In 2008, with the support of the Manx Heritage Foundation, CLIP made images of the shipping registers and other documents held by the Manx National Heritage Library in Douglas. From these, we made a complete transcript of the documents, down to the level of individual transactions - we think this is the first complete transcription of shipping registers for any group of ports.

These notes provide extra detail and background drawn from our experience with that project.

Ports of registry

The ports of registry for the Isle of Man are:

• Douglas
• Castletown (previously Derbyhaven)
• Peel
• Ramsey

The earliest surviving documents relating to the centralised system of registration are the transcripts at TNA, which date from 1818 for all the ports, and these are detailed below TNA 1818 .

The registers for the 19th century and the early 20th century are held by the Manx National Heritage Library

Our list of the registers is here: Isle of Man Shipping Registers

Missing registers

At least two of the registers appear to be missing: that for Peel for 1849 to 1864, and there are no shipping registers for Ramsey after 1855.

For Peel we have not made a detailed investigation, but some of the evidence as to what occurred is as follows:

• The Appropriation Books, which are the central documents in which were recorded the official numbers allocated to ports and vessels, show only one record for a ship registered at Peel in the period 1849 to 1864 - she is the Fairy Queen, 21981, registered Peel, 9/1854. This indicates that at least eight other ships were registered at Peel in that year.
• The Douglas Transactions register show that over 30 vessels were transferred to Peel registration on the 12 March 1864. However, the Peel shipping register for 1864 to 1893 shows only two ships registered that year, the first on the 13th of May, and neither of them transferred from Douglas.
• The Douglas Transactions register includes entries for ships whose registry is shown as Peel(Douglas) or Douglas(Peel).

For Ramsey, the series of registers ends in 1855.

Fortunately, there are two volumes of Shipping Returns, covering the period from 1844 to 1901. These include annual (though not every year) lists of the ships registered at the port, and notes written across the lists, some of which show the previous registry of newly registered ships and the ultimate fate for most ships. Unfortunately, there is no information about ownership, masters and transactions. However, in combination with the Appropriation Books and crew list transcriptions, it is possible to reconstruct the bare bones of the register, at least as far as the history of the ships is concerned. This reconstruction has been included with the rest of the registers, but information from it should be used with caution. We have not attempted to include details such as dimensions and ownership. The Mercantile Navy List will provide some of this information.

Later documents

The later Manx shipping registers are held by the Isle of Man Ship Registry

They hold the following documents for the period up to about 1990:

Registration of shipping continues on the island, run by The Isle of Man Ship Registry which operates the Isle of Man Ship Register (part of the British Register), which is used by many large companies, including BP Shipping, who have registered 50 ships in the island.

Records at The National Archives

As for all British ports of registry, transcripts of register entries and transactions were returned to the Registrar General of Shipping and these are now held at TNA.

They provide an alternative copy of the existing registers and fill in the gaps for the earlier years and missing documents.

For the earliest years, the TNA references for Manx ports are:

  CLIP transcription and indexes

Methodology

Images were made of all the shipping registers using a digital SLR camera under ambient lighting in the searchroom of Manx National Heritage Library (MNHL) and stored as .tiff files, using two separate images for each folio. Apart from the improved quality of using two images, this allowed us to deal with some of the earlier volumes where the entries for a ship are on the front and back of the same folio, rather than on facing pages as in the later registers.

Copies of the images have been compressed in .jpg format and written to a single DVD. A copy of this and of the original images have been deposited at MNHL.

Transcription

The register entries were transcribed onto a custom MS-Access database, with both the image and the database on the computer screen at the same time. The database has a single front-end, but separate data files for each register. The database system will work for the registers of any port, and we'd be happy to discuss licensing it (for free) with anyone who would be interested in using it elsewhere.

Transcription was carried out according to the same protocols that have been used for all CLIP transcription. These include:

• All transcription is 'as seen'. We did not attempt to interpret the entries, though obviously we made use of our knowledge to help in reading handwriting.
• Abbreviations have not been expanded.
• We minimised punctuation, omitting full stops and only using commas to help clarity.
• Where a ship's name includes 'and', we have altered it to '&', for example, Jack & Jill.
• Where the originals have written notes, for example detailing the fate of a ship, we have quoted directly from that in the notes fields on the database.

Transcription quality

Both main transcribers have long experience of transcription from documents of this period, particularly maritime documents. However, it should be noted we do not have a native's knowledge of Manx surnames and place names, though we had previously transcribed extensively from crew lists of Manx vessels. Our checking procedures included:

• Each entry was checked and corrected independently by the other transcriber, so each page has been viewed twice.
• The database system includes a facility to check data against indexes (similar to a spell-checker) which allows us to check all peoples' names, addresses and occupations against likely entries, and correct any mistakes.
• The data has been inspected in various formats, for example in lists sorted on various fields, to pick out anomalies.
• Output in folio transcripts from the web site database has been proof-read.

Experience in using these procedures with similar databases has produced assessed error rates of less than 0.1% for individual data items and we have no reason to think that this data is different.

That means that there are still likely to be some errors in the data, for which we apologise. Please tell us about them, so that we can make corrections.

Indexes

The data on this site is a union of the data from all of the shipping registers, with index files for surnames and ship's names.

The data shown in the transcripts and indexes is essentially 'as transcribed' particularly in relation to information about people's names and the ships' details. However, to improve the presentation, we have added small amounts of text which is generated within the database. In describing the transaction types, for example, we have used standard text such as 'Died, leaving xxx shares to " which is close to, but not necessarily a transcript of, the phrases the registrars used. Where other notes are added, these will usually be direct quotes, as described above. In the few rare cases where we have added our own notes of explanation, [these are in square brackets].

  Further research

We are far from completing every task with the maritime records of the Isle of Man.

We'd suggest that any of the following could be usefully undertaken:

• Obtaining copies of the transcripts of the earliest registers from TNA, and transcribing them.
• Making a list of the transcripts held by TNA in BT 107 et seq.
• Obtaining copies of the transcripts covering the periods where the Peel and Ramsey records are lacking, and transcribing them.
• Indexing the Fishing Registers.
• Though the original CLIP crew list transcription covered every crew list held at MNHL, there are still documents at TNA (a 10% sample), and at The National Maritime Museum (NMM), which holds all documents for 1861, 1862 and years ending in '5'. If these were transcribed, the island would have a complete record of everyone sailing on Manx registered ships for the whole period, 1861 to 1913.

We are aware that the MNHL has plans to present the records and data they hold in an imaginative way. The Isle of Man is uniquely well placed in respect of maritime records of this period, with excellent data sets from crew lists, shipping records and wrecks, together with a large photo archive. This presents an excellent opportunity to present interlinked data sets to researchers. We know that plans are afoot and we await developments with interest.

  Acknowledgements

We're glad to thank everyone who has helped us with this project.

The staff of the Manx National Heritage Library were unfailingly helpful in making facilities available for the photography, in producing document after document, and in providing friendly advice and encouragement. Many thanks to Roger Sims, Alan Franklin, Wendy Thirkettle, Jude Dicken and their colleagues.

Thanks to Adrian Corkill, who was partially responsible for instigating the project and who has provided welcome assistance with transcribing and checking some of the data, and with retaking some of the images. We hope this data will be a useful complement to his book Shipwrecks of the Isle of Man

We are also extremely grateful to the Manx Heritage Foundation who provided significant funding for the project, enabling us to spend the time necessary to get a good set of images and to develop the custom database.

Thanks also to the staff of the Isle of Man Ship Registry for information about the registers they hold.