How to search for masters and mates in BT 124

The search form for BT 124 is here Records of masters and mates in BT 124

Use the form to enter the master's surname or part of the surname, entering at least three letters. Do not use wild-cards, such as '?', '%'.

Choose whether to search for an 'Exact match' or search for the surname which 'Starts with this', 'Includes this' or 'Ends with this' (often a good idea if there are different spellings for the name). If you wish, you can add a forename and a year of birth (the search covers 5 years either side).

Then click Search

The results are displayed in a table, sorted by Surname, Forename and Year of birth as shown in Figure 1 below. You can move through the pages using the page-select bar above the results.

Against each entry, we show its source in BT 124 and provide links to TNA's site or our own image viewer so that you can see the entry.

The TNA image icon links to the TNA web site so that you see their original images. On TNA's catalogue page, choose the link 'Preview an image of this record' and use the page number and row information from our page to find the image quickly.

The Image icon links to the CLIP image viewer, which will show you the page, but at a lower resolution.

In these notes, we've used the example of Edward Lewis of Aberystwyth from BT 124/6, page 460. Figure 1 shows the results of a search for him.

Using the TNA images

Click the TNA image icon on the results table or the TNA link on the image viewer. The TNA catalogue page opens in a new window (Figure 2). You can download the whole piece from here at no charge. Alternatively, you can click on the 'Preview an image of this record' link (arrowed in green). This opens TNA's image viewer so that you can scan through the images (Figure 3).

To find the right page, use the information from our transcription (page 460 in this case) and enter that into the page selector at the bottom of the viewer. This is the original image so the quality is good and the viewer has the usual controls to zoom in or out.

As you can see from the image, the data we have transcribed is in the left hand column, and in the middle, there is a year-by-year record of the officer's career. We explain below how to interpret that and use it to find more information.

Using the CLIP image viewer

Click the Image icon to open the CLIP image viewer (Figure 4).

On the top right hand side of the viewer are controls to zoom in or out on the image, two tools to help interpret the image, as described below, and a link to TNA's site for better quality images.

  How to interpret the data

Figure 5 is the record for Edward Lewis from BT 124/6 page 460 showing part of his career as a master.

• Certificate number This is not unique - an officer may have had more than one certificate. This number appears on crew lists against the officer's name. It can also be used to obtain copies of the certificate from the National Maritime Museum (see below).
• Seaman's register ticket number Masters and mates will have previously served as seamen or apprentices, so will have had a seaman's register ticket. Edward Lewis may have lost his.
• Surname and Forename
• Birthplace, Year of birth and County of Birth. Note that the county is shown as the county town, so Edward Lewis was born in Aberystwyth (modern spelling) in what was then Cardiganshire (now Ceredigion).
• Whether master's or mate's certificate
• Port and date on which the certificate was granted. The date of granting the certificate is not shown in this case, but was probably in 1851.

For many seafarers there is more than one record: one showing voyages up to 1860, the other for later voyages.

The right hand columns show a record of the seafarer's voyages. We explain below how to decipher them.

As in this case, the records frequently show when an officer retired or died.

Royal Naval officers who had passed equivalent examinations were also eligible for merchant masters' tickets. Some of these are recorded in BT 124/23 for dates after 1900, including some which are thought to be for naval officers who had left the Royal Navy under a cloud but were still considered suitable for the merchant service. In a different category are records of some of the officers of Scott's Antarctic expeditions, including Scott himself. Though the Antarctic expeditions ran on naval discipline, the ships (Discovery and Terra Nova) were merchant vessels and so the officers presumably needed merchant master's tickets. See: Robert Falcon Scott

  Tracing ships and voyages

The ships and voyages entries all used a port number code for the port at which the ship was registered and the same code was used for the ports of departure and arrival. For details, please see: Port numbers

The way in which the ship was entered changed after 1855 when the system of official numbers was introduced. For details, see: Official numbers

Prior to that, ships were allocated a port rotation number. CLIP has recently discovered the lost key to these numbers and worked with an Australia-based researcher, Peter Hamersley to make an index of them. For details, see: Port rotation numbers

Tracing ships and voyages after 1856

The main columns shown in Figure 5 record Edward Lewis' career from 1861 to his death in 1866. This is how to decipher the records covering the period after 1856.

The most useful parts, and the easiest to untangle, are the names and official numbers of the ships of which he was the master (as shown by C for Captain against the ship's details).

Official numbers (ONs) were given to all British registered ships from 1855 and were used in BT 124 from 1857. They were unique, and stayed with the ship throughout her life. CLIP has a database of all these numbers, which can be used to check the number against the name, and vice-versa. The Official number tool on the right hand side of the image viewer gives a basic check. Here is a working copy of it - enter the official number, and click 'GO'.

