Ships’ Official Logs
Through
the Mercantile Marine Act of 1850, official logs were to be kept
by masters. Instead of the traditional understanding of navigational records,
these logs were intended to note illness and treatment (if any), deaths of mariners onboard, as well as bad behaviour, desertions
and punishments of crew members, along with assessments of conduct and ability
of all on board: excluding the master. As with crew lists and agreements they
were to be surrendered to Shipping Masters or Customs Officers ashore (within
the United Kingdom, which then included Ireland in the definition in the Act)
on completion of agreed voyages for foreign-going vessels, or six monthly for
coasters. (Within a year smaller coasters of 80 tons burthen or less had been
exempted.) Even though crew lists and agreements were to be transmitted to the
Registrar General of Seamen’s Office, after a time regarded as reasonable for
any interested party to view all these documents, logs were not
sent on to London. Instead they were then to be returned to masters or owners
within forty-eight hours (if required by the same) and retained for two years.
In
1854, under the massively enlarging Merchant Shipping Act, further entries in
these official logs were required of masters: for births, marriages and all deaths onboard. It should be noted that this
legislation stated that official logs could either be combined with ships’
(navigational) logs, or separate. (There being very little navigational
information in examples I have seen I would opine that overwhelmingly these
were kept apart.) A comparatively small percentage of official logs have
survived and the reasons for this can be found in careful study of this and subsequent Acts, combined
with study of surviving documents and correspondence of the bureaucracies
involved.
The
popular understanding is that this 1854 Act required all official logs to be
retained by the office of the Registrar General of Seamen (or Registrar General
of Shipping & Seamen from 1872) in the City of London. While one section
(277) indeed seems to state that all documentation handed into Shipping
Masters, Customs Officers and under certain circumstances Consular Officials
abroad, should be sent to the Registrar General of Seamen in London, this section
was dealing with records other than ships’ logs. In fact, immediately before
this (sections 273 to 276) it states that lists of details including births,
deaths and marriages should be made out and surrendered at the end of voyages:
as part of the normal documentation still to be found within crew lists and
agreements. Interestingly, the sections actually dealing with logs themselves
(280 to 287) do not specifically state where, or even if, all logs were to be retained.
The
situation was far more complex though and allied aspects of this are dealt with
in the section on deaths of mariners at sea (along with
births, deaths and marriages of passengers). It is obvious that
some logs were indeed transmitted to the office of the R.G.S./R.G.S.S., since they still survive. However, I know this
was not due to a blanket requirement of the Merchant Shipping Act of
1854 at all. (There is something of an exception for the first few of years,
where it seems that in confusion over the apparent contradiction within the
1854 Act many logs were sent to London and
retained,
along with the other documents. Nevertheless, this practice soon ceased.) The
‘Board of Trade’, which incidentally was housed in London’s West End near
Whitehall, could request logs and this is one potential explanation. But,
even then, this does not make administrative sense. After all, the pertinent
detail was already in the crew lists and agreements. Instead, I believe that
there were two not dissimilar reasons as to why there are logs surviving. There
were the results of formal boards held at local level and transmitted to London
on completion (section 12 of the 1854 Act) and when masters felt the need to
have accounts of their actions retained. These alone would explain why some
logs are missing where there were deaths at sea and also, why some others have
been retained where there was wholesale breakdown in discipline, desertion en masse etc., etc.
Moreover,
the currently widely expressed explanation that all logs were sent to London,
but at some later but unknown stage, large numbers were destroyed by civil
servants beggars belief! Not only is it known
that by the 1870s the office of the R.G.S.S. was running very short of storage
space and that a vast amount of documentation was destroyed, it is also
known which types were got rid of at this time. These included 18th
and early 19th century parchment certificates of ships’ registry,
unwanted early 19th century customs registry books, seamen’s
register tickets and apprentices’ indentures. All these were records that were not required to be kept by law. Intriguingly, one
piece of correspondence of 1867 shows that there was a move to have a clause in
the upcoming Merchant Shipping Bill allowing for all documentation held by the office
(presumably of the R.G.S.) to be destroyed after 25 years. (See PRO: MT 9/34 -
File M3579/67.) However, this clause seems never to have seen the light of day,
as it was not within the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1867, 1871 or 1872 and there
were no pertinent sections mentioning ships’ logs in these Acts. Furthermore, a
quote from P.G. Parkhurst’s Ships of Peace, which deals with the workings of these
bureaucracies, lays this to rest. On page 205 it states:-
‘The
Lists of Crews dating from 1835 to 1845 are the only legal evidence of deaths
of seamen at sea within that period; from 1845 they also contain records of
births and marriages. They are the
only documents from which seamen’s services can be proved during those years,
for pensions, certificates or any other purpose...’ (My
italics.)
This
report went on to state ‘in pursuance of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, and
subsequent Acts, I am required by that Act to record and preserve them, to
allow the public to inspect them and to produce them in Courts of Justice’.
This then was the crux of the matter.
