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LONDON DOCKLAND TALK

“C17th London as seen in the archives of the High Court of Admiralty”

TEXT AND SLIDES

Text Illustration

Introduction Good evening. My name is Colin Greenstreet, and I am a co-director of a volunteer project named Marine Lives. With me is my fellow volunteer and co-director, Jill Wilcox. This evening we will be presenting the English High Court of Admiralty as a rich source of the social, commercial and maritime history of seventeenth century London. At the conclusion of our talk we will outline the activities of the MarineLives project.

The High Court of Admiralty What was the High Court of Admiralty? The Court was a London based Court, located in Doctors Commons, near Saint Paul’s Cathedral. You can see the Court here on this map, taken from Strype’s 1720 guide to London. It borders onto Knightriders Street, to the south of the cathedral, not far from Puddle dock and Saint Paul’s wharf. Cases were prepared and heard on the premises of the Doctors Commons, and records were kept there in the Registry of the Court The Court dealt with maritime disputes throughout the world, including disputes in ports, providing the disputes took place in tidal waters. So we find cases involving collisions on the River Thames, and disputes in the Port of Lisbon over freight charges, as well as disputes on the open seas. The court had jurisdiction over both criminal and civil matters within maritime geographies. Criminal cases include piracy, theft and violence at sea. Civil cases include breach of contract for payment of freight or meeting the terms of a charter party between a ship’s owners and its freighters; they include disputes over mariners wages; and they extend to collisions between ships of all sorts, and salvage claims after the wrecking of

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a ship. An important sub-group of cases relate to disputes over ships taken as prize.

Court Personnel Who were the Court personnel? The Admiralty Court was run by a staff of proctors and clerks, who collectively supported three Admiralty Court judges. Here on this slide you can see a document wrapper addressed to Mr David Budd proctor for his Highness in the Admiralty Court at his lodgings in Doctors Commons The proctors conducted court business on behalf of the litigants in a dispute. Typically one proctor would act for the plaintiff and one for the defendant. These proctors worked with numerous law clerks or notary publiques who documented the cases in a variety of documents. The judges themselves typically had doctorates in civil law from the University of Oxford or of Cambridge. They presided over the cases, which were presented to them by the proctors, and reached decisions.

Basics of Court procedure Many disputes were brought to the Admiralty Court, but far fewer went through the full legal process. It was expensive to litigate, and there was considerable incentive to settle out of Court.

Documents and archives The records of the High Court of Admiralty are now in the National Archives at Kew. The depositions or witness statements are in good condition and easy to handle physically. You will find them in large bound leather volumes covering a year or two at a time. This slide shows the leather front cover of a deposition book with the class mark HCA 13/68. In large print at the top you can see that it covers the period September 1653 to April 1654.

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The next slide shows another book of depositions (HCA 13/73) open at folio 14 verso and folio 15 recto. You can see that the pages are densely written. On the right hand side there is the start of a witness statement by a William Reading of Rederiff Wall.

Reading legal hand Who would like to take a shot at reading some seventeenth century legal hand? This image is from a deposition of Mark Harrison of Wapping You can see the date in the top right hand corner To the left of the date is a description of the case for which the deposition is given Underneath the date you can see the name “Mark Harrison”. He is of Wapping in the County of Middlsex. Aged forty seven. And below that is the start of Mark Harrison’s response to the first article of the allegation on which he is being examined. You can just see, in the second line of his answer to the first article, that he is discussing a ship called the Golden Starr, otherwise known as the Morning Starr

Interrogatories Not all the records are in such good condition as those contained in the deposition books, nor are they so easy to handle and read. This slide shows a collection of questions to be put to witnesses, known as Interrogatories. The loose pages are held together by a single tie in the top left of each page. Water damage has affected the pages, and the right margin of the pages has been eroded.

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You can see from the state of the loose leather binding and clasp in which the Interrogatories are bound that there has been considerable wear and tear.

Instance Papers Finally, some papers, such as Instance papers, are stored loose in boxes. Many of them are quite fragile.

