## Facts

- Seamen, including Thompson and Jacobson, served aboard *The Catharina*, a foreign vessel, under written shipping contracts.
- The contracts required the mariners to return to the port from which they had shipped.
- The voyage ended, or was broken up, in a United States port, and the vessel was present within the district.
- The seamen filed a libel in admiralty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Pennsylvania seeking wages allegedly due.
- The shipowner objected that the court should not decide the controversy because no domestic statute directly governed the point.
- The crew and contracting context were mixed, including some American mariners and contractual dealings partly made with them as American subjects.
- No treaty or bilateral compact specified a different forum or special procedure for adjudicating the wage dispute.

## Issues

1. When federal statutes do not supply a rule of decision, what law governs a federal admiralty court’s determination of maritime disputes involving foreign vessels and seamen?
2. Whether, and to what extent, a seaman’s contract may validly require suit to be brought only in the courts of the seaman’s own country.
3. Whether a federal admiralty court should entertain a foreign seaman’s wage claim when the foreign voyage has terminated or been broken up in a U.S. port.

## Decision

- The court held it could proceed to decide the dispute despite the lack of a controlling domestic statute.
- The court stated that it is governed by the maritime law recognized before the Revolution, except as changed by statute or changed circumstances.
- The court indicated it may apply the maritime law of the vessel’s nation when there is a material variance from generally prevailing maritime rules.
- The court treated as lawful a contractual provision limiting suits to the mariner’s own courts, but treated as void any provision that would bar the mariner from suing in any case or from suing in the proper courts of the mariner’s country.
- The court stated it generally avoids taking cognizance of disputes between foreign ships and foreign seamen, but will permit suits when the foreign voyage ends or is broken up in a U.S. port and no treaty or compact prescribes another mode of proceeding.

## Legal Principles

- In the absence of controlling federal legislation, federal admiralty applies the general maritime law historically received in American practice prior to independence, subject to later statutory change or changed conditions.
- Admiralty may, as a matter of maritime comity and party expectations, apply the law of the ship’s flag where the relevant rule materially differs from general maritime norms.
- A forum-selection term requiring mariners to sue only in their own courts may be enforced, but a term eliminating all judicial recourse or barring access to the mariner’s proper national courts is void.
- Parties may structure maritime contracts freely unless the agreement conflicts with common justice.
- Federal admiralty may hear foreign seamen’s wage claims when the voyage has ended or been disrupted in a U.S. port and no treaty requires exclusive recourse to a foreign tribunal.

## Conclusion

The court retained admiralty jurisdiction over the wage libel and explained that, absent statute, it applies the received general maritime law while sometimes looking to the ship’s national law for materially different rules; it also recognized limited enforceability of contractual forum-selection terms and permitted adjudication where a foreign voyage ended or was broken up in a U.S. port without treaty-based displacement.


Thompson v. The Catharina, 23 F. Cas. 1028 (D. Pa. 1795)