Abandonment

"When Brazelton found the wreck he traced lines to it from different points on the Arkansas side of the river, so that their intersection would show the situation of the wreck, and the lines were indicated by marks upon the trees. It was upon the return of Brazelton from St. Louis with his bell boat that a float or buoy was placed by Brazelton over the wreck, and this was done with the intention of signifying the place to which the diving boat was to be dropped the next morning. It was not to be expected that such objects would remain permanent fixtures, as the wreck was in the main channel of the river, and it is evident that Brazelton considered them as guides to the situation of the wreck, as the marked trees were, as he stated to Seth Daniel, in the presence of Reese Bowen, that it would make no difference if they should be washed away, as he could find the wreck from the ranges of his lines. Brazelton does not pretend to have put his boat over the wreck, or to have had any claim to the wreck but by occupancy, which depended upon his finding it, upon his providing means for easy approaches to it by landmarks, and floats upon water, and upon his being in the neighborhood of the wreck from January to the last of September, without any other appropriation of the wreck, but with a continual assertion of his claim, and with the intention of making it good by future action. This, doubtless, he would have done in the winter of 1855, had not the sinking of the steamboat Eliza afforded the opportunity of other work to which he confined himself till June. Then he would have applied himself to the America, but the periodical rise of the river at that season prevented him from so doing, and when he was nearly ready, with his boat and machinery in order for effective labor, with favorable water for work, safe from rafts and flat and coal boats, the Submarine, No. 4, belonging to the defendants, passed him on the 28th of September, and within two days was placed over the wreck, and thenceforward the defendants were its occupants in fact, and claimed to be so by right."