Master's authority to sell stranded ship

All will agree that the master must act in good faith, exercise his best discretion for the benefit of all concerned, and that it can only be done upon the compulsion of a necessity, to be determined in each case by the actual and impending peril to which the vessel is exposed; from which it is probable, in the opinion of persons competent to judge, that the vessel cannot be saved. This is, as it is decided in some of the English Courts, an extreme necessity... It is also properly termed a moral necessity, because when the peril and information concur, as we have just stated, it then becomes an urgent duty upon the master to sell, for the preservation of the interest of all concerned.