Salvaging Recreational Boating: Reforming an Antiquated Maritime Practice

This note looks at the history and development of the law of maritime salvage from antiquity to its modern iteration and outlines how the modern recreational mariner is being made the victim of an outdated and imbalanced system. In doing so, this article looks at the evolution of maritime salvage laws and the public policies that support and argues that the reasons underlying those policies have either evaporated as society and technology have changed and that salvage law, in the context of recreational vessels, is grossly mismatched to the realities of modern boating and needs to be changed to reflect current maritime practices and protect recreational boaters