Nutters

Oldest and youngest of a family of nine seafaring brothers, Capt. Fred Nutter and Capt. Edgar Nutter quarreled as shipmates for 50 years, quarreled for ten years more as inmates in New York's Sailors Snug Harbour. Last week their ceaseless rancor brought them into court.

Capt. Edgar Nutter, a doddering petulant man of 74, charged his brother with assault. He said that one hot summer day when he had been sewing an eyeshade for his weakened eyes, Capt. Fred Nutter had come into their room, put a calendar in the window to spoil the light, then whacked him with a monkey wrench. Capt. Edgar Nutter angrily insisted that his brother was too "bossy," that he should be safely jailed before he killed someone with the shoe-hammers and wrenches which he habitually used for weapons.

Capt. Fred Nutter, 86, seemed less angry than reproachful. He admitted he had whacked his brother with a wrench. But first, said he, Capt. Edgar Nutter had attacked him with a slop-bucket. "Self-defense. . . . He's younger than me," said Capt. Fred Nutter. He added that his brother had been "spoiled," that "it's a damn lie, everything he said."

Fellow inmates, judges, lawyers, officials of the institution and a jollier brother, Capt. Eugene Nutter, 75, who had come from Gouldsboro, Me., asked them to make friends. Instead, Capt. Fred Nutter scowled sadly at his brother in the court; Capt. Edgar Nutter hid his face with his hat. A patient magistrate dismissed the case. Capt. Fred Nutter strolled out the front door. Capt. Edgar Nutter, too proud to follow him, went out the side.

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