Definition
A Latin term from civil and old English law referring to material thrown up or cast out by the sea — including flotsam, jetsam, and wreck — that has been deposited on shore by wave or tide action. The term encompasses any goods, debris, or matter ejected from the sea and found on the coastline or foreshore. It is closely associated with the law of wreck and the legal rules governing ownership of sea-cast material.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry; the term does not appear in general modern English dictionaries.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a common English word; treated as a Latin term of art.
The absence of any common-language counterpart confirms this is pure legal and civil-law terminology. Researchers encountering the word in non-legal historical texts should treat it as a borrowing from the civil law tradition, not an anglicized term with independent meaning.
Common Confusion
Ejectum is sometimes conflated with jetsam or flotsam in historical sources, but the terms are not identical in scope. Flotsam refers specifically to goods floating on the sea after a wreck; jetsam refers to goods deliberately thrown overboard. Ejectum is the broader category — whatever the sea casts up — and can encompass both, as well as other wreck material not easily classified as either. Historical dictionaries use the terms interchangeably in places, which can mislead researchers working with admiralty and maritime sources.
Ejectum should also be distinguished from the verb ejectment (the common-law possessory action). The shared Latin root ejicere (to throw out) has caused occasional indexing confusion in older digests, where entries for ejectum and ejectment appear in close proximity. They share no substantive legal relationship.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in admiralty law, the law of wreck, or early property law will encounter ejectum primarily in pre-nineteenth-century sources — English and American admiralty decisions, civil law treatises, and early statutes governing foreshore rights. The term falls out of active judicial use as Anglo-American admiralty practice consolidated around English common law vocabulary (wreck, flotsam, jetsam, lagan), but it persists in scholarly and treatise literature through the nineteenth century.
The Bouvier's citation to 1 Peters' Admiralty Decisions (Appendix) is the most practically useful anchor: Burrill confirms that a Charter of Henry III (1226), reproduced in full in that appendix, is a primary source connecting ejectum to the law of wreck in English legal history. Researchers tracing the origins of foreshore and wreck rights should consult that document directly.
Jurisdictional variation in wreck law — who owns sea-cast goods, the crown, the lord of the manor, or the finder — is the substantive legal question underlying the term. In English law, wreck belonged to the Crown or to lords holding franchise rights; in American law, post-Revolution admiralty jurisdiction complicated these claims. Ejectum appears in early American admiralty opinions precisely because courts were working out whether English wreck-law principles survived the transition. Researchers should not assume that English civil-law rules governing ejectum translated directly into American practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier agree on the core definition without elaboration: ejectum is what the sea throws up, associated with jetsam and wreck. Neither source develops the term beyond this brief identification.
Burrill's is the most substantive entry. It supplies the Latin derivation (ejicere, to throw out or up), the phrase quod è mari ejicitur as the underlying civil-law formulation, and the reference to the 1226 Henry III charter. Burrill also includes the maxim Ejus est nolle, qui potest velle immediately following — a sequencing artifact of alphabetical arrangement, not a substantive connection.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the doctrinal context: none explains how ejectum interacted with the English law of wreck, the rights of salvors, or the franchise rights of coastal lords. Researchers should supplement dictionary sources with treatises on admiralty and the law of the sea for substantive doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Ejectum as a term of art is most relevant to English admiralty and civil law sources. American courts adopted the underlying subject matter — wreck, salvage, sea-cast goods — under federal admiralty jurisdiction, but American practice quickly displaced the Latin terminology. Researchers in American sources after approximately 1850 are unlikely to encounter ejectum in judicial opinions and should search instead under wreck and salvage.