Furthermore,
section 242 of 1894’s Merchant Shipping Act is absolutely clear in regards to
ships’ logs - they were to be handed to ‘superintendents’ (of Mercantile Marine
Offices, as part of the local set-ups maintained by Local Marine Boards).
Nowhere does it state that these superintendents were then obliged to transmit
logs to the R.G.S.S.
Apart
from those covering 1902 until 1919 (that are retained in a separate class at
the P.R.O.) all other logs are now held with crew lists and agreements.
However, these are not always physically with these documents, having become
detached. (Additionally, on one occasion at the National Maritime Museum, I
found documents including logs of three different vessels with consecutive
official numbers sewn together.) Also, combined logs and crew lists were often
adopted for coastal vessels, which are filed as crew-lists and agreements.
Intriguingly some exist for U.K. coastal-vessels of less than 80 tons burthen,
although apparently not strictly necessary by law.
As
for ships’ logs for the period of 1902 to 1919, again these are far from complete. Some are
missing from this series because the logs have been retained with crew lists
and agreements. Others seem merely to be missing. The ‘official line’ is that
no one knows precisely where these logs were held prior to the process of
opening them up to public scrutiny. Recently I have made a discovery (in the mis-filing of one vessel’s records over a two year period)
that explains precisely when (if not why) these official logs are in a separate
class. They must have been split in 1969 when the vast collection of crew
lists and logs were divvied up.
One
aspect that my recent discovery does not explain relates to an apparent change
in working practice around 1902 whereby logs were then sent to the R.G.S.S.
when previously they had not. Up to now I have seen nothing either to prove, or
disprove this. But, if this did happen it must have
been the result of some internal Board of Trade order, as there is absolutely
no sign whatsoever of any Act of Parliament covering this period (from the 1894
Merchant Shipping Act onwards). There was, as has already been stated elsewhere
in this site, much activity to standardise paperwork and this included ships’
logs. One proposed form (found in PRO: MT 9/746 - M22698/02) gave a breakdown
of legislation that master mariners were affected by. In the section dealing
with logs, there were no instructions other than the requirement of handing
them to superintendents (of M.M.O.s): exactly as in the 1894 Merchant Shipping
Act.
In
relation to genealogical searches, complicating matters even further as of July
2001 the P.R.O. has added to its collection of ships’ logs a small number
between 1857 and 1901. This, however, does not materially alter the above,
except by making searches even more complex than they
already have been made by bureaucratic politics. Without any information on the
source of this particular tranche of logs (even though I have asked about
this), I would opine that it is not unlikely that these too have held in
storage by some Mercantile Marine Office and unearthed separately.
Before
leaving this, a few points need making in regards to entries in ships’ logs.
These overwhelmingly were from the viewpoint of the command. On relatively rare
occasions when differing types of evidence is available, such as in court
cases, others’ perspectives of events can be
inherently different. I have noted that there was often a highly righteous tone
taken by masters in their log entries, particularly when discipline had
largely, or completely broken down. Frequently entries state that crew-members
had refused to turn-to (that is work), but no explanation as to why was furnished. However, two reasons for men’s
unrest can easily be determined from long term study of the Merchant Service -
cruel and arrogant attitudes of masters and mates; and poor and/or insufficient
food (compounded by equally foul living conditions for those in the fo’c’sle.)
Also,
occasionally other types of log are uncovered. Some years back I found an
engine-room log and deck logs from tankers of the Eagle Oil Company within
Admiralty Transport Department files. And, recently I came across a deck log
from a First World War Q-ship within Admiralty files. However, these
discoveries are by mere chance and anyway, are not likely to hold information
interesting to genealogists.
Apart
from where already mentioned, much of the historical information came from
study of the original legislation, plus the excellent work on the Board of
Trade - P.G. Parkhurst’s: Ships of Peace - A record of some of the problems
which came before the Board of Trade in connection with the British Mercantile
Marine from the early years to the year 1885 (New Malden, Surrey: private
publication, 1962). I would be interested in hearing from anyone with further
accurate information on the workings of the Marine Department of the Board of
Trade and the location of a copy of the second unpublished but produced second
volume of Mr. Parkhurst’s study..
Following
are some examples of the types of information which can be recorded in ships’
logs:-
BALMORAL - Foreign-going (full-rigged) ship
1851-52
SPIRIT OF THE AGE - Foreign-going barque 1857
DENNIS HILL - Foreign-going barque 1857-62
INDIAN - Foreign-going barque 1858-59
VERITAS - Foreign going schooner 1859-60
Also, see Crew Lists and
Agreements
FY CHOW - Foreign going schooner 1864-65
ZEBRA - large coastal steamer 1869
Combined logs and crew-lists for Barnstaple coasters 1914 and 1919
KORANNA - Foreign going steamship 1914-1915 - terms of employment of Lascars and Asiatic Seamen
Go to Ships’ Crew Lists and Agreements
Go to Deaths of Mariners at Sea (along with births, deaths and Marriages of Passengers)
Go to
Life and Conditions at Sea - Social history since the 1840s
Go to the main Mercantile Page