Beachcombing
As beach robbers are called persons who unlawfully acquire flotsam, especially after targeted beaches allow foreign vessels. Beach robbery was allowed on the basis of inherited from the ancient beach right under certain conditions to the Middle Ages and actually came up to the 19th century almost all the coasts of the world before, but now only on the coasts of failed states that can not enforce international law.
Social background
The " appropriation " ( = acquisition of ownership of an ownerless thing ) and possibly sale of flotsam was in the centuries often very poor coastal regions such as those in the North Sea and Baltic Sea a significant contribution to livelihoods. Were driven most beach robbers regularly fishermen and small farmers, thus by their poverty. The flotsam offered them a necessary complement to the meager income.
Molding
One hand there are the "passive" beach robbery, also referred to as " beach gear ". Here, the drift line is expired and the flotsam appropriated - on the one hand natural products such as wood, and on the other hand, objects of human production such as clothes, valuables, equipment and devices or ships. It is similar to the simple poaching.
The less frequently used and operated at a much higher criminal energy form of beachcombing is the "active": With false beacons are aware of ships on shoals, reefs or lured to the beach and then looted. This was also in the civilized parts of the world until the 19th century by the widespread construction of lighthouses along the coasts, the publication of current nautical charts and other navigational aids to an end. For various reasons, in this type of beach robbery initially still find survivors shipwrecked death. For example, because the beach right provided for in the rule that a angestrandetes ship only then became the property of the finder, when the crew had perished, this condition is sometimes brought about by the beach robbers themselves. Survivors can be dangerous by a display of the robbers also - which further increases the ruthlessness of the beach robbers. A little more luck since had such castaways who were like, made at many Lower Saxony coasts until the thirteenth century serfs.
Legal classification
Originally, the coastal residents had to use in many regions of the world by custom the right to the beach as they see fit. In the coined by the ancient countries they could be also on the beach and right away called derived norms of secular and ecclesiastical authority. Prerequisite to the appropriation of the discovery, however, was always the Herrenlosigkeit, for example, by death of the original owner.
For the passive beach robbery, so the " beach gear ," there have been and almost no sense of wrongdoing: the view of the beach -goer, he just takes what gives him the nature by flushes it to the beach. He could feel confirmed in this view, since the authorities often tolerate such activities for remuneration or in kind. For the active beach robbery could not be invoked such a good conscience, he has always been considered wrong. With him, the beach robbery of piracy, piracy differs only in that in the former the offender from the coast.
The beach law was declared in Europe in the 12th century by the authorities repeatedly invalidated or at least adapted to Christian ideas, by the law of the vessel's owner or shipwrecked increasingly strengthened that the Finder was restricted accordingly. This meant for coastal residents not only a significant reduction in their income, they found them often as arrogance and paternalism of the already reluctantly endured authorities from the mainland. Detlev von Liliencron therefore leaves the Sylt Fischer Pidder Lueng demand against the Danish Bailiff:
" But just the repetition of the prohibition and the desire to be protected by special individual charters, however, prove the relapses into the old evil. " - These bans were thus initially only limited effect.
It is true in most cases for the flotsam Fund law. On some coasts the beach found a Vogt appointed by the State, the customs or other authority to contact or pass.