What’s on this site
(and why I bother)
(revised 12 May 2006)
I’m
in my early ’60’s, with a lifetime interest in maritime history. My career
background in social science and social and economic statistics gives me the
basis for and interest in approaching maritime topics with tools that most
other people with similar shipping interests probably won’t be as familiar
with. I don’t think that such approaches are all there is to it by any means
but I do think that they are under-developed in maritime history relative to
the contribution they can make and that they are essential to making progress
with some aspects.
I’ve
set up this deliberately plain and easily maintainable site to make available
some of my research results and work in progress and to develop contacts and
promote information sharing and discussion with people with similar interests.
You’ll
find quite a lot of information here about basic sources that has taken a fair
while to hunt down over the years, summaries of work in progress and requests
for assistance and offers of collaboration, along with discussion of strategies
and approaches in maritime history and for documenting and analysing its source
material.
Underlying
all of my approach(es) is a belief in the need to study ships in general as
well as individually and within the context of wider trends and processes of
technological, economic and social change. Through all my projects you’ll find
a quest for pattern and trend as well as interest in the individual vessel and
person – if anything, I emphasise the former in the interests of redressing
what I perceive to be under-emphasis on context and over-emphasis on the
specific. Much of what you’ll find on this site does deal with the
practicalities of obtaining and organising information about specific ships but
generally from the underlying perspective of combining the specific into the
general.
While
my particular emphasis is on merchant sail, I’m interested in the theme within
the context of the parallel development of steam. You won’t find very much
about individual steam ships on my site but you will find some, coverage of the
transition from sail to steam and a lot about data sources that is equally
relevant to steam.
Focus and
approaches
My
special interest is merchant sail in the 19th and early 20th
centuries, but my approach is much wider than that. You can’t make sense of one
part outside of the context of the whole so I am interested in the development
of steam and motor vessels at least to that degree. The issues of data sources,
data bases and the statistical analysis of any part of the whole are
essentially the same and ultimately inseparable from shipping in general. They
have led me into the practicalities of documenting recent large motor-powered
vessels as well as the sailing ships of generally less than 3,000 tons that I
started out reading about some fifty years ago. The only thing that you
definitely won’t find on my site is ships of war unless they spent part of
their careers in merchant service.
I’m
working a lot on New Zealand shipping because that is the information most
accessible to me (and which I can best help others to gain access to) and
secondly on Australia because so many of the ships are common to both countries
and so much NZ trade has been with Australia since even before official
colonisation. However, much of my research is international, both for its own
sake and as the context of the local and regional - “contextualisation” is a
favourite theme. You have to be very conscious of your links with the wider
world when you live on a group of islands about as far as it’s possible to be
from everywhere else that’s bigger. “Farthest Promised Land” is the title of a
famous book on migration to
I’m
interested in developing collaboration with Australian maritime historians as
many ships were common to both countries. North American and British
developments are of interest as their fleets represent so much of world
shipping historically and led world technology for so long. I’m also interested
in links with people researching ships built in continental Europe up to WWI
and any transcription of information from Bureau Veritas records as European
shipping has been much neglected by English monoglot maritime historians (quite
unnecessarily as the registers are bi-lingual).
While
much has been done, particularly by Canadians and Americans, in improving the
general accessibility of historical shipping records, there is still much to do
and much that can be made more useful. Modern computer-based information
technology makes possible much wider access to a lot of information that
hitherto for many individuals (particularly those on distant islands) just
about might as well have been on the moon, but much of even that which has been
computerised could be exploited more effectively with improvements in format,
data editing and integration. Such improvements will typically go beyond what
the databases were ever expected to be used for but it is part of optimum
database development that databases are capable of being used for purposes that
extend the original design expectations forward and laterally. All of the
computerised maritime records I know of could have made better provision for
linking and matching information with other databases with overlapping or
comparable content, often very easily and cheaply if built into the original
design approach.
Most
computerisation of records has been and is being done in ways that are good for
identifying records relating to individual ships – in effect, splendid
retrieval systems for locating needles in haystacks – but comparatively poor or
quite useless for grouping ships into categories and relating them to the whole
and for relating time trends in categories to developments in the wider
contexts of technological, economic and social change and the changing world
geography of trade and international politics. Ultimately, it is in these
latter directions that deeper understanding lies.
The later
steps of interpretation and analysis are more “exciting” and more likely to
attract funding and recognition but systematic observation and efficient
recording are necessary preconditions. Without the development of a solid basis
of common information and links between information systems that can only be
developed co-operatively, there are limits to what can be accomplished either
individually or collectively. The inefficiency built into the use of many
databases for general analytical purposes is a real impediment to doing
properly the stuff that wider audiences are interested in.
Much
of what I’ve covered on my site is related to working through these issues and
to the practicalities of their solutions. I hope this site will always be a
work in progress. I don’t envisage that it will ever be complete – I’d be
worried if it was! – but you will find some starting points and intermediate
stages here that will be progressively updated and extended as I discover more,
particularly if the site is successful in facilitating co-operation with those
whose interests and approaches overlap.
