Should U.S. Courts Exercise Jurisdiction in Treasure Salvage Cases where the Wreck is Located in International Waters?
The term "treasure salvage" has a tendency to conjure romantic images of pirates and adventurers. Not, I might add, of modern day pirates, who are widely acknowledged to be unromantic thugs and scoundrels, but rather those of the old story books, of whom time and fiction writers have been more forgiving. In these stories, "x" marks the spot and the hero follows obscure and cryptic clues in a wild adventure to the long-lost chest of gold in the abandoned sunken shipwreck, keeping it all for himself and living happily ever after. (View PDF to read the rest of this article)
This article by Thomas H. Belknap, Jr., partner at Blank Rome, is one in a series of articles written for Blank Rome Maritime's quarterly Mainbrace newsletter. To view the other articles in the September 2011 edition of Mainbrace, please click here.