Searching for Ships ... Finding Ships

[PatReynolds]

from my point of view as a researcher, for Scottish Shipping, EWS, RNS and other ships incidentally captured in Censuses

A search of a parish should find a) ships registered to that parish in the ships papers (e.g. the Saucy Sue, registered Scarborough), and b) ships at anchor / in harbour in that parish (e.g. the Saucy Sue, in Whitby harbour on census night) some ports are in two parishes - a ship in port should be treated as being in both parishes

A search of a parish and 'nearby places' should also find: c) ships at anchor/at sea in nearby waters (based on a lat and long assigned to the "parish" of a body of water [as is done for parishes] or the census-recorded lat and long, for ships at sea)

Ships should be found whether they are recorded as part of land pieces (1841, 1851, 1881 onwards, or as EWS specials (1861, 1871).

E4 U3 S6 or S0 C7 (research): P20

[Captainkirkdawson]

In my opinion this is an impossible requirement. We do not have any knowledge of item a. The registration parish or even registration place of a ship. It might be possible to address item b for CSV entries. The ability to address the requirement for VLD entries is currently unclear within Freecen2.

[suffolkroots]

Ship's name and home port is entered as the address for the entries. The civil parish is the port where the census was handed in. A person search if successful will present an address for that person, which may or may not be a ship.

[PatReynolds]

@PatReynolds to find examples showing the kinds of data in censuses

[geoffj-FUG]

Pat The instructions for entering information for EWS are the same as for FreeCEN1. The only significant change is that we now collect the latitude and longitude of ships at sea on census night. This was not done for FreeCEN1. We have also expanded the information that is to be entered in Notes as we are no longer constricted by the number of characters. The Instructions are in Appendix D of the Handbooks, as followsL Geoff

Appendix D – Shipping Guidelines The following guidelines are used when Transcribing Shipping Returns. They are read in conjunction with the rules for each field in the main section of the Handbook. Enumeration_district – This will probably be 0#2 or 0#8 from the special ED codes. Civil_parish – This is the parish in which the census was lodged. If the ship was at sea on census night, it will be the first port visited. Where_census_taken – this will be the location of the ship on census night. In some cases, this may be the Latitude and Longitude of the ship as shown in the census return. Note: For other fields in the Enumeration District section of the spreadsheet, and where no information has been given, enter a hyphen (-). This only needs to be entered once unless one of the fields or any other part of the ED section changes. Folio_number - If the return does not have folio numbering, please enter “0” (zero) against the first line of the return. Page_number – There may be no page numbers, in which case enter “0” (zero). Schedule_number - Schedule numbers were not used in these returns. Treat like an Institution as a single household (even if a very large one) that may contain several individuals identified as “Head”, “Wife”, etc. Simply enter “0” (zero) on the first line of the Institution. Uninhabited_flag – Occasionally you may find a (foreign) ship that is named but with no crew details. Enter v in the uninhabited_flag and put any extra information in the Notes field, for example, the Louise Frederick came from Norway, had five crew on board who were not named, nor were any personal details provided —Enter “(Louise Frederick) Norway” in house_or_street_name, “v” in uninhabited_flag, and “five crew, unnamed” in the Notes field. House_or_street_name - Enter the address as the vessel name in brackets () followed by the home port or the port of origin, if given, e.g. “(Prince Consort) Aberdeen”. Notes - Enter the tonnage, Ship description and trade in this field. Other information such as that suggested under uninhabited_flag may also have been included in this field.

[geoffj-FUG]

Pat says that serches should be able to find: a) ships registered to that parish in the ships papers (e.g. the Saucy Sue, registered Scarborough), and This is entered in the address. It will not be able to be searched unless searching for a specific address is implemented systemwide b) ships at anchor / in harbour in that parish (e.g. the Saucy Sue, in Whitby harbour on census night) *some ports are in two parishes - a ship in port should be treated as being in both parishes This should be able to be searched once we have civil parish level searching. However there is no differentiation from other entries in the parish as all entries will be listed. It may be possible to implement a filter on the special ED code which would then identify all shipping. A search of a parish and 'nearby places' should also find: c) ships at anchor/at sea in nearby waters (based on a lat and long assigned to the "parish" of a body of water [as is done for parishes] or the census-recorded lat and long, for ships at sea) Once geographic searching is implemented it should be possible to identify ships within a defined area. So ships in Brixham DEV should be able to be found moored in Salcombe DEV if the search is wide enough. However it should be pointed out that our current searching methods are predicated on a person not an address. Your proposal is a significant paradigm shift from our current search processes Geoff

[PatReynolds]

Making separate stories once I have examples.

Nb the related #1159 is about searching for a ship with no associated person (a phase 2 story, in incoming).

[DeniseColbert]

FreeREG deaths at sea may help with locating ships