A
more specific listing of my research interests follows. Many overlap in various
ways and may well lead to outputs not currently specifically envisaged.
Obviously, I’m not working equally on all of them simultaneously - nor am I
working solely on maritime history – but I’ve set out the range fairly fully as
it can easily take a year or more to establish contacts and acquire resources
to do something in a year’s time.
World merchant
shipping themes
Development of sailing ship
rigs during the 19th century; competition of sail and steam
world-wide. Establishing the numbers and characteristics of classes of sailing
ship in particular periods.
Charts showing sailing ship rigs,
subclasses and regional types drawn to a common scale, with related
documentation. This involves analysis of average sizes and size ranges in
various periods, the numbers of particular classes ever constructed and the
identification of representative individual ships. I’m also interested in the linguistic development of terms relating to
sailing ship rigs in multiple languages.
The transition from sail to
steam, including the role of schooner-barges and unrigged barges in the
transition. They are a neglected element as seamen and sailing ship historians
have always looked down upon them with one notable exception, but their
economic significance cannot be denied.
International statistical time
series of ships of particular types (sail/steam/motor, wood/composite/iron/steel)
and nationality (principally to WWI).
Statistical records of ships
in particular trades; arrival and departure statistics. Passage times on
particular routes.
Coverage and availability of
shipping registers and their research applications.
Databases and their
applications. Universal ship numerical identifiers. Linking the records of
ships registered in multiple jurisdictions.
NZ and Australian
ships and shipping projects
Australasian shipping
primarily to WWI, with a strong Australian component because so much of NZ 19th
century trade and shipping interaction was with
NZ shipping statistics to WW2
covering the changing significance of sail and steam and the numbers of
overseas and coastal arrivals and departures at each port. Publication is
envisaged. The statistical tables will provide control totals for arrivals and
departures at particular ports in particular years against which to assess the
coverage of collections of ships’ passenger lists.
Australian shipping statistics
particularly for the 1870's and 1880's as these can fill a gap in NZ shipping
statistics. (NZ statistics do not make the sail/steam distinction until 1886 by
which time steam tonnage already dominated the trans-Tasman routes. Most
Australian shipping statistics made the distinction a critical ten years
earlier so that the NZ transition can be studied from the Australian end; the
trans-Tasman trade being the critical one.) The same approach can be used for
studying the shipping of
Master-indexes of NZ and
Australian ships to 1920 (possibly beyond) based principally on the Register of Australian and NZ Shipping
from 1874 and the Mercantile Navy List
with cross-links to indexes to other sources. Deliberately limited in scope for
obvious practical reasons but will be sufficient to do things like quickly
identifying ships built in X or Y and, potentially, as the core of an index
infinitely extendable as a link to multiple sources whether computerised or
not. Attempting to standardise the statistical information in a number of local
sources that are generally regarded as having been “done” indicates many gaps
capable of being filled, anomalies and inconsistencies and linkages to other
sources that could be made much easier to use for people not specialised in
their use and for the handful of over-worked and under-funded people actually
paid to assist them.
Indexing books, plans and
photograph collections for progressive inclusion in a common master-index
intended to have official numbers (and where necessary other numerical
identifiers) for each ship so that multiple references to a ship can be
reliably and immediately connected. I am well advanced with indexing Watt’s
Index (NZ registrations to 1950), Ingram and Wheatley (NZ shipwrecks) and
references to NZ scows in multiple sources, and have commenced indexing Ronald
Parsons’ publications (which deal primarily with Australian ships but many of
which were also owned or wrecked in NZ).
A monograph on immigration
under sail to Queensland in the 1870's and the career of Capt James Ratcliffe
Smith based on a 3,500 word letter inherited by my family (for what it’s worth,
Capt J. R. Smith was my great-grandfather’s brother’s, wife’s, sister’s second
husband, the nearest I have to a maritime forebear). This also includes genealogical
information about the Matthews, Jaap, and Fowles families in 19th
century
Appraisal of NZ sailing scow
research and study resources to identify what more research could usefully
still be done from the dozen or so surviving remains (quite a lot actually and
not much time to do it in). Seeking
information on the links to Canadian, American and Australian scow design.
Documenting the scow remains
on
NZ shipping arrivals and
departures, individually, port by port. I’ve partially compiled
NZ tonnage calculation records
as a source for studying hull design. These are a neglected but potentially
major source for studying trends in design. The number of ships for which such
records are available is much greater than the number for which plans or
half-models are available. A possible major component for a monograph on the
Auckland cutters that preceded the development of scows and which for quite
some time were equally important, for which no other comparable source exists.
Maritime data bases: I hope to use the opportunity of
the maritime conference tentatively planned for Wellington in 2006 to promote
collaboration, joint protocols, data sharing etc among New Zealanders
developing maritime databases and also to develop overseas links, particularly
with any interested Australian researchers working with records likely to
involve some of the same ships. Many ships built in
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