Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/308

 292 only, it is clearly not a legal wreck: but the heriff of the county is bound to keep the goods a year and a day (as in France for one year, agreeably to the maritime laws of Oleron, and in Holland for a year and an half) that if any man can prove a property in them, either in his own right or by right of repreentation , they hall be retored to him without delay; but, if no uch property be proved within that time, they then hall be the king's. If the goods are of a perihable nature, the heriff may ell them, and the money hall be liable in their tead. This revenue of wrecks is frequently granted out to lords of manors, as a royal franchie; and if any one be thus entitled to wrecks in his own land, and the king's goods are wrecked thereon, the king may claim them at any time, even after the year and day.

is to be oberved, that, in order to contitute a legal wreck, the goods mut come to land. If they continue at ea, the law ditinguihes them by the barbarous and uncouth appellations of jetam, flotam, and ligan. Jetam is where goods are cat into the ea, and there ink and remain under water: flotam is where they continue wimming on the urface of the waves: ligan is where they are unk in the ea, but tied to a cork or buoy, in order to be found again. Thee are alo the king's, if no owner appears to claim them; but, if any owner appears, he is entitled to recover the poeion. For even if they be cat overboard, without any mark or buoy, in order to lighten the hip, the owner is not by this act of neceity contrued to have renounced his property : much les can things ligan be uppoed to be abandoned, ince the owner has done all in his power, to aert and retain his property. Thee three are therefore accounted o far a ditinct thing from the former, that by the king's grant to a man of wrecks, things jetam, flotam, and ligan will not pas. Rh