Salvage is a romantic word. It stimulates the imagination and conjures visions of rescue tugs driving through mountainous seas en route to aid a stricken vessel. At any rate, this type of operation receives the attention of the press and reaches the public eye. This view has led to a general tendency to regard all salvage operations as actions of heroic proportions, requiring skills so arcane that they are far beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals who seek their pleasure or livelihood from the sea. This popular concept is not altogether accurate. The act of patching and refloating a sunken skiff or towing a disabled yacht is categorically as much an act of salvage as refloating a stranded supertanker, although admittedly there is a lot more work involved in the latter. There are plenty of small salvage operations being carried out all the time, almost unnoticed except by those involved. My reason fro dealing with this topic is twofold: first, to provide a source of information for the pleasure boatman on some aspects of seamanship not ordinarily dealt with in most books on the subject; second, to encourage the seasoned boatman and/or diver to expand his activities to include the possibility of engaging in salvage for commercial purposes.