Definition
Goods sunk in the sea but attached to a buoy or float so that they may be located and recovered. Ligan is distinguished from flotsam (goods floating on the surface after a wreck or jettison) and jetsam (goods deliberately thrown overboard that sink without a marker). The buoy or tether is the definitional feature: ligan is intentionally marked for retrieval, not abandoned to the sea. Also spelled lagan, the variant form that appears in Bracton and in much of the later admiralty literature.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Alternative form of lagan.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Goods sunk in the sea, with a buoy attached in order that they may be found again.
The common and legal meanings are essentially identical here — Webster's definition tracks Blackstone directly, and Wiktionary simply redirects to lagan. The legal significance lies not in any gap between common and legal usage but in the doctrinal consequences that attach to the classification: what qualifies as ligan determines ownership rights as against the Crown, salvors, and the finder. That consequence is invisible in ordinary-language definitions.
Common Confusion
Ligan, jetsam, and flotsam form a trio that historical sources treat as mutually exclusive categories of wreck goods, but the boundaries blur in practice and the terms are often used loosely or interchangeably in non-legal writing. The critical distinction:
— FLOTSAM: goods floating on the surface, not deliberately thrown overboard, typically after a ship sinks.
— JETSAM: goods deliberately cast overboard (jettisoned) to lighten a vessel in distress, which sink and are unmarked.
— LIGAN: goods deliberately sunk or left but marked with a buoy for later retrieval.
The buoy is what separates ligan from jetsam. Both involve goods that have sunk, but jetsam is abandoned; ligan is not. Historical sources occasionally add a fourth category — wreck proper — for goods cast ashore. Researchers should not assume these categories map cleanly onto modern admiralty or salvage law terminology.
Why It Matters in Research
Ligan appears primarily in historical admiralty and common law contexts dealing with wreck and salvage, crown prerogative, and the rights of lords of manors to goods cast upon their shores. In English law, the Crown's prerogative over wreck traditionally extended to flotsam, jetsam, and ligan alike, though the precise rules varied by charter grant and by whether the goods were recovered within a set period. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century admiralty materials will encounter all three terms as a linked set — citing to Coke (5 Co. 106) and Blackstone (1 Bl. Com. 292) is conventional in the historical dictionaries, and those remain the anchoring primary sources.
The spelling variation matters for corpus searching. Ligan and lagan are both attested, and Bracton uses lagan. Burrill notes that Spelman favored lagon. A search for only one spelling will miss a portion of the historical record. In modern maritime law, lagan has largely displaced ligan as the preferred spelling, so researchers moving from historical to modern sources should adapt their search terms accordingly.
The entry under Bouvier indexed to this term in some editions is a misdirection: Bouvier's relevant entry on the goods themselves appears under LAGAN, not LIGAN, and the Bouvier source material above instead points to an unrelated entry (LAGE DAY). Researchers using older Bouvier editions should check both headings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most complete historical treatment, tracing the term to the Latin ligare (to tie) and noting Spelman's alternative derivation from the Saxon liggan (to lie). Burrill's citation chain — Coke, Blackstone, and Jacobsen's Sea Laws — represents the standard authority network for this term and is reliable. Anderson's definition is accurate and concise but offers no additional texture. Rapalje & Lawrence treats the term only in contrast to flotsam and jetsam, which reflects how practitioners typically encountered it: as one of three categories requiring distinction rather than as an independent subject of analysis.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses how these categories interact with modern salvage conventions or statutory schemes, which had largely superseded the common law framework by the time most of these works were compiled. Researchers should treat the historical dictionary entries as a guide to the pre-statutory common law baseline, not as a statement of current admiralty doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Ligan as a distinct legal category is primarily a feature of English common law and admiralty tradition. Its practical significance in American law diminished as federal maritime statutes displaced much of the common law wreck framework. In research involving admiralty jurisdiction in U.S. courts, lagan (the modern spelling) appears occasionally in salvage disputes, but the doctrinal weight carried by the flotsam-jetsam-ligan trichotomy is largely historical.