Accounts. or Fourth Auditor. The discharge should not be given unless the man is present and receives the pay due him. 7. All original letters, or copies thereof, from pay agents, Fourth Auditor's office, and the Department, and other official papers relating to his accounts; copies of officers' orders to join the vessel, certified by themselves, also with their certificates as to the time of accepting their orders. 8. An account current, showing all his receipts and expenditures, and the date of his bond. 1182. Paymasters on board receiving ships, or at shore stations, will be guided by these instructions in the rendering of their accounts, so far as they are applicable. 1183... In the rendition of the accounts, Paymasters of all grades are required to forward to the Fourth Auditor's office, besides the papers above specified, all their original books from which such accounts are compiled, such as ledgers, journals, receipt books, &c. 1184....All Disbursing Officers must prepay the expense of transportation of their accounts to the Fourth Auditor's office for settlement if they be sent by any other conveyance than the United States mail. cient. 1185....A general witness to signatures on the pay-roll is not suffiThe signature of the officer witnessing the receipt must be given in each case. 1186....Paymasters will make an immediate return to the Fourth Auditor's office of the accounts of deceased officers, seamen, or marines, and transmit their wills if they shall have left any. The balances which may have been due to them at the time of their death will be paid only after a statement of their accounts at the Fourth Auditor's office. 1187.... Payment of balances due deceased seamen and marines will be made to administrators who are heirs, or appointed with the consent of a majority of the heirs. 1188....When the balance due does not exceed the sum of one hundred dollars, letters of administration will be dispensed with, and the prescribed affidavits substituted. The widow, if she be the applicant, should render a certified copy of her marriage certificate. Accounts. 1189.... Heirship may be established by the fact being inserted in the letters of administration, and additionally proven by the affidavits of two disinterested persons, taken before an officer duly empowered to administer oaths. 1190....If the heirs be minors, guardians should be appointed. Payment of arrearages, claimed under a will, will only be made after satisfactory proof of the will is adduced to the Accounting Officers. 1191.... Wills of persons in actual service must in all cases, when possible, be in writing, and attested by an officer. A nuncupative will must be reduced to writing immediately, and be attested by at least two officers. The executor will be required to produce the original will, or a copy duly authenticated. No payment will be made to a creditor until the balance due to the deceased person shall have remained in the treasury, uncalled for by an administrator as aforesaid, for six months after information of the death of such person shall have been received at the Department; and where the balance exceeds the sum of twenty dollars, no claim of a creditor will be paid until an advertisement shall have been inserted, for three successive days, in the newspapers employed to publish the laws in the city of Washington, and also in three successive numbers of a paper nearest where the deceased resided, calling upon other claimants to present their claims at the office of the Fourth Auditor within four months; at the end of which term, if the balance shall not have been demanded by an administrator appointed as aforesaid, the claims which shall have been presented and proved before the Accounting Officers will be paid in equal proportion, the expense of the advertisement having been first defrayed out of the sum due to the deceased person at the time of his death. 1192.... In accordance with the spirit and letter of the laws of the United States, the Accounting Officers have determined that the arrears found to be due shall be paid, in all cases, to the proper parties interested in preference to attorneys. 1193....Where supplies for the Navy are obtained without advertisement, the account must be accompanied by a certificate of the Commandant of the yard or station who has approved the requisition for the articles that the public exigencies required the immediate Accounts. delivery of the articles mentioned in the bill, and that, there not being time to advertise for proposals, the articles were properly obtained by open purchase, and that the purchase is approved for the sum they cost. Where the purchase is made under contract growing out of an advertisement for proposals, the fact must be certified in like manner upon the voucher. 1194....All transfers of the accounts of officers of the Navy from one Paymaster to another will be made directly, and not through the office of the Fourth Auditor. The Paymaster by whom the transfer is made will give notice of it, and transmit a copy of the account to the Fourth Auditor's office. When an officer is granted leave of absence, placed on furlough, or directed to await orders, his account will be transferred to the Fourth Auditor's office, or to the Paymaster of the station nearest his intended residence, as he may prefer. When the officer desiring the transfer has allotted any portion of his pay, the Paymaster, upon transferring his account, will make a note thereon of the monthly sum allotted, and of the place of payment and date of expiration of the allotment. 