United Kingdom shipping: General

There aren’t any pages on my web site dealing solely with United Kingdom shipping. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t important or that I’m not interested – quite the contrary.

However, all the important major sources cover the whole British Empire rather than the United Kingdom alone. You’ll therefore find a lot about UK shipping on my site but under broader themes of registers and records, comparisons with other countries and its role in New Zealand trade. The documentation of the Mercantile Navy List and British official numbers are particularly relevant (see the appendices to Identifiers in particular).

I am interested in the development of databases of UK sailing ships in connection with documenting construction trends and the connections between rig and size through time. The American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand sources are fairly well documented on my site. Major relevant tabulations already exist in more or less suitably structured forms, notably for 4 and 5-masted square-riggers and 4, 5 and 6-masted schooners and barquentines. Three-masted square-riggers and schooners and the 2-masted square-riggers are the key to broadening out this starting point to cover deep-sea Sail more generally. The American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand records documented on this site as existing or under development are or will be capable of providing this information, leaving the United Kingdom and Europe as the weak point – hence my interest in the Mercantile Navy List as a resource for United Kingdom shipping and in Bureau Veritas as (by inference) the best single record of European shipping.

Some minor localities of the United Kingdom are covered by generally accessible on-line databases but there is nothing available at the time of writing covering UK shipping to WWI comprehensively – understandably so given the magnitude of the task. However, various people are working on parts of the whole so it is logical to consult to limit duplication and to promote common approaches to enable individual projects to exchange information and possibly to be combined eventually.

The logical primary reference point for comprehensive coverage is the Mercantile Navy List, backed up and augmented by fuller information from shipping registers and, where necessary, the primary registration records. This is not to say that the MNL is necessarily the best source of detailed information as it is provides comparatively sparse details but it is the most complete record to which mass production methods can be applied as (in principle) it covers every registered British ship from 1857 onward. For an analysis of the degree to which Lloyd’s Register covers UK ships in the period up to World War I click here.

My particular interests are in identifying ships of particular rig and size classes for further analysis and in consulting with anyone working on lists of official numbers up to WWI. These interests are discussed in turn below.

Identifying ships of particular characteristics

I know of no master listings of major categories of UK sailing ships along similar lines to many available for North American ships. Established sources identify all 4-masted square-rigged ships. Log Chips has extensive coverage of iron and steel square-rigged ships built in the UK and at least two individuals are working on this aspect. However, comprehensive identification of UK-built full rigged ships, 3-masted barques, barquentines, 3-masted schooners, brigs and brigantines evidently remains an objective yet to be accomplished. If you are working on any of these or on the MNL as a whole in a way that can be used to identify them then I’d like to hear from you.

Note that the MNL does not differentiate schooners by the number of masts but can be used to pinpoint those of a tonnage likely to indicate more than two masts that can then be checked against other records including photograph collections (doing it this way round is a strategy for ensuring complete coverage). A logical basis of collaboration would be for those such as myself who have ready access only to the published records to collaborate with others with convenient access to the primary records and a particular interest in that aspect of the quest. Hunting down photographic records would be doubly valuable as the distinction between topsail schooners and fore and aft schooners is important in the UK and European contexts. The possibility that Bureau Veritas may be more useful than the British publications for making this distinction warrants investigation.

An important technical consideration warrants elaboration as I have seen much evidence that it has not been recognised by many other researchers. This is the frequency with which vessels that are known to be barquentines appear in British records as schooners. This may have resulted from the deliberate implementation by some surveyors at some periods of the view that for a barquentine’s foremast to be “properly” square-rigged it must have a separate topgallant mast resulting in vessels with no fore-and-aft foresail being listed as schooners (alternatively, they may just have been indifferent or contemptuous of barquentines as some people did not regard them as a proper rig at all). There is no conceivable necessary reason for a small barquentine to have a separate fore topgallant mast other than tradition for tradition’s sake, as sailing performance would be unimpeded. Whatever the reason, barquentines seem to turn up in the records as schooners quite often. Comparing sources, where possible, is the only way to be certain.

