## Facts

- Federal statutes required U.S. vessels, upon request of designated officials, to transport “destitute seamen” to the United States for agreed compensation, evidenced by an assignable certificate.
- Seamen whose service ended due to the loss or wreck of their vessel were treated as “destitute seamen” subject to those transportation provisions.
- Alaska Steamship Company owned the *Depere* and the *Yukon*.
- The *Depere* was wrecked on the Alaska coast and could not complete its voyage, leaving its crew in Alaska.
- The *Depere*’s crew was transported from Ketchikan, Alaska, to Seattle on the *Yukon* at a specified rate agreed with, and certified by, a deputy customs collector.
- No consular officers were stationed in Alaska; for decades, local collectors or deputy collectors of customs had issued the certificates used to obtain payment for such transportation, and Congress had repeatedly funded the program during that period.
- The Comptroller General refused payment on the ground that the shipowner had a duty to transport the crew of its own wrecked vessel without compensation.

## Issues

1. Whether the compensation-and-certificate scheme requiring a “consular officer” could be applied in Alaska—where no consular officers existed—based on long-standing administrative practice using customs officials and repeated congressional funding.
2. Whether the statutory duty to provide transportation for shipwrecked mariners rested on the United States (with compensation to carriers) or on the owner of the wrecked vessel without compensation.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment dismissing the claim and remanded.
- The Court held that, for Alaska, certificates issued by the local collector or deputy collector of customs could support payment because long and consistent administrative practice, coupled with congressional acquiescence, had effectively construed the statute to operate that way.
- The Court held that the duty to provide transportation for shipwrecked mariners rested on the government, not on the owner of the wrecked vessel, and the owner was entitled to statutory compensation when it provided the transportation.
- The Court rejected the Comptroller General’s contrary view as inconsistent with the governing statutes and the settled administrative construction.

## Legal Principles

- Courts generally give substantial weight to a long and consistent administrative construction by the department charged with administering a statute, especially where that construction is necessary for the statutory program to function.
- Repeated congressional appropriations and statutory amendments that leave an administrative practice undisturbed may constitute implicit legislative approval of that construction.
- When a statutory scheme places responsibility on the United States to repatriate destitute (including shipwrecked) seamen, a vessel owner that provides transportation under the statutory framework is entitled to the prescribed compensation, even if it also owned the wrecked vessel.
- Comptroller General rulings carry little or no interpretive weight when they conflict with the statute as properly construed and with the administering department’s settled practice.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the statutory compensation program for transporting destitute seamen applied in Alaska through certificates issued by local customs officials, and that the United States—rather than the owner of the wrecked vessel—bore the statutory duty to provide and pay for repatriation of shipwrecked seamen.


Alaska S.S. Co. v. United States, 290 U.S. 256 (1933)