A Humble Petition in the Instance Papers Though fragile. The instance papers can also be quite fascinating. This slide is the humble petition of Priscilla Lockier and Sara Spurgeon, wives of two mariners on board the ship the Virginia Merchant, and is dated September 28th 1650. On the face of it it is an appeal for the immediate payment of overdue wages for their husbands, who had not yet returned from Virginia. But the story contained in the legal prose is remarkable. It describes the abandonment of twenty-three men and women from the Virginia Merchant on an island off the Virginia coast, after a disasterous voyage. They were left without food or water. According to the solicitor who drew up the document they were saved by the intervention of God, who caused: “the sudden and unexpected fall of a great tree that night which killed two men and a woman of their company: which the rest of the company left alive were forced to eate and live upon untill such time as they were by Gods providence releived by the very heathen and by them in canoes transported over the river to the other side and soe travelled to Virginia by land.”

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Was this strange story the invention of two desperate women who were faced with destutution? It appears not, since the story is corroborated in the published account of a passenger on the Virginia Merchant, a Colonel Henry Norwood. This slide shows the title page from Norwood’s account, which was first published in 1649 [CHECK]. Norwood repeats the claim of cannibalism, but suggests that it was limited to the flesh of one “weak woman”, who had the “envied happiness to die about this time”.

London as seen in Admiralty Court documents Let’s turn now to the topic of London as seen through the records of the High Court of Admiralty.

Occupational geography I am going to start with the occupational geography of the city and its surrounding parishes stretching southwards and eastwards along the River Thames, as revealed by the occupations and places of residence of the many witnesses in Court in the 1650s. Merchants were concentrated within the walled City of London, although some could already be found beyond the walls, in fashionable areas such as Hackney and Hammersmith. Mariners were more scattered, with some, particularly officers, living within the City of London, in parishes bordering the river, such as Saint Dunstans in the East. But the bulk of mariners were to be found further east in the parish of Stepney, in hamlets which bordered the river, such as Wapping, Shadwell and Limehouse, and on the Surrey and Kent river bank in Horsey Downe, Rederiff, Bermondsey and Greenwich. Occupations such as that of wine cooper, anchor smith, and ship carpenter showed distinctive patterns. The wine coopers, who dealt with the import of French, Spanish and Canary Island wines, were heavily concentrated on the northern shore of the Thames in the shoreline parishes by Thames Street. Anchor smiths were largely in Southwark, as were other metal oriented trades. Ships carpenters were more widely spread, and appear in the parishes of Stepney, Bermondsey and Greenwich, where the ship building and maintenance yards were also located.

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For any one in the audience who has an interest in pursuing these geographical and occupational patterns further, we have a database of 3,000 Admiralty Court deponents from the 1650s, coded by occupation, location, name and age, which you are welcome to explore and to use to map the data.

Physical geography What about the physical geography and topology of the City and its surrounds? Several types of court case provide physical evidence. These tend to be cases concerning collisions, both mid-river and at moorings; concerning the poor condition of goods laded on ships which have docked in the Thames; and concerning the failure of ship’s captains to pay for supplies laded on their ships by local suppliers, such as anchorsmiths, brewers, chandlers and victuallers. Because the jurisdiction of the Court was restricted to tidal areas, physical information does not extend much above the old Tower Bridge. The Thames shoreline which emerges from the data is one full of wharves, docks, chains, and stairs, on both the north and south banks of the river, stretching from above Tower Bridge down as far as Greenwich. It is a crowded shoreline, with ships moored many abreast at the busier docks, and ships competing to move upstream on favourable tides, as ships sought to move downstream to Gravesend, and then beyond, to Lee and out into the Thames estuary. The larger ships, with burthens of 400 and above tons, stayed below London Bridge, and were to be found moored by Blackwall and Greenwich. Lighters were used to carry their goods from these moorings to docks further up the river.

Access to Saint Catherines stairs and beach Two cases give a particularly good flavour of the physical geography and appearance of the docks and wharves. The first case concerns a dispute over access to the staires, beach and wharves at Saint Catherines near the Tower.