A related point also relevant to the use of the MNL as a source, is the frequency of the use of the expression “3-masted brigantine” in Lloyd’s Register and elsewhere in parallel with barquentine. There would be a certain logic to it if the expression was used consistently to differentiate barquentines without a separate fore topgallant mast. It is pure speculation that that might possibly be the case but it warrants systematic investigation only possible with photographs or detailed descriptions (to facilitate this, transcribers should not convert 3-masted brigantine to barquentine). A disturbing extension arises from the fact that the MNL does not directly indicate the number of masts so if any “3-masted brigantines” appear in the MNL with the brigantine symbol for rig they are liable to be assumed to be ordinary (ie 2-masted) brigantines, a complication resolvable only by comparing records from multiple sources. I have not yet systematically investigated this problem but note it as a caution. I am aware of one project that “corrected” records where it judged information on rig and number of masts to be inconsistent which may have introduced errors if those who did the corrections were unaware of this consideration.

A master index of British official numbers

Interest in a master index of British official numbers that can be consulted in official number order arises from time to time. Recent discussion on the Mariners’ List proposes compiling such an index working forward from a source commencing in the early 1890’s. While many people are interested primarily in United Kingdom ships rather than British ships in general, UK ships form such large proportions of British shipping records that it would be extremely inefficient to approach them separately (it would actually involve more effort because of additional checking required to avoid omissions). Similarly, it would not be efficient to attempt to approach Sail and Steam independently.

Up to 1864 the Mercantile Navy List is compiled in official number order and therefore already fulfils this function. The 1864 edition includes numbers as high as 47,991 although with significant gaps of numbers not already issued. The 1857 edition which is readily available in inexpensive facsimile includes numbers as high as 41,457.

A number of individuals are known to be working on projects potentially able to put names and basic ship details to more or less complete blocks of numbers within the period from 1864 through to the 1890’s. Potentially therefore, the overall objective could be achieved over a period through collaboration. There are many ways that could be done involving both centralised and decentralised approaches each with their advantages and disadvantages. I think that there are many issues to be worked through carefully before anyone “declares a project” with this specific objective but there’s no harm in seeking expressions of interest and sharing views on approaches. Anyone interested in this is welcome to contact me and I’ll either add their thoughts to this page or pass them on to other individuals I know to be interested, as appropriate.

Central to my own thinking is that a master list of ships in official number order is only a particular form of output and merely one way among many of organising blocks of information given universally available, personally affordable computer resources. The objective is therefore inseparable from the development of any other databases which may not have that specific sole objective but which do include the information. Any database that includes all British ships issued an official number in a particular period or sub-jurisdiction should be capable of generating a list in numerical order with a whirr and a blink. However, it isn’t necessary to actually sort the information into numerical order in order to check which particular ship goes with which number provided you can search the database on the official number field. As long as general datasets are available that singly or collectively cover all ships allocated an official number then no independent list in numerical order is actually required to find what you want.

Compiling an official numbers’ list is therefore not distinct from developing databases in general. Pursuing it independently would be likely to needlessly duplicate effort. Discussion and debate of strategies is therefore desirable before committing to any way of achieving the objective.

For what it’s worth, I am particularly interested in the documentation of British official numbers from 30,000 up to the year 1875 because of their relevance to the “difficult” period of Australian and New Zealand registrations. Numbers below 30,000 were all issued to ships initially registered in the United Kingdom and are almost all named in the 1857 volume of the Mercantile Navy List which is almost certainly capable of being electronically scanned to disk with acceptable accuracy if anyone has any ambition to take that on as a project.

There isn’t any specific number range relating to the year 1875 as numbers issued in a particular year vary from territory to territory and port to port. The significance to me is that 1874 is when the annual Register of Australian and New Zealand Shipping commences. The early 1870’s is when the level of detail in the MNL becomes more useful which is another relevant consideration. The lowest official number issued in Australia or New Zealand is actually 31,486 but in the absence of any other division of labour I’m working to 30,000 as that is the dividing line between the batches of numbers issued entirely to UK ports and where the colonial batches (and later UK batches) start. There is some scope for co-operation with someone working on a master list of Canadian official numbers as they are the largest other regional grouping within this range other than the UK. Such a project could be a suitable core for establishing what exactly is and is not covered in the various Canadian databases and identifying any gaps.

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