Wreck

A derelict or broken vessel, or portions of one, or cargo from one, cast by the sea upon the land. Most of the definitions given in the dictionaries seem, however, to exclude a vessel. Wreck applies to property cast upon land by the sea. Things are not wrecks in the legal sense, so long as they remain at sea. A sunken vessel is not a wreck, but derelict.

Baker v. Hoag, 7 A^. Y. 555.

Wreck of the sea. The expression that " the admiralty has not jurisdiction of the wreck of the sea," does not refer to property, deemed wreck or shipwrecked property, in the sense of the maritime or commercial law; but to " wreck of the sea," in the purely technical common-law sense, such as constituted a royal franchise and part of the revenue of the crown in England, and often granted, as such a royal franchise, to lords of manors.

United States V. Coombs, 12 Pet. 72.

Wreck means such goods as after a shipwreck are cast up by the sea and left there within some county. By the common law, all wrecks belonged to the crown; but it was usual to seize wrecks to the king's use, only when no owner could be found. The common law was modified by statute in the reign of Henry I, who granted that if any should be no wreck; and afterwards, by the statute of Westminster the First (3 Edw. I.), ch. 4, if a man or dog or cat escaped alive, the goods shall be no wreck, but the sheriff shall keep the same (or, if perishable, their value) for a year and a day, in order to restore them to the rightful owner, or his representatives, establishing their claim to them; and still later, by the statute 27 Edw. IIL ch. 13, if a ship is lost on the shore, and the goods come to land, they are to be at once returned to the owners, they paying a reasonable reward for their salvage.

Brown.