and it enacts, that if a man, a dog, or a cat escape alive, the vessel shall not be adjudged a wreck. The animals mentioned are only put for examples. Whether the real owner was entitled to reclaim his shipwrecked goods, although no living creature had come alive from the ship to the shore, was a question which arose in the King's Bench in Hamilton v. Davis.1 The grantee, under the crown, claimed the goods as wreck, because the ship was totally lost, and no living 'animal was saved, and his counsel insisted, that, according to all the writers, from the Mirror to Blackstone inclusive, it was a lawful wreck, as no living creature had come to the shore, and that Bracton stood unsupported by any other writer. But Lord Mansfield, "with a sagacity and spirit that did him infinite honor," " reprobated the doctrine urged by the counsel, and declared that there was no case adjudging, that the goods were forfeited, because no dog, or cat, or other animal, came alive to the shore; that any such determination would be contrary to the principles of law and justice; that the very idea was shocking; and that the coming ashore of a dog, or a cat, alive, was no better proof of ownership, than if they had come

Hamilton v. Davis, 5 Burr. R. 2732. In case the goods are of a perishable nature, the sheriff may sell them, and the money received for the same, may be claimed by the owner in their stead. Molloy,

263.

2 2 Kent's Com. 322.

ashore dead; that the whole inquiry was a question of ownership; and that, if no owner could be discovered, the goods belonged to the king, and not otherwise; and that the statute of 3 Ed. I. was not to receive any construction contrary to the plain principles of justice and humanity.

Though the governments of the American colonies were understood to be exclusive of many royal prerogatives, yet the king considered himself as entitled to wreck. This is made to appear by the grant to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of the province of Maine, in 1639, which grant includes the right to wreck. And as the king judged he could grant this right in one colony, he of course so judged, as relates to the other colonies. If the king's prerogative of wreck, then, extended to the colonies, and was not relinquished to the colonies, (as for instance, his prerogative in royal fish was relinquished to Rhode Island,) the colonies must have succeeded thereto, on the separation of the two countries, when they became independent states.

1

The statutes of New York, Massachusetts, and other American states, are like the edict of Constantine, and the declaration of Bracton; as they declare, that nothing that shall be cast by the sea upon the land, shall be adjudged wreck, but the goods shall be kept safely for the space of a year for the true owner, to

1 3 Dane's Abr. 137.

whom the same is to be delivered on his paying reasonable salvage; and if the goods be not reclaimed within that time, they shall be sold, and the proceeds accounted for to the state. The statutes of North Carolina on the subject, are founded, said Mr. J. Story, on the principles of justice and humanity."

12 Kent, Com. 321, 322; N. Y. Rev. Stat. vol. 1, p. 690; Mass. Rev. Stat. part 1, tit. 14, ch. 37, sec. 12.

5 Mason's R. 477.