If you’re not sure where to begin, use the Search box in the banner at the top of any page. Enter a person’s name, a vessel name, a year, or any other words of interest and click the ‘magnifying glass’ icon. This site Search function knows about all of the databases and all of the web pages on the Whaling History website. It will return any results it finds from each one in a separate tab.
Information about using the Search function will appear below your search results. View the Search documentation here → (when you get there, click on the “View search help” button.)
Data map
The data map below shows the entities represented in the databases and the main connections among them to help you visualize what is going on in your search results. Click on the data map to view or print a PDF version.
Every entity record in the WhalingHistory.org databases has a unique Whaling Resource Identifier (WRI). Just as libraries assign each book a call number and museums refer to an object in their collection by an accession number, you can cite a whaling master, vessel, voyage, crew list, etc. from WhalingHistory.org by its WRI. Even better, the long form of that WRI can be used as a URL, enabling anyone anywhere on the Internet to link directly to that record.
The short form of a WRI consists of two letters (which identify the database and record type) followed by a string of digits. For example, James F. Smith’s short WRI is “AM4504”
When the the main site search is not specific or flexible enough for your needs, use the data viewers. Each database has its own data viewer—a tabular display window to interact with the data—and all of the data viewers share a common set of features.
The data viewers are available from the Databases item on the main menu at the top of every page.
Scrolling
The view displays a scroll bar on the bottom to scroll left-and-right through the available columns. A scroll bar on the right edge scrolls through the records. In the top left, the viewer shows the records currently in the display window. If you have a tablet or other touch screen device, you can also swipe vertically or horizontally to scroll the data.
Showing columns
You can choose to hide or show any of the columns in the database. Click the red Show/Hide Columns button in the top left to display all of the column names. Click on a column name to toggle it on or off. Each database has a Columns Definitions page where you can learn more about the content its columns. (Click outside column name box to continue.)
Sorting
Click on any column heading to sort the database by that column. The triangle to the right of that column name will turn blue to indicate that the column is sorted. Click again on the column heading to reverse the sort order. (The blue triangle will invert.) To add more columns to your sort shift-click on their column headings.
Searching
At the top or bottom of each column is a search box. Some columns have a selection menu that will pop up, others have a free form text box. Text searches are not case sensitive.
Multiple search words are treated as if joined with AND, so choosing “Fall River, MA” with the Port menu and typing “indian” in the Ground search box will result in all voyage records that have Port=”Fall River, MA” AND Ground contains “indian”.
Some of the databases are very large—please be patient, your search results may not appear instantaneously. To clear all active searches, use the red “Clear all searches” button in the top right.
Selecting and displaying one voyage
In the Voyages database, click on a single row in the data viewer for a full display of all aspects of the voyage at the bottom of the page.
Selecting multiple records
To select more than one row, click on the first row, then add more with shift-click. Depending on your browser and operating system, you may also be able to add individual records using ctrl-click or ⌘-click.
Select all search results
Or, after searching the database you can select the found records by clicking the “Select all search results” button that will appear in the top right. To unselect all selected records, click the red “Clear selection” button.
Printing, copying, exporting
Printing, copying and export all work with a selection, which may include one or more records. For the examples below we’ve selected all the voyages of the bark Sappho. This selection happens to fit neatly in our data viewer window, but your selection might include many more records than you can view at one time.
The set of columns that you’ve chosen with the “Show/Hide” button will be the columns that appear in your print, copy or export.
Print
To produce a printable version of the selected records, click on the “Print selected” button in the top left. A new browser window will open with your data in a table. You can then print the page using your browser’s print command. Depending on your operating system, you may also be able to save the output as a PDF file, or email or text it to yourself and others.
Copy
To copy the selected records to your clipboard, click on the “Copy selected” button. A message will appear to tell you that the data has been copied. You can then paste the data into any other application. It is properly formatted so that you can paste directly into a spreadsheet. It will also format neatly in a word processor. If pasted into a plain text editor, the result will be tab-delimited text.
Export
To export your selection as a CSV file, click on the “Export selected” button. Your computer operating system will prompt you to save the data. The resulting file will be comma-delimited and all columns will be wrapped with quotation marks. The first row will contain the column names. A file in this format can be opened in a spreadsheet, or it may be imported into software for managing databases or performing statistical analysis.
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
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.
“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.
WhalingHistory.org is a repository for data about whaling. For a general overview of whaling and whaling history, here are some resources to start your exploration. Each of them takes a different approach: a narrative, a collection of artifacts and maps, a timeline, a collection of topics, a map, a work of literature.