4.1 Early law

4.1.1 Generally

The “law of maritime salvage is old” said Lord Mustill in Semco Salvage & Marine Pte Ltd v Lancer Navigation Co Pty Ltd (The Nagasaki Spirit). ¹ The first clear example of a suit for salvage in English admiralty law occurs in 1633, so the area is indeed quite ancient. ² But it goes back much further than that. Dr Sanborn suggests the law of salvage grew out of civil authorities wanting to reward pirates and others—“for their self-restraint in salving…goods but more especially for their self-restraint in not knocking the merchant or passenger on the head and pocketing his property”. ³ There could be some truth in this for as Dr Ashburner says: “In the Mediterranean, piracy…was the resource of the young, active and resolute among the sea-faring population”. ⁴ The temptation to steal riches or keep goods found at sea would have been strong. Hence, salvage offered a “counterpoint to such temptation”. ⁵ This may help explain why salvage reward has always been generous. In a doubtful case of salvage in 1881, Windeyer J in the NSW Supreme Court in The Wotonga, ⁶ erring on the side of generosity, said it “is not in the interests of the public that [those rendering salvage service] should be dealt with in a niggard spirit”. But that same notion can be seen even in the Rhodian Sea-Law as far back as the seventh or eighth centuries. ⁷