Definition
The plural of flotage. In historical English law, flotages referred to two distinct things:
1. Things floating on water by accident. Objects that float upon the surface of the sea or great rivers by chance — goods, debris, or cargo that ends up adrift without deliberate act. This sense is closely related to flotsam and was used in admiralty and common law contexts to describe property found floating at sea or on navigable rivers.
2. Commissions paid to water bailiffs. A fee or charge associated with the office of water bailiff, collected in connection with the administration or oversight of navigable waters. This administrative and fiscal sense appears in Cunningham's Law Dictionary and was noted in both Bouvier and Black's.
Common Confusion
FLOTAGES vs. FLOTSAM/FLOTSAN: These terms are related but not identical. Flotsam specifically describes goods cast overboard or floating after a shipwreck — it carries a defined legal character in admiralty law and is one member of the classic triumvirate of flotsam, jetsam, and ligan. Flotages is a broader or more general term encompassing things that float by accident on rivers or the sea, and also carries the separate meaning of water-bailiff commissions. A researcher encountering flotages in an older source should not assume it maps precisely onto flotsam without examining context.
FLOTAGES vs. JETSAM vs. LIGAN: Jetsam refers to goods deliberately thrown overboard to lighten a ship in distress; ligan (or lagan) refers to goods sunk but marked for recovery, typically by buoy. These distinctions mattered for determining who had title to recovered goods — the Crown, the lord of the manor, the salvor, or the original owner.
Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning of flotages creates a real interpretive trap. A researcher working through admiralty records, port records, or manor court rolls may encounter the term in either its property sense (floating goods) or its fee sense (water-bailiff commissions), and the context will not always make the distinction obvious. The water-bailiff commission meaning is largely absent from modern legal usage and would be easy to misread as a reference to floating property.
Historically, the Crown held prerogative rights over wreck, flotsam, jetsam, and ligan found on the sea or shore. The property law dimension of flotages therefore connects to the broader regime of royal prerogative over maritime goods — a framework extensively developed in Bracton, Coke, and Blackstone. Researchers tracing ownership disputes or admiralty proceedings in English records from the medieval period through the eighteenth century will need to understand where flotages fit within that hierarchy.
In American law, the term flotages as such is largely obsolete. The substance — rights over floating or wrecked goods — passed into federal admiralty jurisdiction. Researchers working in American maritime law will find the relevant doctrine under salvage, wreck, and admiralty jurisdiction rather than under this term.
The water-bailiff fee sense is essentially confined to English legal history. Researchers encountering it in fiscal or administrative records should treat it as a term of art from English river and port administration, not as a reference to maritime property.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (both editions), Burrill's, and Bouvier's — agree on the first meaning: things that float by accident on the sea or great rivers. All cite Blount or Cowell as authority, indicating the definition was drawn from early English legal glossographers rather than from active case law.
Black's and Bouvier's both record the second meaning (water-bailiff commissions), citing Cunningham's Law Dictionary. Burrill omits this sense entirely, suggesting either editorial selectivity or uncertainty about its currency. Neither meaning in any of the dictionaries receives substantial doctrinal development — flotages is treated as a definitional entry pointing toward the richer bodies of law surrounding flotsam, jetsam, and ligan.
The entry for FLOTSAM/FLOTSAN appears immediately after FLOTAGES in Black's and Bouvier's, and both dictionaries signal the distinction between flotages and flotsam without fully resolving it. The Bracton citation (lib. 2, c. 5) and the reference to 5 Coke 106 and 1 Bl. Comm. 292 in connection with flotsam are the primary authorities for the underlying maritime property regime, and those sources are where substantive doctrine will be found.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: how flotages was applied in actual admiralty proceedings, whether the term had statutory footing at any point, or how it interacted with manorial rights over coastal wreck. Researchers should not rely on dictionary definitions alone for these questions.
Jurisdictional Note
Flotages in its property sense was a term of English common law and admiralty. In the United States, rights over floating and wrecked goods fall under federal admiralty jurisdiction; the specific term has not carried over into American legal usage. In England, the Crown's prerogative over flotages, flotsam, jetsam, and ligan was substantially codified and eventually modified by statute.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Admiralty and Maritime Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Wreck and Salvage
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Royal Prerogative (Property Dimensions)