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The watermen of Saint Catherines stairs and other inhabitants “there bordering upon the River of Thames” petitioned the Admiralty Court for remedy against damage to the shoreline and to their employment as watermen. In their petition they described the former “fair and sandey ground” between Saint Catherines’s stairs and Saint Catherines’ dock, which had been “very commodious for their imployment”, on which they had pulled up their hoys and other vessels. But the actions of a cordwainer named Jenkin Ellis, they alleged, had led to thirty or more large vessells mooring many abreast, damaging the shore, which was now “suncke and filled with mudd soyle and slime in divers places thereof about knee deep.” The petition was followed by a Court case in which witness statements were taken. One of these witnesses was Thomas James, a twenty seven year old waterman of Saint Katherines near the Tower. In his statement James described vessells belonging to Dunkirkers, Ostenders and others, lying seaven or eight a breast near the wharf of Jenkin Ellis. These vessells stopped the watermen from passing to and fro “as their occasions required to Saint Katherines stayers”, much to the prejudice of the watermen. James claimed furthermore that: “some of the neighbours liveing neere the sayd Ellis his wharfe have had their galleries or balconyes broken downe and some the pyles which supporte their wharfes puld downe and broken by the sayd vessells and bin alsoe hindered of their liberty of takeing in and shipping off of any goods as their occasions often required”. Piling on the complaints, James alleged that the foreign vessells moored at Ellis wharf: “keepe fireing aboard to dresse their provisions, and also candle light in the night tyme soe that if any casualty of fire should have happened aboard the sayd vessells many of them the neighbours houses were thereabout as well as their vessells would have bin in great danger to bee burnt.” James contrasted the recent muddy nightmare of the shoreline with an idyllic vision of a “fayre sandy ground” between the stairs and the dock, where “people at Lowe water might and did usually walke on foote.”

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Despite the one hundred and fifty foot distance between Saint Catherines stairs and Saint Catherines dock, Jenkins, he alleged, owned only twelve feet. Yet, Jenkins was allowing all and sundry to have passage from their vessels to the street and to return through it, for, of course, a fee. (HCA 13/72 ff.199v-200r)

Mrs Ewens ballast wharf at Greenwich The second case concerns a dispute over alleged damage to a ballast wharf near Greenwich. The wharf belonged to a widow, Mrs Ewens, who was in dispute with Richard Pryor, a lighterman. Thomas Jones, a lighterman of Wapping Wall, aged fifty, gives us a detailed physical description of the wharf and the river around it. He himself was a “lowe water man”, who had his own lighter, and who was experienced in extracting gravel as ballast from the River Thames. He describes the wharf itself as “old and decayed”. Mrs Ewens’ deceased husband had caused great heaps of ballast to be cast upon the wharf, where they lay drying in readiness for ships to take the ballast on board. According to Jones the wharf was much endammaged as a result of the ballast piled up upon the wharf. The Greenwich ferryman, William Ballow, was also called as a witness. He described Richard Prior as a “lowe water man”, who owned three or four lighters. In October 1656, Ballow had seen: “severall lighters at worke neare the bancke and wharfe of the said Mrs Ewen in taking up ballast or gravell, in which working they made severall greate pitts and holes, betwixt which pitts and holes (being some foure foote and a halfe deep other five foote, some more and some lesse) there have risen severall hillocks or hills, to the endangering of shipps and vessells in their passage that way, and the said digging and taking up ballast neere the said wharfe and bancke being to the greate endangering of the same” (HCA 13/72 f.34r)

Thames shoreline I want to turn now to the Thames shoreline, and to explore with you some of the trades supplying London’s shipping.

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Anchorsmith’s workshop in Rotherhithe Let’s start in Rotherhithe, known in the seventeenth century as Redderith. The master anchorsmith, William Gough, had his anchorsmith’s workshop in Redderith, adjacent to a shipyard known as the “Pitchehoule”. The shipyard belonged to a Mr Christmas, as, reputedly, did Gough’s workshop. Walter Gough himself lived in Shadwell, on the other side of the River Thames, near Wapping. Gough was involved in a legal dispute with a Mr Bigg, the builder of a ship named the Redd Lyon, which had been built in 1656 in the adjacent shipyard, using ironwork from Gough’s workshop. Mr Bigg claimed that he had been cheated on the weight of ironwork delivered to him from Gough’s workshop One of Gough’s workers, a journeyman anchorsmith named James Cower, has left us with a detailed description of the workshop and its activities. James Cower was forty seven years of age when he gave his statement in the Admiralty Court. He described himself as an Anchor Smith, who “wrought as a Journey man” in the workshop of Walter Gough. He lived near by to the workshop, giving his residence as the parish of Saint Mary Magdalen Bermondsey. Cower had helped make the ironwork delivered to the shipyard, and had been involved in its weighing and delivery. The ironwork consisted primarily of nails and bolts of different sorts, but extended to clench hammers, garnetts, gimletts, hinges, hooks, prickers, scapers and shovells. This was relatively fine or light work, compared with some other types of ironwork. Indeed, Cower contrasts the work of Gough’s workshop with that of a competing anchorsmith, a Mr Barnackle, whose goods were also delivered to the ship yard for the building of the Redd Lyon. Barnackle’s work consisted of great bolts, which were to be used around the keel and lower parts of the ship. These larger goods could be manufactured quicker, with greater weights dispatched every day to the ship yard than from Gough’s workshop. As a journeyman, it was Cower’s job to keep a tally of the weight and number of the goods as they were manufactured and delivered. He describes scoring up a tally of goods supplied for the Redd Lyon, and then calling

