Description: |
The Merchant Shipping Act, 1835 (5 & 6 Wm. IV, c.19) provided for the appointment of a Registrar to form and maintain a register of seamen and for the masters of British ships of over eighty tons burden to enter into agreements with every crew member before sailing. Copies of these agreements in the case of foreign going ships at the end of a voyage and, in the case of fishing or Home Trade vessels at six monthly intervals, were to be logged with the Collector or Comptroller of Customs and Excise who would, from time to time, transmit them to the Registrar.
An amending and consolidating Act of 1845 (7 & 8 Vic. c.112) re-enacted most of the provisions of the earlier Act and in addition required seamen to produce Register Tickets, obtainable from the General Register Office of Merchant Seamen before they could be signed on for a voyage. Copies of these are attached to some of the Agreements and Crew Lists.
The Mercantile Marine Act of 1850 required masters to keep Official Log Books in which were to be recorded illnesses, deaths, misdemeanours of crew members and punishments awarded, and statements as to conduct and discharge. Official Logs are found with the Agreements from about 1852 and as a general rule those which have survived contain reference to births and deaths. The same Act directed that on completion of a voyage, a mutual Release was to be signed by master and seaman: and a few of these Releases are to be found among the Agreements and Crew Lists.
Existing practice is governed by the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, which provided that there should be a General Register Office of Seamen and for the appointment of the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen (i.e. the old office under a new name but with extended responsibilities) under the control of the Board of Trade - the successor to which in these matters was firstly the Ministry of Transport, and is now the Department of Trade and Industry. The Act further provided for the appointments of Superintendents of Mercantile Marine to undertake the duties in this regard previously laid upon the local officers of Customs and Excise.
The original Agreement is carried on the voyage, and except in certain short Home Trade voyages, a copy is lodged with the Superintendent of Mercantile Marine at the port of departure for subsequent transmission to the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen. On the completion of the voyage of a foreign going ship, and generally at six monthly intervals for fishing or Home Trade vessels, the original Agreement and the Official Log are lodged with the Superintendent at the port where the voyage terminates for transmission to the Registrar General. The copies are destroyed when it is clear that their use as a check is exhausted.
There are various types of Agreements and there is a corresponding variation in the information shown. In the main, however, the name of the ship, port of registration, ports of departure and destination, and details of the owner or manager, and master, are given together with, in respect of each member of the crew, the name, age, place of birth, home address, next of kin, previous ship, date and place of joining ship, capacity, date and place of leaving ship, cause of leaving ship, rate of pay, advances and allotments.
The National Archives (TNA) has preserved entire all Crew Lists and Agreements relating to voyages completed prior to 1861 and for the years from then until 1913 two 10 per cent samples have been taken: the first a statistical sample by TNA on the basis of random numbers, and the second by the National Maritime Museum of all documents excluded from TNA's random sample for 1861-2 and thereafter for years ending in "5" (e.g. 1865, 1875 etc). The residue was offered to interested Archive repositories and shipping companies and any not claimed presented to the Memorial University, Newfoundland.
Of the Crew Lists and Agreements held by NRS, BT3/1-33 relate to selected vessels, including whalers, registered or operating from Scottish ports, and BT3/34-193 to Scottish fishing vessels of over 25 tons. BT3/194-224 are stray Scottish items found among crew lists received by other archive offices. |