HCA 30/636 Project Home Page
This page is the home page for volunteers working on HCA 30/636/ materials
Contents
Background
Are you interested in a startup collaborative online project to look at, partially transcribe and understand three ship account books from the 1620s and 1630s? You have come to the right place. Marine Lives is launching a new project and is seeking volunteer collaborators. This will be a project about co-creation of a public resource, which will be published on the Marine Lives wiki and made available to all - public and academic historians alike (and those just intrigued by our past).
HCA 30/636 document category
HCA 30/636 is a document category which has been created to cover certain papers generated by the Prize Court jurisdiction of the English High Court of Admiralty papers. It contains nine sub-references. We have imaged all the documents within HCA 30/636 and will be making these available to volunteer collaborators online. Documents include three beautifully leather bound account books of various sizes, further paper bound account books, a letter copy book of letters written from on board ship, and various miscellaneous accounting documents relating to multiple voyages. In all we have over one thousand images.
We are compiling a running list of C17th ship account books - all languages. Please take a look and contact us if you have comments or additions to this list.
Commercial record keeping
Ship account books represent just one type of commercial record created by and used by mariners.
Volunteers may find it useful to review this Overview of Marine Oriented Commercial Records
1 Overview
2 Acquittance
3 Bill of lading
4 Boatswain’s book of accounts
5 Charter party
6 Chief mate’s book
7 Cocket
8 Custom house book
9 Custom house waiter’s book
10 Gunner’s inventory
11 Letters of advice
12 Letters of correspondence
13 Lighter’s book of accounts
14 Master’s book of accounts
15 Marks on goods
16 Miscellaneous papers and writings
17 Notes or receipts (supply of goods to ships)]
18 Notes (wages related)
19 Private instructions from freighters or owners
20 Protest
21 Steward’s book
22 Waiter’s book
23 Warehouse records
24 Wharfinger’s book of accounts
Thematic pages
1. Dutch connections with 1H C17th Barbados
2. Dutch connections with 1H C17th Virginia
Project description
We are in start up mode. Our current thinking is to make the images available on DropBox or OneDrive and to use this MarineLives wiki as our collaboration platform - to share ideas, to provide support, and to be the vehicle to publish our transcriptions and synthesis. But we are open to your ideas about how to organise this project and nothing will be finalised until we have our team in place. You can get up to speed on our thinking by reading this Twitter Thread.
We have had expressions of interest from people from many places - Mexico, Michigan, Texas, London, Newcastle to list a few - which is perfect given the virtual nature of our project and the broad geographic scope of the papers which include multiple voyages from England to the West Indies, the Mediterranean and to Northern Europe.
This is going to be a very relaxed project running through to the middle of 2022 in which people are welcome to dip in and out, and to do as little or as much as they have time and interest for.
Project launch
We have sent an email to everyone who has expressed this interest this weekend (Sunday, October 17th 2021), and have invited people addressed in that email to take a look at some sample images and to tell us about their research interests, skills and ideas for this project.
We are doing a soft project launch between now and Thursday, November 18th, when we will launch the project with a one hour ZOOM call for confirmed volunteers. The ZOOM call is planned for midday (EST), 5.pm (London), 6 pm (Germany) on Thursday, November 18th 2021.
In the meantime, the project leader (Colin Greenstreet) will contact each volunteer for a short (15-20 minute) chat about their research interests, and to induct them into basic wiki skills. If you want to learn the basics on the wiki side, click here for a quick wiki primer.
The project will run from now until the middle of 2022, with the Marine Lives wiki as the principal platform for publishing the results of our collective research.
Input from volunteers prior to our launch meeting
We have created a new wiki page for volunteers to tell us a little about their research interests, and what they would like to get out of the Marine Lives Ship Account Book project. You can access this page by Volunteer research interests and goals clicking the link here
In the next few days we will be giving all volunteers editorial access to our wiki, and will be giving you a ten minute lesson in how to add wiki content, how to make simple edits, and how to add a new page of your own.
So when we get together for the first time on October 18th, 2021, for our one hour launch ZOOM meeting, we will have started each of us to become familiar with using the main publicationa nd collaboration platform for this project - the Marine Lives wiki.
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Project launch meeting: Thursday, November 18th 2021: DRAFT AGENDA
DATE: The project launch meeting will be held on ZOOM on Thursday, November 18th, 2021
TIME: Midday (EST); 5 pm (London); 6 pm (Germany)
ADMIN: A ZOOM link will be sent to registered volunteers closer to the event.
PRELIMINARY AGENDA
1. Welcome & goals of project (Colin) [5 mins]
2. Introductions (all) [20 mins]
3. Project organisation (5 mins)
4. Introduction to the Abraham and to Early Modern Barbados Michael Bennett (Sheffield) [10 mins]
5. Walk through the manuscripts [Colin; all] [15 mins]
6. Next steps [5 mins]
Expressions of interest
As of Friday, October 15th 2021, 17.00. GMT we have received thirty-five expressions of interest from:
Kerry Apps
Dr Richard Blakemore
Dr Michael Bennett (consultant to project)
Dr Holly Brewer
Zachary Copin
Dinorah
Jack Dorward
Dr Joshua Eckhardt
Amanda Ap Ennion
Dr Ian Friel
Jamie Gemmell
Dr Peter Good
Ros Jones
Megan Johnston
Ros Jones
Meghan Kern
Dr Dylan M. LeBlanc
Sarah Mah
Peter Olsen-Habich
Jools Parker
Michael Powell-Davies
Dr Emily Rendek
Dr Lou Roper
Rebecca Rose
Dr Benjamin Slade
Dr Tabitha Stanmore
Katherine Stephen
Jane E. Tomlinson
Daisy Turnbull
Mehmet Tutuncu
Twitter handle: Crafty Librarian
Twitter handle: Vampire, Ph.Die
Twitter handle: Professor M. Walton
Dr Jen Waghorn
Charlie Wilson
Resources
Sample images and context by subcategory
HCA 30/636/1
HCA 30/636/2 [WITH SAMPLE IMAGES]
HCA 30/636/3 [WITH SAMPLE IMAGES]
HCA 30/636/4
HCA 30/636/5 [WITH SAMPLE IMAGES]
HCA 30/636/6 [WITH SAMPLE IMAGES]
HCA 30/636/7
HCA 30/636/8
HCA 30/636/9
Existing project resources
Marine Lives brush up your palaeography and teach yourself wiki
C17th Textiles, garments and Dyestuffs glossary
Commodities glossary
Weights and Measures glossary
Proposed project resources
Ship Account Book glossary
Compendium of Ship Account Book named persons
Compendium of Ship Account Book geographical terms
Partial transcriptions and abstracts of the Account Books and related papers
Thematic synthesis around geography, materials, commerce and social world as evidenced in the HCA 30/636 papers