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in a scrivener once a week to put the details down in writing, he being unable to read or write. Illiterate Cower may have been, but he was no fool, and was expert in his job. He admitted in Court that there had been an error in weighing some of the goods, but claimed that the error had been dealt with as soon as it was discovered. One George, a labourer in the workshop had removed the eye of a tackle hooke, which was used in the weighing scales and had subsequently lost it. The same George had replaced the eye with a ring, but there was a pound’s difference on the scales as a result, and Cower tells us that the shipyard had been given an abatement in Gough’s charges.

Brewhouse in East Smithfield The second trade I want to explore is that of the brewer. Beer was an important item in the victualling of a ship before it sailed, and was specially brewed as strong or ship beer to cope with long voyages. Several breweries appear in the Admiralty Court records in the 1650s, typically in Southwark and along the north Thames shoreline. The one I want to explore with you is the Harts Horne Brewhouse in East Smithfield. The Harts Horne Brewhouse was located in Lower East Smithfield on land adjoining the Hartshorn Wharf. Given its location by the Thames it was much involved in supplying ships with strong beer. The brewery appears in the Admiralty Court records in late 1656 in a dispute over a delivery of beer from the brewery to the ship the Salem earlier that year. The brewery belonged to Abraham Corsellis, a wealthy brewer, of Dutch origins. The ship the Salem belonged to a Colonel Atkins of Leith, near Edinburgh Let’s hear what the Brewer’s Clerk, Peter Descobeck, had to say about the affair. As Brewer’s Clerk, it was Descobeck’s job to take note of deliveries and to enter them in the debt book of the brewery. He was sixty-four years old at the time of his deposition on November 27th 1656, and was evidently still alive in 1665, since he was to receive forty shillings for his services according to Abraham Corsellis’ will, which Corsellis wrote and signed in 1665. Descobeck appears to have worked earlier for a Southwark brewery in Maudlins Lane, since the same Peter Descobeck was deposed eight months earlier. in

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March 1656, concerning deliveries of beerin the year 1652 from the brewery of a Mr William Crosse in Maudlins Lane, Southwark, to a ship named the Chase. According to Descobeck: “In or about the moneth of May or June” of 1656 “there was delivered at and from the Brewhouse of the said Abraham Corsellis (knowne by the name of the harts horne brew house scituat in East Smith field) sixtie tonnes, one hogshead and twenty nine gallons of beere and one last and a halfe of barrells to and for the use and setting out the shipp the Salem” which was “then lying in the River of Thames, and outwards bound” Another deponent in the case, a fifty five year old cooper named John Hall from Eastsmithfield, tells us that it was his job to trim and fit the casks on board the ship the Salem, so that they were fit to hold the beer from the brewery. According to Hall the casks were in perfect condition when he left them aboard the ship the Salem, but that Colonel Atkins, the owner of the ship protested that they were leaky and demanded that a cooper sail with the ship to monitor their condition. The legal dispute was a complex one in terms of the facts of the case. Colonel Atkins the ship owner claimed that the casks leaked beer, and refused to pay for both the casks and the beer. In the witness statements taken in the Admiralty Court, the proctor acting for Abraham Corsellis the brewer, and for Andrew Debenham, the supplier of the casks, had to establish that the casks were in good condition and that the beer was delivered in the quantities contracted for. It is not possible to determine the truth of the matter from the surviving records, but we do know that the brewing and shipping of strong or ship beer was often the subject of fraud. Indeed, the Hartshorne Brewery itself appears in the Journal of the House of Commons in February 1710 accused of abuses and frauds committed in the supplying of ships with beer. According to the Journal, there was a fine trade in buying weak beer from the Hartshorne Brewery at twenty two shillings per ton and selling it on as strong beer to ships at forty eight shillings a ton. The brewer’s clerks and the ships pursers seemed to have been in on the fraud, with the concealment of the fraud assisted bt the failure to make up the accounts of the brewhouse for at least six years prior to 1710.

