On the fourteenth of January, 1886, the Goodrich Transportation Company, a Wisconsin corporation, filed in the district court of the United States for the Eastern district of Wisconsin a petition for a limitation of its liability as owner of the steamer Oconto, claiming the benefit of the provisions of sections 4283 and 4284 of the Revised Statutes. The substantial matters set forth in the petition are these: The Oconto was on a voyage from Chicago, Illinois, through Lake Michigan and Green bay, to the city of Green Bay, in Wisconsin, which she approached by entering the month of the Fox river. While she was passing up the river opposite the city, on the twentieth of September, 1880, a fire broke out in a planing-mill which the steamer had passed, and it spread to other buildings, about 67 being destroyed or injured, causing a damage of not less than $100,000 to the buildings and property in them. Such damage exceeds the value of the steamer, and of her freight pending at the time of the fire; that value being about $12,400. There was insurance against fire on some of the buildings and property. The owners and insurers claimed that the fire was negligently communicated to the planing-mill from the steamer, and that the corporation was liable for all the loss and damage occasioned by the fire. Some of the owners sued it in state courts in Wisconsin to recover damages, by six suits, in which the Phenix Insurance Company, as insurer, was joined as a co-plaintiff. One of those suits had been disposed of by a judgment in favor of the corporation. In another a judgment against the corporation, for $2,570 and costs, was rendered in March, 1885. An appeal from it by the corporation to the supreme court of Wisconsin is pending. The other four suits are pending. Other persons are threatening to sue the corporation by like suits. It denies its liability for any loss or damage occasioned by the fire, and insists that the fire did not originate from, or was not negligently communicated from, the Oconto; but says that, if it is so liable, the fire originated, and the losses and damages were occasioned, without the privity or knowledge of the corporation; and that it desires as well to contest its liability, and the liability of the vessel, for such losses and damages, as also to claim the benefit of sections 4283 and 4284 of the Revised Statutes, and to limit its liability to the value of the vessel and her freight then pending. It offers to enter into a stipulation, with sureties, to pay into court the value of the vessel, and the amount of her pending freight, whenever ordered so to do. The prayer of the petition is for a decree that the corporation may have the benefit of such statutory provisions; that the value of the vessel immediately after the fire, and the amount of her freight then pending, be appraised; that the corporation may enter into a stipulation to pay such value and amount into court when required; that a monition issue for the proof of claims; that a commissioner be designated before whom claims shall be presented, and before whom the corporation may appear and contest said claims, and its liability on account of any loss or damage occasioned by the fire; that, if it shall appear that the corporation was not liable for any such loss or damage, it may be so finally decreed, or, otherwise, that the moneys secured by the stipulation be divided pro rata among the claimants; and that the prosecution of all the suits be restrained.