The icon leads to other records which show that these ships were all registered at Aberystwyth and the Mary and the Credo were owned by Thomas Jones of Mount Pleasant, Aberystwyth.

The names and ONs of the ships will enable you to find out much more, particularly from the crew lists which detail the crew and voyages, as explained below.

Reading the voyage entries

The main columns of the page record voyages, but are sometimes tricky to untangle and may need to be checked against crew lists to be certain.

Figure 6 is a magnification of the image for Edward Lewis' voyages in 1866.

Voyage entries make use of codes for British ports. For example, the 2 in these records stands for the port of Aberystwyth. You can check these port numbers by using the Port number tool on the CLIP image viewer. Here is a working copy of it - enter the port number and click 'GO'.

 Port numbers

Port number:    Port:  

The voyages show the date (day and month, with sometimes the year), the port of departure and the destination. The first voyage of the Credo in 1866 (1.5.2 Quebec) shows the vessel leaving on the 1st of May from Aberystwyth (port number 2) for Quebec.

The return voyage (10.8 Quebec 2) arrived in Aberystwyth from Quebec on the 10th of August. Note that the order of the ports is different for the outward and return voyages.

The full record is:

• 1 May : sailed from Aberystwyth to Quebec
• 10 August: arrived Aberystwyth from Quebec
• 21 August: sailed from Aberystwyth to Quebec
• 26 December: arrived Aberystwyth from Quebec, Edward Lewis having died at St John, New Brunswick on 4 November 1866.

The voyages from Quebec were probably carrying timber, the outward voyages may well have carried emigrants.

More research would show Edward Lewis' place in larger pictures of the history of Aberystwyth, of Wales, of Britain and the then British colonies.

His own story, though, had come to an end in New Brunswick and finding the crew lists for that voyage would be likely to provide more detail of what happened. We explain how to find them below.

Voyages 1856 to 1860

Records of Edward Lewis' earlier career are shown in Figure 7 below. You will see that the entries for 1856 to 1860 use a similar format to the ones described above, using official numbers. Edward Lewis was the master of the Credo and then the George. The voyage records show the year as well as the day and month. We are not exactly sure what the codes A and C against the voyages stand for but it appears that A marks the start of a voyage and C the end. Crew list form A was the agreement signed before the voyage and List C was returned when the ship arrived back at a British port at the end of the voyage.

There is a gap in the records for 1855. It is not uncommon for the records for 1855 and 1856 to be missing from BT 124 - it may be to do with the changes to the systems at that time as official numbers for ships were introduced.

The crew lists for this period are at TNA in BT 98 and are filed by official number. We explain how to find them below.

Voyages before 1856

This is the entry for Edward Lewis from BT 124/7, page 57.

Prior to 1855, the vessel name was not shown and instead a three figure code was used - for example, the column for 1851 is headed 348.2.7.

This code is a reference to the crew list document from which the data was extracted and which is now at TNA in BT 98. The code is written on the matching crew list document, so confirming that it is the correct one, when you find it. It works like this:

• The first number, 348, is the port rotation number. CLIP has found the key to these numbers for all British ports and made an index of them in collaboration with an Australia-based researcher, Peter Hamersley. With the help of a volunteer at the National Library of Wales (NLW), we now have data for Aberystwyth. and can deduce which ship is referred to, as we explain below.
• The second part of the code, 2, is the port number - Aberystwyth, as previously.
• We suspect that the third number, 7, is the number of the original box in which the documents were stored at the Board of Trade (probably not its present box at TNA). It doesn't help the search and is best ignored.

The CLIP search page for port rotation numbers identifies the ship and helps to find the crew lists by providing a list of the TNA references for BT 98 and links for FamilySearch images. Figures 8 and 9 show how it works.

  Finding out more

You can find out more about the man's career using:

• A copy of his original certificate and application forms from NMM.
• Crew lists and agreements.
• Newspaper advertisements and shipping news.

Original certificates

Once you have the man's certificate number, you will be able to enquire about a copy of the original certificate. These are held at NMM and this is their guide to the records they hold: Masters and mates certificates at NMM

The officer's application form for the examination, or to be granted a certificate of service, is often filed with the certificate and contains records of his previous service.

Using crew lists and agreements

Crew lists and agreements show the record of a voyage or, for home trade ships, the voyages in a half-year.

A crew list shows all the crew, with their date of birth or age, birthplace, previous ship, capacity in which engaged, wages and date and place of signing on and off. They may also show records of incidents and illness affecting the crew, and later lists are often accompanied by a log book which records disciplinary incidents in more detail. Masters were required to lodge the ship's papers with the British consul in foreign ports at which the ship touched, so voyages can be traced in detail from the consular stamps which record the visit. The only item which is not usually detailed is the cargo, though this can often be inferred from the ports visited - for example, timber in Quebec.