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Shipping on the Thames If we could be, in a phrase beloved of the Admiralty Court, an “eye and ear witnesse” of the River Thames in the 1650s, what would ships would we see? The inward shipping would have come from far and wide – from the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. There would be ships from Norway and Sweden carrying tar and deals for use in ship building; ships from Hamburg and Lubeck carrying grain; ships from Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Middleburg in the United Provinces, and from Antwerp in Brabant; all kinds of coastal vessells from French ports such as Rochel and Saint Malo, carrying salt and agricultural produce. Then from further afield there would be ships returning from the Canary Islands and from Mallega in Spain, with wines and oils. And from even further afield, tobacco and sugar ships from Virginia and Barbados; and pepper carrying vessells from Bantam in the far East Indies. The ships would have varied greatly in size. From small coastal vesells with a burthen of forty, sixty and a 100 tons, to the standard merchant ship with a burthen of 200 or 300 tons. Right up to the largest vessells of 400, 500 or even 600 tons. A trained eye would have seen significant physiscal differences between the build or mould of the hulls of these ships, which varied according to the nation and port of their building. Various deponents in Admiralty cases involving the seizure of foreign ships distinguish betwwen French, Flemish, Dutchand other ships according to the details of their “mould or build” For example, in a case involving the recovery of a previously seized ship in the Port of Newcastle it was identified as Scottish built . Specifically it was recognisable by their high sterns and their “Scotch manner of building” (HCA 13/70 f.400r). In another example. the ship the Sampson was built at Lubeck in 1646 by Jurian Steeckman, and lay decaying in the River Thames when it became the subject of an Admiralty Court case. (HCA 13/70 f.135r) Various expert witnesses were brought to the court to testify to the Lubeck build of the ship, emphasising the unusual width and solidity of Hansa town built shipping.

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Customary behaviour on the River Thames On a river as crowded as the River Thames, ship masters and crews needed their wits about them to avoid collisions, both mid river and when mooring. Common sense and good seamanship played an important role, but so did customary behaviour, as governed by the customs of the River Thames Deponents make frequent authoritative reference in the Admiralty Court to the customs of the River Thames, and it appears that the Admiralty Court judges were prepared to enforce custom and to punish its breach. The case of Huntington v. the Waterhound illustrates the role of custom as applied to the mooring of vessells abreast each other. The case involved the mooring of four vessells at Tower Wharf in September 1655. Three vesells lay at the wharf, with the forty ton empty ship the William outermost. A fourth vessell, the sixty ton corn carrying ship the Waterhound, made fast to the William on the night of September 18th 1655, and hawled itself close into the William. The tide went out and the William was left suspended out of the water between the Waterhound and the vessell to the inward of the William, causing fist sized cracks to appear in its planking. Despite the damage, the William set off downstream on the morning of the 19th, but was forced to put in at the ballast key at Greenwich for inspection, before being taken to a Greenwich shipyard for repairs. Thomas Reedman gave evidence on behalf of George Huntington and Company, the owners of the ship the William. Redeman had been master and ship’s pilot for over twenty years. On the night of the incident he had been pilot of the innermost vessell at Tower Wharf Reedman stated that during all this time: “It is a custome upon the River of Thames both at Tower wharfe and other wharfes thereabouts that there ought but three shipps at most to lye a breast one of an other and for the most part but two shipps suffered to lye abrest one of an other unlesse for one tyde or the like and saith if more then three lye abrest they are punishable by the water bayly or other authority for soe doeing if they be complayned of…and hee hath knowne divers masters

