Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors: A Guide For Family Historians

Chapter One

GETTING STARTED

Starting research – Published sources and museums –

Basic family history documents – Shipbuilding archives

Starting research

The starting point for researching family history is the same, whatever the occupation that is being investigated: talk to the family. Try and speak to as many members as you possibly can, not just parents and grandparents, but include uncles, aunts and even the most distant cousins. You never know who might have the crucial document or vital snippet of information that will help to fill gaps in the history. Anecdotes and stories can give valuable clues to the past, but you need to treat such information with caution. Memories are notoriously unreliable: almost anyone doing this kind of research will be told, for example, that a member of the family was born in such and such a town, only to find when documentary evidence becomes available that they were actually born miles away, even in a different county. There is also the real possibility now that genealogy has become so popular that one member of the family will have already started on a similar task and will have consequently acquired a lot of information that can be shared. Here again one has to exercise certain caution: a distant relation of mine produced a family tree according to which I had married my own mother!

A very useful way of checking if anyone has already started on a similar process is to join a family history society. These are generally based on counties, and many societies publish lists of members’ interests. Shipbuilding is a localised industry and it is quite common to find generations of workers employed at the same yards, so this focus on a particular region can prove very fruitful. It is a huge advantage to be able to build on research done by others, and it is not by any means a one-way system. As you begin to get deeper into the subject you might well find that you in turn can help in supplying information to those following different branches of the family. For example, I recently looked at the correspondence relating to a particular family with shipbuilding connections in Sunderland, and it was fascinating to see how one simple question resulted in a flood of information.

Published sources and museums

Once you have established a connection with shipbuilding, you will certainly want to know more about the industry and the people who worked in it. It is probably best to start with a basic general introduction, such as this, and then perhaps move on to a more-detailed general history and local histories. Although there are large numbers of books on ships and the sea, there are very few that offer an overall view of the shipyards that made them. I am suggesting my own book not through vanity, but simply because I have been unable to find any other general history published in recent years. There are, however, published histories of many individual yards, not merely the big and famous, which can prove fascinating. The great majority of them are out of print, though you should be able to get copies through your local library. Failing that you might have to go to specialist libraries, such as that at the National Maritime Museum. The copyright libraries hold copies of most books published in Britain. The British Library is the best known, but you may find it more convenient to use the National Libraries of Wales or Scotland, or the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. Once you find a connection with a particular yard, you may want to try and find a copy to buy for yourself. Many of the books are beautifully produced, with excellent illustrations. Nowadays most secondhand bookshops have Internet connections and can help track down a specific volume. Alternatively you can do the job yourself on the computer by logging on to www.AbeBooks.co.uk or www.bookfinder.com, two sites that will give you access to thousands of dealers.

Reading about a subject will help you to come to terms with the history of the industry and what it did, but it is equally valuable to be able to see an actual yard to get an understanding of how it worked and see the artefacts that were used. The general public are not generally admitted to working yards, but there are a number of museums based on former shipyards. They range from the immense site of the Historic Dockyard at Chatham to the shipbuilding village of Buckler’s Hard in Hampshire. Some of these may have special facilities for dealing with family history queries, but even if they do not the curatorial staff may often be able to help with specific queries. Many of the maritime museums spread around the country also have excellent sections dealing with shipbuilding. Equally important are the many historic ships preserved around the coast and there are a number of replicas of famous ships, built using old technology. It really does help in bringing the whole subject to life, when you can actually study a vessel in this way. For example, seeing the interior of the hull of a wooden ship makes one realise how intricate ship construction is, and how much skill is required to create the optimum shape. A ship does not even have to be fully restored to make it interesting, in fact it is often easier to see construction details at an early stage of restoration than it is when the ship is looking as grand and as fresh as when she was launched. For example, I was fortunate enough to visit Britain’s first ironclad battleship HMS Warrior before restoration work was started and I found it at least as interesting as when I went to see her after completion. In her rough condition, when little had survived apart from the basic hull and decks, it was very much simpler to understand how the unique system of armour plating had been put together.

Published books and museum visits will only take you part of the way in your researches. Many, many yards have closed without their histories being written up. The site will have been cleared and artefacts sold or dumped. Fortunately many archives have been preserved and these will form an essential part of your research. By far the best starting point is the guide to historical records edited by L A Ritchie, The Shipbuilding Industry (1992). It gives details on documents relating to some 200 privately owned British yards, trade organisations and public records concerning the industry. Most of the latter can be found at the National Archives. In practice, the majority of the papers are held in a few major archives. The main archives for the north east are the Tyne and Wear Archives held in Newcastle upon Tyne. The main sources for the Clyde are the Business Records Centre at the University of Glasgow, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow and the Glasgow Museum of Transport. Mersey shipyard records are held at the Birkenhead Reference Library and the Merseyside Maritime Museum. The records for Northern Ireland are mostly held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast. The majority of the papers relating to naval dockyards are either in the Public Record Office at Kew or in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Between them these bodies hold a very high proportion of available records, but by no means all. They cover most of the major employers, but one must never forget the immense number of smaller yards scattered all around the country, whose records have to be hunted down in local archives and museums.

