Another good turnout of 30 despite the cold weather. The topic for this meeting was “The Sea” John Hammond shared his “voyage of discovery” as he investigated the long absences of a relative who turned out to be a Master Mariner and later owner of ships sailing to places as far away as Australia, North Korea and Russia. Sailing to Australia before the Suez Canal meant going south round Africa usually calling at Cape Town, and could take over 4 months, hence the absences. Getting shipwrecked was a real danger then and both uncomfortable and frightening for the poor souls involved but in this case for us it provided two interesting stories. Our second speaker had to pull out but we can have that story another time. I have researched some seafarers recently and so at the last minute put together a short presentation showing examples some of the types of information that can be found on-line. I was heartened to see how John’s and my “voyages of discovery” were similar in that we used the same or similar on-line sources. At the end of this article I have inserted a few hints and links to assist anyone else and possible save a bit of time.
Next month, being December, we will have a purely social meeting with mince pies. I have had no offers of sections for a quiz to date but any contributions will be welcome and can be used on the day.
Searching for seafaring ancestors.
One of the best hints is in the census records, as wives often give their “occupations” as “husband at sea” or “wife of a Master Mariner”. Census records include vessels in UK ports or coasts and these will come up in Ancestry and Findmypast. Scroll through to find the title page which will give details of the vessel, name, tonnage, type of trade etc. Passenger lists will give the name of the vessel and usually the shipping line and captain or master. All British mercantile marine vessels have a unique number and there has been a central register since the late 1700’s. Master Mariners and Mates have had to carry their certificate of competence since 1850 and most are now on the main subscription family history sites. Masters were also obliged to keep crew lists, which give details of the crew members dates and places of birth and previous ships. Unfortunately the information is not all held in one place and digitisation and indexing is not consistent. The best site to start your search is the Crew List Index Project website. https://www.crewlist.org.uk/#top. The user information is self-explanatory. Another source for this information is the FamilySearch “Full Text Search” found under the “Search” tab. This uses optical character recognition to search un-indexed images. It uses AI to transcribe the documents and you can download the original image and the AI transcription. I have found the quality and consistence variable but this facility is only a few months old and I am sure will improve over time. Once you find a vessel you will have its number, name and place and date of build. There are websites for ships built on specific rivers or towns, just Google until you find the appropriate one. Shipping Intelligence in newspapers identifies the vessel’s and Master’s names as they enter and exit ports or areas of the sea, so from this you can track individual vessels over time. The newspapers will also report incidents such as storm damage or sinkings.