One of the most useful items of data for each man is that his previous ship is recorded and (in theory) this gives a way of tracing back his previous career, ship by ship.

Finding a crew list depends on the date.

From 1861 onwards

The crew lists are scattered across over 40 archives, including TNA, NMM, the Maritime History Archive (MHA) in Canada and many local archives around the British Isles. There is an example below to show how that works.

See Crew lists 1861 to 1913 for more details.

Before 1861

• From 1857 to 1860, the lists are at TNA in class BT 98 which is sorted by official number. We explain how to find a crew list below.
• Before 1857, the lists are at TNA, also in class BT 98, but sorted by port of registry and then alphabetically. Again, there is an explanation of how to find a crew list below.

See Crew lists pre-1861 for more details.

Crew lists from 1861 onwards

Some of the crew lists for Edward Lewis' ships from 1861 onwards, including his last voyage, are held at NLW in Aberystwyth. Figure 10 shows the results of a search for their holdings for the Credo. The documents for 1866 include a log book which gives details of his illness and death.

Crew lists before 1861 in BT 98 at TNA

All the crew lists for British registered ships for the period before 1861 are held at TNA in BT 98 - there are none elsewhere. They are stored in thousands of boxes (pieces), each holding dozens of documents.

From 1857 onwards, the crew lists are boxed by year and the ship's official number; for earlier lists the sorting is by port, year and then the ship's name.

This is TNA's research guide for their holdings of crew lists and their catalogue for BT 98.

You can order copies of a document from TNA, working from the BT 98 catalogue. However, we provide some tools below which will make it easy to identify the reference to the box you want, with a link to the correct place in TNA's catalogue.

TNA research guide for crew lists TNA catalogue for BT 98

There is an alternative, and perhaps more convenient, way to access these documents. FamilySearch filmed the records back in the 1970s and the images are available online The snag is that they are only available at a FamilySearch Centre or a FamilySearch Affilate Library unless you are a member of the LDS Church.

Our general guide to how to find FamilySearch Centres and FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries and use the films is here: Finding FamilySearch films

We explain below how to link to the FamilySearch films. The documents for 1857-1860 are filed in a different way to the earlier ones.

Crew lists from 1857 to 1860

Crew lists from 1845 to 1856

From the the records of Edward Lewis' voyages and port rotation numbers data (Figure 6 above), we can find the crew lists for the Eliza Charles using FamilySearch. The first one, (Figure 12), shows Edward Lewis as the master on her maiden voyage, leaving Shields on 27 October 1851 heading for Cadiz and then South America.

The crew list was endorsed by British consuls in Cadiz and, as Figure 13 shows, in Buenos Ayres in June 1852.

Another document shows the ship arriving back in Liverpool on 31 August 1852.

The second voyage shown in Edward Lewis' record was again to Buenos Ayres, leaving Liverpool on 26 October 1852 as shown in Figure 14.

The crew signed on at the magnificent just-brand-new Liverpool Sailors' Home which also housed the Shipping Office (see top right of the form). Liverpool Sailor's Home

The consul's endorsements in Monte Video are shown in Figure 15.

Using newspaper advertisements and shipping news

Newspapers are a useful source for information about the ships and their masters.

For example, Figure 16 shows an advertisement for the voyage shown in Figure 14 above.

Figure 17 shows a typical item of the shipping intelligence carried by many newspapers. The master's name was usually appended to the ship's name and this makes a convenient target for searches (eg Search for "Eliza Charles" Lewis Shipping).

For more details of using newspapers to search for ships, please see: Newspapers

More about the records of masters and mates

For general information on the records of masters and mates, please see Masters, mates, engineers and cooks

  Making the CLIP index for BT 124

The CLIP index is made from the images of the BT 124 documents which TNA publish, as detailed above.

We set up a transcription site using these images and CLIP transcribers used custom input forms on our site. We used double‑keying - ie each record was entered independently by two different transcribers and we then cross-checked their inputs. Experience shows that this will produce a likely error-rate of well under 1% on individual data items.

However, the BT 124 records are handwritten and occasionally difficult to read. This applies particularly to the seamen's ticket number in the top right of the entry for each man. As always, our transcribers were told to 'transcribe as seen' and not to try to interpret the data so, for example, Liverpool may be recorded as Liverpool, Lpool or occasionally Lpl and that is what will appear in our transcription.

As each volume was completed, the data was transferred to our public database. We completed the project in 2016.

We are most grateful for the hard work of the small group of CLIP transcribers who have populated this database and whose names are recorded amongst our list of Acknowledgements . Thank you all.