Where do crew lists come from?
Crew lists appear in many different primary sources. American crew lists in WhalingHistory.org have usually come from one of these sources:
- Government records kept at U. S. Customs Houses. These can be ‘outbound’ (filed before leaving port) or ‘inbound’ (filed when returning at the end of the voyage.) These official crew lists were required of vessels leaving U. S. ports beginning in 1803. See the Crew Lists About page. These records are official U. S. government records preserved by the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Articles of Agreement. These constitute the formal contract between the vessel’s owners and each member of the crew. See “Articles of Agreement” in Stein, Douglas L., American Maritime Documents
- Whalemen’s Shipping List and Merchants’ Transcript. This weekly newspaper was published in New Bedford. It printed crew lists of departing vessels in the second half of the 19th century.
- Other newspaper reports.
- Logbooks and journals. Sometimes the keeper of the ship’s logbook or a personal journal would list some or all of the members of the crew.
- Books kept by owners, agents, and shanghaiers, such as the Aiken & Swift Manuscript book, or the San Francisco Shangaiers 1886-1890 database.
How are they different? What information do they contain?
- Outbound crew lists contain:
–The name and rig of the vessel, the name and signature of the master, the destination of the voyage, the date that the crew list was filed.
–And for each crew member: name, birthplace, place of residence, citizenship; sometimes age, height, skin, hair; and rarely other notes.
–They do not include crew members who joined the voyage after its initial departure from port. - Inbound crew lists contain a handwritten copy of the outbound crew list plus additional information:
–The date that the inbound list was filed with the customs house, the name and signature of the master (or other responsible person).
–And a notation accounting for each crew member who did not return with the vessel.
–They sometimes include information about crew members who joined the voyage after its initial departure from port. - Crew lists from Articles of Agreement contain:
–The name and rig of the vessel and the destination of the voyage.
–And for each crew member: signature, date of signing, rank or position, and lay. - Crew lists from the Whalemen’s Shipping List and Merchants’ Transcript usually contain names, places of residence, and ranks.
- Crew lists from logbooks, journals and other documents vary widely but typically include names and ranks for some or all crew members.
- Crew lists from books kept by owners, agents, and shanghaiiers vary widely, always including name, but they may also include rank, lay or pay rate, performance notes, and other information. They may list only officers, or only seaman, or combinations, depending on the purposes of the list keeper.
They often include crew members who joined the voyage after its initial departure from port.
Why is my ancestor’s name spelled wrong?
- Names change over time. Sometimes descendants change the spelling of family names. Sometimes your ancestor didn’t spell his name quite the way you might think. Sometimes he didn’t spell it consistently throughout his life. Sometimes the person who wrote his name down didn’t hear or spell it correctly, this was especially a problem with uncommon and non-English names. Sometimes clerks made mistakes. Sometimes your ancestor couldn’t spell his own name.
- All of the source documents were originally written by hand. Nineteenth-century pens were usually dip pens, often cut from feathers. Some clerks had clear handwriting, some didn’t. Inbound crew lists started with handwritten copies of the handwritten outbound crew list, then the additional information was written in, by hand, crammed into whatever open space was available on the page. The documents have been filed, folded, unfolded, and moved many times over the last hundred to two hundred and fifty years—they have developed creases and holes. Then many of them were were microfilmed. Then the original or the microfilm was scanned digitally. Then one or more people transcribed the information from the scans into digital files, doing the best they could to figure out the original writing. Then those files were loaded into databases, which have been converted several times as technology has changed. Unsurprisingly, there may be errors.
Why is my ancestor missing from the crew list database?
Crew lists were supposed to be filed, but sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes the records were later lost. Official crew lists were intended for the protection of American citizens, so they may not carry as much (or any) information about foreign-born crewmen. And, crew lists, like other primary sources, are snapshots in time—if a crew list was submitted before the beginning of a voyage, it will not contain information about crew members who joined the voyage later.
Why are there duplicate entries?
Sometimes the database contains two copies of the same crew list, usually because the original document was transcribed by different people working on different projects years apart. There are often differences in how they interpreted the original handwriting, which leads to very different spellings for some names. We keep both versions to improve the chance that you find the name you are looking for.
Why are there multiple crew lists for one voyage?
- Often the database contains both the outbound and the inbound crew list for a voyage. These look very similar in the database, but they really are from two different handwritten nineteenth-century documents. Certain entries on one document may be more readable or less damaged than they are on the other, leading to better transcriptions of the information. And, the inbound list has extra information about crew members who did not return.
- Or, there may be two or more crew lists from completely different sources. Again, we provide them all in order to capture as much information as is available, even though they may conflict.
What do the column labels mean?
See the Crew List Column Definitions.
How can I learn more about crew lists?
- About Crew Lists
- “Crew List” in Stein, Douglas L., American Maritime Documents
How can I help improve the data?
If you have relevant information from other sources (public sources, family documents, etc.) or you have found a transcription error, write to us using the Contact form.