth and residence, and description of the persons who compose his ship's company; to which list the oath of the captain shall be annexed, that the list contains the names of his crew, together with the places of their birth and residence, as far as he can ascertain them; and the collector shall deliver him a certified copy thereof. (R. S., 4573; June 19, 1886.)
In all cases of private vessels of the United States sailing from a port in the United States to a foreign port, the list of the crew shall be examined by the collector for the district from which the vessel shall clear, and if approved of by him, shall be certified accordingly. No person shall be admitted or employed on board of any such vessel unless his name shall have been entered in the list of the crew, approved and certified by the collector for the district from which the vessel shall clear. The collector, before he delivers the list of the crew, approved and certified, to the master or proper officer of the vessel to which the same belongs, shall cause the same to be recorded in a book by him for that purpose to be provided, and the record shall be open for the inspection of all persons, and a certified copy thereof shall be admitted in evidence in any court in which any question may arise under any of the provisions of this Title [R. S., 4501-4613.] (R. S., 4574.)
Failure to produce crew.
The master of every vessel bound on a foreign voyage or engaged in the whale fishery shall exhibit the certified copy of the list of the crew to the first boarding officer at the first port in the United States at which he shall arrive on his return, and also produce the persons named therein to the boarding officer, whose duty it shall be to examine the men with such list and to report the same to the collector; and it shall be the duty of the collector at the port of arrival, where the same is different from the port from which the vessel originally sailed, to transmit a copy of the list so reported to him to the collector of the port from which such vessel originally sailed. For each failure to produce any person on the certified copy of the list of the crew the master and owner shall be severally liable to a penalty of four hundred dollars, to be sued for, prosecuted, and disposed of in such manner as penalties and forfeitures which may be incurred for offenses against the laws relating to the collection of duties; but such penalties shall not be incurred on account of the master not producing to the first boarding officer any of the persons contained in the list who may have been discharged in a foreign country with the consent of the consul, vice-consul, commercial agent, or vice-commercial agent there residing, certified in writing, under the hand and official seal, to be produced to the collector with the other persons composing the crew, nor on account of any such person dying or absconding or being forcibly impressed into other service of which satisfactory proof shall also be exhibited to the collector. (R. S., 4576; Mar. 3, 1897; sec. 3.)
Papers relating to crew.
The following rules shall be observed with reference to vessels bound on any foreign voyage:
First. The duplicate list of the ship's company, required to be made out by the master and delivered to the collector of the customs, under section forty-five hundred and seventy-three, shall be a fair copy in one uniform handwriting, without erasure or interlineation.