Of small ships forgotten.

Abstract

Ordinary ships such as merchant schooners—and most importantly the people involved in their lives—are often absent from contemporary discussions and narratives of the 19th century. Those ships have the potential to improve and refine our understanding of the 19th century Maritime World. Their absence from contemporary discussions suggests there are gaps and blind spots in our understanding of the period. A challenge faced by archaeologists and historians is that only a small number of such ships have been explored in any detail. It is also clear that archaeology has a lot to add to and challenge about our understanding of the 19th century more generally. Therefore, this thesis introduces new material through the material culture documentation of several hundred ships, sourced from the archives of the Lloyd’s Register which at the time was the world’s largest shipping registration organisation. That material will be used to move beyond individual vessel-narratives to produce new knowledge and ideas of seafaring and shipbuilding from this period.
This thesis presents a theoretical and methodological framework to integrate large documentary datasets into an archaeological investigation. Part of this process includes a re-evaluation of the 19th century Maritime World through the lens of Britain’s coastal merchant shipping and the systems and forces that industry operates within. That revaluation provides the backdrop and context to a large-scale evaluation of British shipping numbers in the 19th century, setting those numbers against key events and changes that have previously been attributed to changes in the shipbuilding and seafaring industries. The investigation then becomes more granular. First, by taking the registration records of 200 individual merchant schooners and exploring their biographies to extract information about their construction and use. Then two of those ships will be examined in the finest detail possible by including archaeological investigation of their material remains and other relevant documentary sources to set out their story in detail.
Presenting those stories allows this thesis to create two anchor points in the dataset which have the investigation of their documentary record supported by real material evidence. Anchoring the documentary evidence in this way deploys an explanatory and narrative power to convey a story of the 19th century Maritime World and expand our understanding of the events that took place and the role Britain’s shipbuilding and seafaring technologies played in industrialisation and globalisation. This use of narrative also allows this thesis to better move between scales, link different sources, and ensure the investigation focuses more effectively on the people involved with the ships discussed here. Therefore, this thesis presents an understanding of 19th century ships that is supported by relevant data and a record of individual ships that is larger than any other study undertaken for this topic.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jack Pink: orcid.org/0000-0002-8525-7969

ORCID for Carl Pollard: orcid.org/0000-0002-8429-2009

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