CHAPTER XII
TOWAGE AND PILOTAGE
1. Definition.—
Towage is the service rendered by one vessel to another in moving her from point to point under ordinary circumstances of navigation. Pilotage is the navigation of a vessel by one having special knowledge of the waters, as pilot.
2. Towage Service.—
This is rendered by the tug to the tow. Tugs are usually specially built and equipped for the business and supply a very important aid to commerce and navigation. The service is generally by contract or informal agreement and includes both the short work in shifting vessels in port and the long voyage and season contracts along the coast and in the canals and Great Lakes. It may be performed in various ways. Sometimes the tug is lashed to the tow and supplies motive power only and sometimes she pulls several vessels behind her upon hawsers from each to the other of great length. The legal relations, however, are usually the same.
The tug should be supplied with hawsers of sufficient strength to hold the tow in any weather which may be reasonably anticipated, unless the tow itself supplies them. Where the tug is given full control, it should arrange the order of towage and the distances apart. It should also arrange, by an understood code of signals, for shortening, lengthening, or casting off the lines, as exigencies of navigation may require. Vessels of heavy draft should be placed behind those of lighter draft. The speed of the tug should be such as is reasonably safe for the condition of the tow and sudden jerks and turns must be avoided. Disaster does not necessarily absolve the contract of towage. On the contrary, it is quite settled that it is the duty of the tug to continue to do all in its power to get its tow out of situations of difficulty and danger, short, of course, of sacrificing its own safety. It is not relieved from its obligation because unexpected difficulties occur and may not lightly abandon the tow to its fate. Extraordinary services under a towage contract may secure a salvage reward, but too great haste in abandoning it will impose a corresponding liability.
3. Compensation.—
The rate of compensation is determined by express contract, or in the absence of such contract by the customary rates prevailing in the port or locality, and in the absence of contract or custom by the fair value of the service rendered. Unless the service performed amounts to a case of salvage the compensation will not be determined by the rules governing salvage. Towage services are presumptively a maritime lien on the tow, and where the owners of the tow contend that the service was performed upon their personal credit, instead of upon that of the vessel, they must affirmatively establish that fact (Erastina, 50 Fed. 126). The lien for towage and pilotage is in general superior to all liens except those for salvage and seamen's wages and "preferred mortgages" given on American ships pursuant to the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (see Appendix). Thus the Court in the Mystic, 30 Fed. 73, said: