The plaintiff brought an action under an Act of Parliament, by which, providing the action were brought within a certain time, she was entitled to recover damages if the loss of her husband was caused by the neglect of the defendants. Her ground of action, shortly put, was that the death of her husband was caused by the negligence of the defendants. She said in effect that it was part of the contract of the defendants to take all reasonable means to provide that their ship should start on all voyages in a reasonably sea-worthy condition. Sea-worthy condition meant that the ship should be in a fit state to encounter all the perils of a sea voyage. Of course, if a vessel got into a cyclone, a typhoon, or some terrible storm that overwhelmed her, the owners were not to be blamed for that. Such an occurrence would be due to what Mr. Purves had called “the act of God.” Speaking for himself he (His Honour) thought the Almighty got the credit, or the discredit, for many of these things of which it would be better to say that such occurrences were due to the destructive agencies of nature for which the owners were not responsible. He (His Honour) did not give the Almighty the credit for slaughtering the human creatures He had created right and left in this indiscriminate manner. The plaintiff, to support her cause of action, had first to prove that the ship was not sea-worthy, and then, to render the defendants liable, she would have to prove that the vessel was not sea-worthy by reason of some precaution not having been taken by the defendants which they should have taken. The defendants pleaded that they did take all reasonable means of making the vessel sea-worthy, and were not guilty of any neglect, and that, even if this were not so, the cause of the foundering was the improper navigation of the captain. If that were so, the owners were not responsible, because the ship did not founder through their fault, but through the fault of the captain. Owners were not responsible for the rash act of a captain at sea. This was important to bear in mind in this case, because the defendants endeavoured to show that the ship would have come through the gale all right if she had been properly handled by the captain. They said that if he had made things all right fore and aft, and had put the covers over the gratings, he would have come through right enough. If the jury thought that the foundering of the vessel was contributed to by the negligence of the defendants, then their duty was to find a verdict for the plaintiff. They (the jury) had a difficult task to perform, because they had to decide between experts. Doubtless the jury knew something of the sea; probably they had all made long voyages, but what was their knowledge as compared with that of those who were bred up to the sea, whose nursery was the sea, and who could with a glance of the eye tell more than the best amateur sailor who ever lived?