PrepTest 157, Section 1, Question 14
Passage A is from a newspaper article.(500 more words not shown)
Passage A(7 more words not shown)
Passage B(500 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- AA government's property(24 more words not shown)
- BGovernments have a(15 more words not shown)
- CGold coins salvaged(32 more words not shown)
- DIf neither the(31 more words not shown)
- EWhen there is(29 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
A gives us an unusual agreement: the British government owns a ship that sank centuries earlier, while a company supplies the means to recover its treasure. For this open inference question, keep those established facts separate from general legal rules the article doesn't give us. The need for a partner doesn't mean the government has lost ownership.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The Sussex sank in 1694, yet the opening still identifies the British government as its owner when the recovery agreement is made. That supports the modest inference that failure to salvage the ship over the intervening centuries did not, by itself, forfeit the government's rights.
- B
This agreement calls for archaeological integrity. That doesn't establish a general legal obligation applying to governments' salvage or exploration efforts. A contractual requirement in one agreement is not automatically a universal rule.
- C
A says cultural items have greater archaeological value than coins. Less value is not no significance, and using coin sales to finance recovery doesn't establish that the coins cease to be cultural property.
- D
We are told that the government owns the Sussex, not a rule explaining what happens when an owner dies without heirs. The ownership fact doesn't establish this proposed route by which a government acquires a ship.
- E
The article mentions freelance treasure hunting as a practice. It doesn't say that the absence of a salvage agreement gives treasure hunters a legal right to someone else's wreck. An activity's occurrence doesn't establish its legality.
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