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of shipps punished by fine or other costs for so doeing by the authority of the Admiralty court” William Smith, a mariner on the William told the Court that he had once himself transgressed “making a fowerth shipp abrest at Porter Key London” and “was for such his offence arrested by James Gyles an officer of the Admiralty” Custom governed many other aspects of navigation and behaviour on the Thames. For example. the requirement, by the “Lawes and Customes of the River of Thames” by which “Masters of ships ought not to lett their anchors lye above one tide without buoys” (HCA 13/71 f.114r) For example, the custom that and lowe watermen who extract gravel or sand as ballast from shelves or banks on the River Thames, were to do so no closer than forty feet from the river bank or walls. In this case there appears also to have been statute law governing the removeal of ballast, which was reinforced by custom (HCA 13/72 f.39r; HCA 13/72 f.41r) The depressing frequency of Admiralty Court cases involving the collision of vessells in the River Thames suggests that common sense and good seamanship were frequently lacking, and that custom could be ignored

Thames Shipyards There is a fine description of a Wapping shipyard in the case of Taylor v. the Elizabeth, brought to the Admiralty Court in December 1655. The case concerned the failure of the owners of the ship the Elizabeth to pay for repairs carried out in the shipyard of John Taylor the elder. Our informant is Ashley Bracliff, a fifty year old shipwright from Chatham in Kent, who was foreman of Taylor’s yard in Wapping and the chief workeman employed in repairing the Elizabeth. Bracliff describes the ship and the repairs as follows: “the shipp stood neede of the repayers following and to the end they might be the better done hee saith shee was haled into the drye dock at Wapping and the sayd Taylor caused this deponent and others his workemen to ripp of all her old sheathing (it being all decayed and rotten) and dubb downe her sides cleane and spike all the hoales in

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her under water and cauke her and grave her with black stuffe a both sides from her water draught to her keele and bring on five or sixe navell hoods on each side under her gerdling two whereof were twelve foote longe a peece and the other tenn foote longe a peece which were all well fastned to her stemme and layd sufficiently with tarr and hare and made square and alsoe new sheathed the sayd shipp from her keele to her gerdling both fore and aft with sound and good firr bords and nayled it very thick with nayles and then Cawked it and graved the sayd shipp againe as high as the sayd sheathing with white stuff for soe doeing all which this deponent well knoweth the sayd John Taylor did provide all the tymber planck boards nayles haire okeam and other materialls used about the same and hyred this deponent and other workement to doe the same” The cost of these extremely thorough repairs? One hundred and twenty pounds sterling “for workemanshipp and materialls”. “Well worth it” we are told by the chief shipwright. The owners of the Elizabeth begged to differ.

Gravesend, the Thames Estuary and beyond What of the River Thames downstream of Blackwall and Greenwich? A number of Admiralty Court cases describe the passage of ships from Gravesend through the Thames estuary and out into the North Sea. Some of the ships turning north along the Essex and Suffolk coasts, others turning south to work their way through the sands and mud flats of the North Kent coast to reach the Downs in the English Channel.

Gravesend to the Downs The route from Gravesend to the Downs was one fraught with the danger of sands and mud flats, and required a ship to take on a pilot to navigate the ship through these perils. It was a custom of the sea that a pilot had sole command of a ship, and that the master and crew of the ship under his pilotage should obey his commands. But several Admiralty Court cases show tensions rising, as pilots made errors and tempers freyed.

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One such case was that of Wilkinson v. Wareinge. William Wilkinson was the master and part-owner of the ship the Exchange, and James Wareinge was the pilot he took on board at Gravesend, bound for Virginia. Edward Alsop was a thirty year old mariner and master’s mate on board the Exchange and testified that Wareing had the “sole care and charge of the said ship and her ladeinge from the River of Thames to the Downes” Wareinge safely guided the Exchange down to Gravesend, where she cleared customs, and then on safely to the Hope. Trouble started coming up to the buoys at Reculver, off the North Kent coast, between Herne Bay and Margate. The pilot was attempting to take his ship over some mud flats. There was a full gale of wind, but no storm, with the wind blowing from the North West. It was noon, and Edward Alsopp was up in the main shrowds. Spying the two buoys he called out to the pilot, James Wareinge, that the ship was very near the buoys. Alsop’s description of Wareinge’s reaction is graphic, if possibly self-serving: “the said Wareing fell into rage of curseinge and swearinge, and sayd wounds, there was any boyes there, since the world stood, and this deponent replyed that hee saw them as plaine as the boats att the shoare, but the said Wareinge continueing swearinge there was none; following still the contrary course even against all reason and willfully and obstinately, pursueinge the course hee was in before this deponent saw the boyes, brought the same shipp by his said wilfullnes that shee runn uppon the sandes, where shee broke her Rudder, and became unserviceable for the voyage libellate, and was verry much hurt and damnifyed” (HCA 13/71 f.49v) Rudderless, the ship became grounded in low water on a sand bank. As the weather became worse the company and passengers on the ship grew fearful of their lives and abandoned ship in the ship’s skiff, leaving the Master and a half dozen more aboard.Finally at midnight “by God’s Great Providence” the ship refloated and was then run shore by the master to preserve the remaining men on board.

