The Chief Justice, in delivering judgment, said that this was an action brought by the personal representative of Mr. Kilpatrick to recover damages for the loss sustained by his being drowned by the foundering of a steamer, which the defendants called the _Alert_, in which the deceased was an engineer. The action was based on section 103 of the Marine Act. The vessel was built in 1877, and certified to be fit to carry goods to any part of the world. In 1891 she was fitted up here for sea traffic, and she received from the Marine Board of Victoria a certificate of her fitness for sea. She made several voyages to the Gippsland Lakes and Tasmania. In November, 1893, she was again repaired, and her certificate was renewed. On December 28, 1893, she left Bairnsdale with some bark and furniture. She fell in with a gale, and when the captain tried to put her head to the wind she fell off. It was said, as seemed probable, that being trimmed very low aft and very high forward, the wind caught her head and blew her off. Finally she fell over on her beam and foundered within a very short time. All her crew, unhappily, were drowned, except Mr. Ponting, her cook, who, after desperate and heroic efforts, escaped with life. Ponting, who was called for the plaintiff, said that a huge wave struck the vessel on the windward or port side, and she heeled over to her beam end, and did not rise again. Three waves dashed over while she lay so. The water entered in part through the starboard door of the saloon, and through a window which was in the saloon bulk-head used for the purpose of passing food from the galley to the pantry, which window was open. The door was then closed by the chief officer, and the window by the steward. From these and other facts the plaintiff said that the _Alert_ was inherently unsea-worthy from defective design and construction, and was, at all events, rendered unsea-worthy by bad and imprudent arrangement of her cargo, and, therefore, that the defendants did not “take all reasonable means to send her to sea in a sea-worthy condition,” and so that they were liable for the loss of Mr. Kilpatrick’s life within the meaning of the Marine Act. That Act established a court of marine survey to inquire into the propriety and fitness of granting a certificate that any vessel was sea-worthy. This court might be warned or advised by anyone of any defect in the vessel sought to be certificated, and was constituted of persons specially qualified to deal with such questions. The plaintiff practically contended that the section was intended to ignore the certificate, which was in fact a formality which every vessel must possess if she was to go to sea, and disregarding the certificate as any evidence of the satisfaction of the law’s requirements, so as to relieve the owner of liability for injuries caused by the vessel’s unsea-worthiness. He did not concur in this view. The statute, in his opinion, aimed at assuring safety to the