Subscribe to RSS FeedA great group of sailors sat through my brief towing and salvage lecture this past Saturday at the Newport Yacht Club. Sure, maritime law can get dry, but I kept a nice tempo going and everybody was gracious enough to keep their eyes open! What's that? Yea, there were some good questions.
The take-away (yep, my nod toward pop-culture jargon) was that salvage continues to be misunderstood. A salvage claim is nothing more than a claim for money based on the claimant having saved a vessel and/or its cargo from loss. Broadly speaking, to qualify for a salvage award, the vessel must be in peril (actual or imminent), you can't have had a pre-existing obligation to assist the vessel, and you need success. Sure, salvage rights generally give rise to a maritime lien, but right to ownership of a salvaged vessel? Not usually.
Why all the confusion? In my personal opinion it's due to two factors. First, salvage is old as dirt. Look back thousands of years and you can find some derogation of the concept. Pretty much like what old age does to us, old legal concepts have a lot of baggage, too. Second, we're all so used to the "time and materials" approach to paying for services that the concept of a "reward" get's everybody tacking sideways. Still, in my opinion, the maritime law concept of salvage works, and I challenge you to propose a different remedy. (Full disclosure, I used to be in the salvage industry myself so I like the stuff, but seriously, what other than a "reward" would roust someone from a warm bed in the middle of a gale?)
See my WorkBoat Magazine Blog entry for some more Fulweiler flotsam and jetsam on salvage: http://www.workboat.com/blogpost.aspx?id=4294989782
Underway and making way.
-- JKF
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