1195... Before a Paymaster can receive credit at the Fourth Auditor's office for a payment made to an officer for any service, or for any amount of money checked on his books as having been advanced by a pay agent, he must produce the order under which the service has been performed, or the advance made, or a copy thereof, with all indorsements, certified by the officer to be such, together with a certificate, by the officer, of the time at which he left his domicile or station to enter upon such service. The Paymaster will always inspect the original order, and satisfy himself that all indorsements are embraced on the certified copy. 1196...Overpayments other than such as are produced by authorized advances will be invariably disallowed, whether made in money, clothing, or stores, excepting payments for the commutation of rations, or of the spirit part thereof, and excepting also such advances in clothing as may have been made by the previous order of the Commander of the vessel, upon the ground that they were necessary to the health and comfort of the men, which order, if in writing, must be produced; and if verb al, there must be a certificate of the Commander that Accounts. gave it. A general approval of the roll in which the advances are charged will not be considered sufficient. 1197....When the crew of a vessel shall have been paid off at the end of a cruise, the Paymaster will transmit to the Paymaster of the marine corps a pay-roll of all the marines who have been attached to the vessel during any portion of the cruise, approved by the Commander of the vessel and the Commanding Officer of the guard. As the utmost despatch is required in paying off crews, Paymasters are directed to forward to the Department, in the most expeditious manner, their requisitions for funds for that purpose. 1198....The second section of the "Joint resolution for the relief of Paymasters," &c., approved March 3, 1849, does not authorize an advance of public money by the Paymaster to the Commanding Officer, or to any other person, on his order. But the disbursement must be for some service rendered or article furnished. (See Circular of Second Comptroller of March 20, 1855.) 1199.... Pay officers of the Navy will render their final accounts and returns to the Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, and the Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing, as soon as practicable after the expiration of their cruise, but not exceeding the following time after the crew shall have been paid off or transferred : For vessels of the first rate... For vessels of the third rate For vessels of all other rates.. .sixty days. .fifty days. .forty days. .thirty days. Final accounts in all cases will be accompanied by the necessary vouchers for a complete settlement of such accounts. Commanding Officers. 1200....An officer in command of a United States vessel may require the Line Officers of any grade under his command to make daily or frequent observations and calculations for determining the latitude and longitude, and the variation of the compass, and report the results to him; he will be held responsible for the safe conducting and steering of his ship, and also whenever an accident shall occur to her from the want of due care or precaution. Arrests and Charges. 1201....Commanding Officers are specially required to see that the Paymaster duly credits each person under their command with the amount of prize money due him, in accordance with the statement received from the Fourth Auditor of the Treasury. ARTICLE XXXII. ARRESTS, CHARGES, AND COURTS-MARTIAL BOARDS. SECTION 1. Arrests and Charges. 1202....No Commander of a vessel of the Navy is to continue the suspension from duty, arrest, or confinement, of a commissioned or warrant officer, for a longer period than ten days, unless a longer one be necessary to bring the offender to a court-martial; and if, after the case of an offender to be tried by a court-martial has been brought to the notice of an authority empowered to convene such court, the offender, owing to imperative reasons, cannot be brought to trial within thirty days after that time, he shall, unless the Secretary of the Navy or the Commander-in-Chief otherwise direct, be released from arrest and returned to duty by his Commanding Officer, and so remain until a court-martial can be convened to try him, when he shall be again arrested on the day before this court is ordered to convene, so as to undergo his trial before it. 1203....As the law requires that the person accused shall be furnished with a true copy of the charges, with the specifications, at the time he is put under arrest, and as the officer empowered to convene a court-martial is to exercise his discretion either to dismiss a complaint against a party or have it investigated by such court, and to direct what portions of the complaint, in the event of a trial, shall be embodied or omitted in the charges and specifications preferred by a complainant, the general rule should be to leave the authority of arresting an officer to be exercised by the superior who may order a trial to take place. |