MarineLives – the project

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Let us stop here, as we contemplate the floundering tobacco ship the Exchange off the North Kent coast. There is much more which could be said coastal and long distance navigation, about behaviour on board the merchant ships, and about the cargos they carryed. But there is sadly not enough time to pursue these topis Instead I would like to hand you over to Jill Wilcox, who will take ten or fifteen minutes to describe the MarineLives project, of which she and I are part, and which has transcribed the documents on which this talk has drawn.

Building the Archives from the bottom up I first heard of the High Court Admiralty documents when I saw an advert for volunteers to transcribe volume HCA 13/71 from September to December. It suggested volunteers give between 3 and 5 hours a week to the project.

Origins of MarineLives project The MarineLives project started in the summer of 2012 as as a collaborative effort to transcribe one book of Admiralty Court depositions from the years 1657 and 1658. It was the late night idea of Colin Greenstreet while he was attending a Hackathon at the National Archives in Kew. Not being able to code, but interested in Admiralty Court records from private research work he was doing on that period, he came up with the idea of the collaborative transcription of Admiralty Court records, using digital images of the Court records displayed on collaborative software. He reached out to history enthusiasts through an article in History Today, and through publicity on the website of the Institute of Historical Research and on genealogical bulletin boards.

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How we run projects – The Philosophy Transcription is not easy as you can see, transcribing online adds another layer of difficulty. We started with the wiki manual. At the start of a project we suggest volunteers read through the training material on the wiki manual. This includes background information on the documents, and additional information about the period. We want people to feel their contributions are valued and that they are gaining from the experience, many crowdsourcing projects such as transcribe Bentham have thousands of people sign up but the majority of the work is done by very few. Our method is to try and find the few, but also give all those who sign up a valuable experience. We believe that the best way to achieve a high quality transcription is to work in small groups and build up individual relationships. Good communication is important, all our volunteers have other commitments and we want them to feel their efforts are productive. Therefore we work in small groups of 4 or 5 volunteers or associates with one facilitator or leader. Groups include a variety of volunteers, from professional historians to gap year students. We also have some students from Bath Spa university doing a work experience project with us.

Our firsst collaborative programme Thirty people worked on that first collaborative project, which ran from September to mid-December 2012, and which continued with a smaller group of volunteers from February to April 2013. Two years later that first volume of depositions, with the classmark of HCA 13/71 is now full edited and freely available as a wiki publication on the web.

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Annotating and Adding Value We now have a complex web of wiki’s which are used to put the transcriptions on and create links in order to add value. In our most recent project volunteers were asked if they would like to do some research to link to ideas on the wiki. Some of the ideas suggested were writing about particular occupations, mini biographies of individuals or writing about laws and regulations that affected shipping at this time.

Google Maps Another way to add value is to create a google map, the example here shows French ports, but they could be used to show a visual representation of a ships journey, cargo that was picked up in different ports, using the layers in google maps you could plot the same ship with different journey’s to see if there was a pattern. This is an area which we hope to develop in the future.

MarineLives-Tools Another wiki based resource you may wish to take a look at is called MarinelIves-Tools This wiki provides a series of tools which assist in using and understanding the Admiralty Court records There are finding aids for the three thousand deponents we have in our volume based wikis There are provides glossaries covering geography, commodities, marine and legal terms There are lists of mariners and merchants appearing in Hearth tax records in the 1660s, many of whom also appear in Admiralty Court records in the 1650s There are probabte records for mariners and merchants appearing in Admiralty Court records in the 1650s And finally, there is a growing index of merchants who appear in the Little London Directory of 1677, who also appear in Admiralty Court records in the 1650s

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MarineLives in social media Our blog, the Shipping News, provides us with a way of publishing case studies, synthesis, and opinion pieces. Topics we have covered range from whaling in Spitzbergen, through an interactive map of the Spanish West Indies, to a profile of the English naval officer, Sir Christopher Myngs We also have an active Twitter account - @marinelivesorg – which we use to draw attention to interesting material in our latest transcriptions, as well as advertising new blog postings.

