Jurists and legislators have had to determine the ownership of property that seems for the time to belong to no one. _Derelict_ is the lawyers' name for such property, so far at anyrate as regards abandoned ships. Where a crew merely quit their ship to obtain assistance, or for any other temporary purpose, it is not derelict: they intend to return; but when the master and crew abandon her without hope of recovery, she becomes ownerless for a time, and then falls to the lot of the finder. Not necessarily to keep, however, but, as has been said, to hold as a claim for salvage from the crown, the owners, or the under-writers. If the solitary ship is found near any coast, there is generally some claim put forth by the owner of the sea-shore, whether the owner be government or a private individual; but when out in the open sea, far distant from land, international maritime law may have to settle the matter. In practice, however, very little of this takes place; a ship really abandoned out in mid-ocean is seldom worth the expense of repair; the finders and salvors regard it chiefly in the light of saleable old materials; and the derelict, if it be taken in tow or otherwise navigated to port by its discoverers, usually finds its way into the hands of the ship-breaker. A curious inquiry it would be, How many abandoned ships are at this moment locked up in densely packed ice? No great difficulty will be felt in understanding that derelicts have a peculiar history in the Arctic regions. When a ship is left forlorn in any sea or ocean, the probability is that fire or leakage has rendered the abandonment necessary as the only chance of escape for passengers and crew. Or it may be that the ship has been cast upon some coast or outlying rock, and so become tenantless. In the intricate channels of the frozen regions, on the contrary, a ship may be in a sound condition, but so hopelessly hemmed in on all sides with huge floes and fields of ice, that the crew would have exhausted all their food and necessaries of life before liberation comes; they quit the luckless vessel, and wend their way by sledge or by boat to regions of civilisation.