460

LAWS OF MARYLAND.

CHAPTER 294.

Passed Mar.
10, 1856.

AN ACT entitled an act to secure the payment of
debts contracted for materials furnished or work
done in the building, repairing, or equipping of
canal boats, or vessels of any kind, used or inten-
ded as carriers of coal or other freight, or pas-
sengers, on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal by
subjecting the boat or vessel to which the debt ap-
pertains to a lien for such debt.

Subject to lien.

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assem-
bly of Maryland, That all canal boats, or vessels of
any kind, used or intended to be used as carriers of
coal, other freight or passengers, on the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal, shall be subject to a lien for all
debts (and bound for their payment as preferred
debts,) which shall have accrued or may be due to
boat-builders, mechanics, merchants, farmers or oth-
er persons, from the owners, masters, captains or oth-
er agents of the owners of such boats or vessels, for
materials furnished or work done in 'the building, re-

Proviso.

pairing or the equipping of the same; Provided,
however, that within twenty days after said debt shall
have accrued, an account or statement selling forth
the names of the claimant and debtor, and if the
debt was not contracted by the owner but his agent,
the name of such agent, also the name or other cer-
tain description of the boat or vessel, and the place
where built, repaired or equipped, and lastly the par-
ticulars or items of the claim or debt, (such account
or statement to be verified by the oath of the claim-
ant taken and subscribed before some officer author-
ised to administer an oath,) be delivered to the clerk
of the Circuit Court for the county where the buil-
ding, repairing or refitting was done and the debt
accrued, to be filed in his office; and that the clerk
of such court shall procure a docket or blank book
to be called "Boats Lien Docket," wherein, immedi-
ately after receiving and filing the said account or
statement, he shall docket a case between the parlies
to the claim, entering the claimant as plaintiff, and
the boat and its owner, and the owner's agent when
the debt was contracted by an agent, as defendants,
and the day when such claim was filed, and the amount
thereof; and for so doing the clerk shall be entitled