MarineLives resources – the wikis We have come a long way since our first collaborative project in the autumn of 2012. In addition to the transcription and editing of the HCA 13/71 volume of depositions, we are well on the way to transcribing three further volumes of depositions – HCA 13/70, HCA 13/72, and HCA 13/73.

Our recent summer programme We learned a lot from that first project – both about technical platforms for collaboration, about teaching palaeography, and about running teams online. Building on this experience we have recently completed our second collaborative summer programme, and are now recruiting people people to join us for an autumn programme. We would be delighted to talk to any of you here this evening should you be interested in learning more about our project, whether or not you are considering joining us as transcribers. There are many ways to get involved, of which transcription is only one.

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Questions We now have some time for questions

Our contact details

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FURTHER READING

Introduction to the Admiralty Court MarineLives Project Manual: Introduction to the High Court of Admiralty

Admiralty Court cases mentioned in this talk Corsellis and Debenham v. the ship the Sarah (1656) Deposition of William Cumley of Wapping in the parish of Stepney and County of Middlesex, Mariner, aged fifty yeares (HCA 13/71 ff.375v-376v) Deposition of John Hall of Eastsmithfeild in the parish of Saint Buttolph Algate Cooper aged fifty five yeares (HCA 13/71 ff.400r-400v) Deposition of Peter Descobeck of the parish of Saint Olaves in Southwarke Brewers Clarke, aged 64 yeeres (HCA 13/71 ff.417v-418r) Crosse v. the ship the Chase (1656) Deposition of Peter Descobeck of the parish of Saint Olaves Southwarke, Brewers Clarke, aged 63 yeares (HCA 13/71 f.41r) Ewens v. Prior (1657) Deposition of Thomas Jones of Wapping Wall, Lighter, aged 50 yeares (HCA 13/72 ff.33v-34r) Deposition of William Ballow of Greenwich, ferriman, aged 30 yeeres (HCA 13/72 f.34r-34v) Gough v. Bigg (1656) Deposition of Arthur Cower of Saint Mary Magdalen Bermondsey parish, Anchor smith, aged forty seaven yeares (HCA 13/71 ff.422r-423v) Huntingdon v. the Waterhound (1655) Deposition of Thomas Reedman of Kingston upon Hull in the county of Yorke, Mariner, aged forty nyne yeares (HCA 13/70 ff.514v-516r) Deposition of Anthonie Deane of Greenwich in the County of Kent Shipwright, aged twenty three yeares (HCA 13/70 ff.528r-528v) Taylor v. the Elizabeth (1655) Deposition of Ashley Bracliff of Chatham in the County of Kent Shipwright aged fifty yeares (HCA 13/70 ff.557r-558r) Vassall v.Ellis (1657) Deposition of Thomas James of the parish of Saint Katherine neere the Tower, Waterman, aged twenty seaven yeares (HCA 13/72 ff. 199r-200r)

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Wilkinson v. Wareinge (1656) Deposition of Edward Alsop of the parish of Saint Olaves in Southwarke, maryner, aged 30 yeares (HCA 13/71 ff.49r-50v)

MarineLives resources

HCA 13/70 wiki (images of entire deposition book + 200 transcribed pages) HCA 13/71 wiki (fully transcribed and edited deposition book) HCA 13/72 wiki (near complete, but unedited deposition book) HCA 13/73 wiki (partially transcribed deposition book + images) MarineLives Tools wikiwe Case mentioned in this talk: http://marinelives-tools.wikispot.org/Cannibal_tales MarineLives Project Manual wiki

MarineLives presence in social media The Shipping News blog Blog articles mentioned in this talk:

The Anchorsmith Fishing for whales (part one) The Admiralty Court and the Spanish West Indies Christopher Myngs, naval officer

MarineLives on Twitter