Ships’
Official Logs
Through the Mercantile Marine Act of 1850, official logs
were to be kept by masters. Instead of the traditional understanding of
navigational records, these logs were intended to note illness and treatment
(if any), deaths of mariners onboard,
as well as bad behaviour, desertions and punishments of crew members, along
with assessments of conduct and ability of all on board: excluding the master.
As with crew lists and agreements they were to be surrendered to Shipping
Masters or Customs Officers ashore (within the United Kingdom, which then
included Ireland in the definition in the Act) on completion of agreed voyages
for foreign-going vessels, or six monthly for coasters. (Within a year smaller
coasters of 80 tons burthen or less had been exempted.) Even though crew lists
and agreements were to be transmitted to the Registrar General of Seamen’s
Office, after a time regarded as reasonable for any interested party to view
all these documents, logs were not sent on
to London. Instead they were then to be returned to masters or owners within
forty-eight hours (if required by the same) and retained for two years.
In 1854, under the massively enlarging Merchant Shipping Act,
further entries in these official logs were required of masters: for births,
marriages and all deaths
onboard. It should be noted that this legislation stated that official logs
could either be combined with ships’ (navigational) logs, or separate. (There
being very little navigational information in examples I have seen I would
opine that overwhelmingly these were kept apart.) A comparatively small
percentage of official logs have survived and the reasons for this can be found
in careful study of
this and subsequent Acts, combined with study of surviving documents and
correspondence of the bureaucracies involved.
The popular understanding is that this 1854 Act required all
official logs to be retained by the office of the Registrar General of Seamen
(or Registrar General of Shipping & Seamen from 1872) in the City of
London. While one section (277) indeed seems to state
that all documentation handed into Shipping Masters, Customs Officers and under
certain circumstances Consular Officials abroad, should be sent to the
Registrar General of Seamen in London, this section was dealing with records
other than ships’ logs. In fact, immediately before this (sections 273 to 276)
it states that lists of details including births, deaths and marriages should
be made out and surrendered at the end of voyages: as part of the normal
documentation still to be found within crew lists and agreements.
Interestingly, the sections actually dealing with logs themselves (280 to 287)
do not specifically state where, or even if, all logs were to be
retained.
The situation was far more complex though and allied aspects of
this are dealt with in the section on deaths of
mariners at sea. It is obvious that some logs were indeed transmitted to the office of the R.G.S./R.G.S.S.,
since they still survive. However, I know this was not due to a blanket
requirement of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 at all. (There is something of
an exception for the first few of years, where it seems that in confusion over
the apparent contradiction within the 1854 Act many logs were sent to London and retained, along
with the other documents. Nevertheless, this practice soon ceased.) The ‘Board
of Trade’, which incidentally was housed in London’s West End near Whitehall, could request logs and this is one potential explanation. But, even
then, this does not make administrative sense. After all, the pertinent detail
was already in the crew lists and agreements. Instead, I believe that there
were two not dissimilar reasons as to why there are logs surviving. There were
the results of formal boards held at local level and transmitted to London on
completion (section 12 of the 1854 Act) and when masters felt the need to have
accounts of their actions retained. These alone would explain why some logs are
missing where there were deaths at sea and also, why some others have been
retained where there was wholesale breakdown in discipline, desertion en masse etc., etc.
Moreover, the currently widely expressed explanation that all
logs were sent to London, but at some later but unknown stage, large numbers
were destroyed by civil servants beggars belief! Not only is it known that by the 1870s the office of the
R.G.S.S. was running very short of storage space and that a vast amount of
documentation was destroyed, it is also known which
types were got rid of at this time. These included 18th and early 19th
century parchment certificates of ships’ registry, unwanted early 19th
century customs registry books, seamen’s register tickets and apprentices’
indentures. All these
were records that were not required to be kept by law.
Intriguingly, one piece of correspondence of 1867 shows that there was a move
to have a clause in the upcoming Merchant Shipping Bill allowing for all
documentation held by the office (presumably of the R.G.S.) to be destroyed
after 25 years. However, this clause seems never to have seen the light of day,
as it was not within the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1867, 1871 or 1872 and there
were no pertinent sections mentioning ships’ logs in these Acts. Furthermore, a
quote from P.G. Parkhurst’s Ships of Peace, which
deals with the workings of these bureaucracies, lays this to rest. On page 205
it states:-
‘The Lists of Crews dating from 1835 to 1845 are the only legal
evidence of deaths of seamen at sea within that period; from 1845 they also
contain records of births and marriages. They are the only documents from which seamen’s services can be
proved during those years, for pensions, certificates or any other purpose...’ (My
italics.)
This report went on to state ‘in pursuance of the Merchant
Shipping Act, 1854, and subsequent Acts, I am required by that Act to record
and preserve them, to allow the public to inspect them and to produce them in
Courts of Justice’. This then was the crux of the matter.
Furthermore, section 242 of 1894’s Merchant Shipping Act is
absolutely clear in regards to ships’ logs - they were to be handed to
‘superintendents’ (of Mercantile Marine Offices, as part of the local set-ups
maintained by Local Marine Boards). Nowhere does it state that these
superintendents were then obliged to transmit logs to the R.G.S.S.
Surviving ships’ official logs are normally held with crew
agreements, but for reasons never disclosed by civil servants, those between
1902 until 1919 are in a separate class.
Before leaving this subject, a few points need making in regards
to entries in ships’ logs. These overwhelmingly were from the viewpoint of the
command. On relatively rare occasions when differing types of evidence is
available, such as in court cases, others’ perspectives of events can be inherently
different. I have noted that there was often a highly righteous tone taken by
masters in their log entries, particularly when discipline had largely, or
completely broken down. Frequently entries state that crew-members had refused
to turn-to (that is work), but no explanation as to why was
furnished. However, two reasons for men’s unrest can easily be determined from
long term study of the Merchant Service - cruel and arrogant attitudes of
masters and mates; and poor and/or insufficient food (compounded by equally
foul living conditions for those in the fo’c’sle.)
Also, occasionally other types of log are uncovered elsewhere in
official records.
Apart from where already mentioned, much of the historical
information came from study of the original legislation, plus the excellent
work on the Board of Trade - P.G. Parkhurst’s: Ships of Peace: A record of some of the
problems which came before the Board of Trade in connection with the British
Mercantile Marine from the early years to the year 1885 (New
Malden, Surrey: private publication, 1962). I would be interested in hearing
from anyone with further accurate information on the workings of the Marine
Department of the Board of Trade and the location of a copy of the second
unpublished but produced second volume of Mr. Parkhurst’s
study.
Go to Ships’ Crew Lists and Agreements
Go to Deaths of Mariners at Sea (along
with births, deaths and Marriages of Passengers)
Go to Life and Conditions at Sea -
Social history since the 1840s
Go to the main Mercantile Page