The intent of this article is to share with you the specific approach that I took to research my Pyves ancestors, who ultimately became master mariners. I conducted this research to provide key information for my new book Beyond the Sea - The stories of a mariner family from the Napoleonic Wars to WWII.
Starting around 1845, any sailor who went to sea in England, regardless of their position, was required to sign a crew agreement. This crew agreement identified the intended destination of the voyage, the expected duration of the voyage, as well as where the voyage would end. The crew agreement also provided information on each crew members position on the ship, their age, where they were born, their home address or the port that they were engaged at, how much they were to be paid and when and where they were discharged from the ship’s service.
One of the most important pieces of information noted in the crew agreement is the previous ship on which the crew member had served. Also specified were the provisions that were to be supplied for each crew member by the shipowner. It was also not uncommon for the crew to be required to provide their own supplies, including both food items and cooking utensils.
Most crew agreements, where the ship was foreign-going, will provide data on the date a ship arrived in each port and when it departed. All ships upon arrival at a foreign port had to deposit the ship’s crew agreement with the local British Vice-Consul. If a crew member deserted the ship while in port, the Vice-Consul engaged the services of the local police authorities to track down the deserter and return the offender to the ship.
If like me, you are fortunate enough to have had a relative who rose to be a second or first mate or master mariner, then a good place to start is to search for their records at the Royal National Maritime Museum in Greenwich at https://www.rmg.co.uk. These files may also be available through a paid subscription to Ancestry. Once an individual applies to be examined for a mate or master position, their application will list all their previous experience by ship and date, up to the time of examination. This is a great way to determine which ships an individual served on and when. It should be noted that each ship has a unique identification number, like a serial number or a car licence plate.
As all crew agreements are filed by ship number, you can use the Crew List Index Project (CLIP) found at https://www.crewlist.org.uk to submit the name of a ship to get its ship number. Inputting the ship’s number into the CLIP database will identify for you which crew agreements are still available by year and where they can be found. Roughly 10% of surviving crew agreements are available through the National Archives UK at https://nationalarchives.gov.uk. Another 10% of crew agreements are held by the Royal National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. The balance of existing crew agreements are held by the Maritime History Archive, Memorial University in Newfoundland found at https://mun.ca
If your ancestor sailed out of a specific English port, then you might also want to check local archives. In my case, as one of my sea captains was based in Cardiff, I also contacted the Glamorgan Archives.
Once you have the archival reference number from CLIP for a specific ship and year, you can then submit a request to the relevant archive for a copy of all crew agreements for a specific year. I recommend moving from the present to the past, as one key piece of information in the crew agreement is the name of the ship your ancestor served on for the previous year. This information allows you to keep moving backward in time regarding their work experience. Getting copies of crew agreements can be expensive if you are researching the entire career of your seafaring ancestors, which can span over 50 years. Where possible, I recommend a subscription to newspapers.com at https://newspapers.com. Once you know the name of the ship your ancestor sailed on, you can recreate their voyage and most ports of call by date. Sometimes, even the cargo or other ship incidents such as collisions and shipwrecks that may have occurred can also be found by looking at newspaper shipping notices. This is a very cost-effective way to reconstruct a sailor’s voyages. The only time when using newspapers will not work is during times of war. You need to locate a military file for your ancestor.
If you know the name of the ship your ancestor served on, you can get the English ship's movements through the National Archives UK ship movement cards for WWII. Please note that it was not uncommon for my surname, Pyves to be misspelled in over a dozen different ways, so you should look at variants on your surname in the newspaper articles.
Lloyd’s Register is a list of all sailing and steam ships registered in England by year from 1764 to 2000 is available at https://heritage.lrfoundation.org.uk/lloyds-register-of-ships-online. There you can find details about each ship on which your ancestor served. The ship listings for each year are alphabetical. For many years, and especially in the 1800s, the master for each ship is listed. If you are lucky like me to have an uncommon surname, this may be another way to determine which ships your ancestor was in command of. This is also true for the newspaper shipping notices that often identify the ship’s captain as part of the information on a specific voyage.
If your ancestor did not serve as a mate or captain, then all is not lost. Around 1845, each sailor who went to sea was assigned a ticket number. Their voyages were documented at least in the late 1840s and 1850s by name and ticket number. There are several files at the National Archives UK which may be of relevance to you, including:
Registers of seamen in BT 112 (1835-1857),
BT 116 (Up to 1913)
BT 119 (Name Index 1835-1857)
BT 120 (1835-1836)
BT 348 (1918-1941)
BT 350 (Since 1918)
BT 364 (1918-1941)
BT 372 (Since 1918)
You can request the archive to check if your ancestors are listed in a specific file before ordering a relevant copy of their record. There is a reasonable cost associated with this service.
For my project, where I researched over 130 ships involved in over 800 voyages, I used newspapers as my primary source. I only had to request crew agreements for 57 ships at a cost of about $5,000 Canadian. This worked out to about $75 per ship for each one-year period. Without the use of newspapers, my cost would have been closer to $20,000. If you are curious as to the distances travelled by your relatives from port to port or for their overall voyage, there is an excellent sea distance calculator at Port to Port Distance » Nauticalculator. It provides the distance sailed in nautical miles.
You may also wish to get pictures of ships on which your relative sailed. By keying in the ship’s name on the internet, you will most likely find some existing photos. One excellent source is old postcards that are for sale at a reasonable cost.
This brief article is not meant to be a comprehensive coverage of how to research your seafaring ancestors, but to share with you my specific approach for my new book Beyond the Sea - The stories of a mariners family from the Napoleonic Wars to WWII. Happy hunting, and may you have a strong wind in your sails!