cast into
the sea, and there sink and remain under water: flotsam is where they
continue swimming on the surface of the waves: ligan is where they are
sunk in the sea, but tied to a cork or buoy, in order to be found
again[m]. These are also the king's, if no owner appears to claim
them; but, if any owner appears, he is entitled to recover the
possession. For even if they be cast overboard, without any mark or
buoy, in order to lighten the ship, the owner is not by this act of
necessity construed to have renounced his property[n]: much less can
things ligan be supposed to be abandoned, since the owner has done all
in his power, to assert and retain his property. These three are
therefore accounted so far a distinct thing from the former, that by
the king's grant to a man of wrecks, things jetsam, flotsam, and ligan
will not pass[o].

[Footnote m: 5 Rep. 106.]

[Footnote n: _Quae enim res in tempestate, levandae navis causa,
ejiciuntur, hac dominorum permanent. Quia palam est, eas non eo animo
ejici, quod quis habere nolit._ _Inst._ 2. 1. Sec. 48.]

[Footnote o: 5 Rep. 108.]

WRECKS, in their legal acceptation, are at present not very frequent:
it rarely happening that every living creature on board perishes; and
if any should survive, it is a very great chance, since the
improvement of commerce, navigation, and correspondence, but the owner
will be able to assert his property within the year and day limited by
law. And in order to preserve this property entire for him, and if
possible to prevent wrecks at all, our laws have made many very humane
regulations; in a spirit quite opposite to those savage laws, which
formerly prevailed in all the northern regions of Europe, and a few
years ago were still laid to subsist on the coasts of the Baltic sea,
permitting the inhabitants to seize on whatever they could get as
lawful prize; or, as an author of their own expresses it, "_in
naufragorum miseria et calamitate tanquam vultures ad praedam
currere_[p]." For by the statute 2 Edw. III. c. 13. if any ship be
lost on the shore, and the goods come to land (so as it be not legal
wreck) they shall be presently delivered to the merchants, they paying
only a reasonable reward to those that saved and preserved them, which
is intitled _salvage_. Also by the common law, if any persons (other
than the sheriff) take any goods so cast on shore, which are not legal
wreck, the owners might have a commission to enquire and find them
out