Nowadays the first stop for most researchers is not the sometimes far distant library or museum but the computer. More and more information is being made available online. Even if you don’t have your own computer, most libraries of any size now make them available at a very small cost per session. Even complete novices soon find how easy it is to use the Internet, but as with all research there is a danger. The material available online is only as reliable as the person who put it there, and there are all too many sites offering either very dubious facts or information that is downright wrong. It is safest to regard the Internet as a guide to reliable, checkable sources, rather than the final stopping place. Obviously, this depends to a large extent on the nature of the site. Where a site is run by a government agency or some other officially recognised body then one can be reasonably confident of its accuracy.

The Internet is also a very good starting point for those who are just coming to grips with family history. Most people by now are familiar with search engines, such as Google, but simply tapping in ‘Shipbuilding’ for example will start you off with a page showing the first 10 of over 5 million entries. There is such a vast amount of information available that it is easy to get overwhelmed by it all. So a complete novice, or even someone who is familiar with the Internet but not with looking for family history sites, might well want to start with a guide aimed specifically at family history researchers. There are two books of particularly use: Peter Christian’s The Genealogist’s Internet (2005), produced by the National Archive, and Stuart A Raymond’s Family History on the Web (2004), for the Federation of Family History Societies.

Once you are comfortable with using the Internet, you will find there are a number of key sites that will help direct you to the specific information you require. The National Register of Archives is invaluable. It does not hold any actual documents, but it does tell you where they are to be found in England and Wales. Altogether it holds 44,000 lists and catalogues. Obviously you are not going to want to search the whole lot, but the website leads you through various steps that will narrow down the search. Turning to www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra will give you an overall view of how the site works, and the different categories that can be consulted. It lists businesses, organisations, personal papers, family documents and diaries, all of which can be accessed individually. For example, under organisations you can call up a full list of trade unions, arranged alphabetically. You can then quickly locate documents relating to individual unions, such as the Amalgamated Union of Shipbuilding, Engineering and Constructional Workers, and discover that the Union records for 1921 are held at Warwick University. On the more general subject of shipbuilding as a whole, the starting point depends on how much information you have. But even if all you know is that you have a relative who worked in shipbuilding in a certain area at a certain rough date that should be enough to begin. Turn to www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a. This opens the A2A site, where you can make a start by entering a keyword in the box. Simply typing ‘shipbuilding’ turns up nearly 2,000 entries, but this can be narrowed down very quickly, by entering information on the region and the dates in which you are interested. For example, asking for details for Newcastle between 1900 and 1950 reduces the number of entries to a manageable fourteen. This is a very useful website to turn to at any stage in your research, and is particularly valuable once you have at least a rough idea of the places and periods in which you are particularly interested.

One approach might seem so obvious that it is easily overlooked. It is always worth simply putting a name into the search engine to see what comes up. Needless to say, it helps if your family name isn’t Smith or Jones. The point is, it only takes a moment to do and you just might turn out lucky. For most of us, however, there is only one option, and that is to proceed through a series of logical steps.

Basic family history documents

Having talked to members of the family, the first essential is to record your findings as soon as possible, and to continue keeping the records as you work your way through the family tree. The next step is to acquire firm documentary evidence in the form of birth, marriage and death certificates. These are held at the Government Record Office (GRO) and records from 1900 onwards can be accessed and ordered on line. The starting point is www.familyrecords.gov.uk. Births, marriages and deaths have been recorded for England and Wales since 1837. Records for Scotland began in 1855 and are available from the GRO for Scotland and the appropriate website for starting the search is www.gro-scotland.gov.uk. Records for Northern Ireland started in 1864 and details are at www.groni.gov.uk, though only Protestant marriages are recorded. This is not as big a problem as it might seem, since for much of its history the major employer in Ireland, Harland and Wolff, employed a predominantly Protestant workforce, and for a time banned Catholics altogether. There are a few snags of which you should be aware. Records are listed under the office where the details were registered. It is perfectly possible that a baby might have been born in a hospital in one town but for the birth to be registered some time later in another town where the parents lived.

The birth certificate can provide a wealth of information. It will give the mother’s maiden name, assuming she was married, which will help in taking the story back another generation on her side of the family. Up to 1875, a mother could have the father’s name included, whether she was married or not, and did not even require the father’s permission. After that date, the father could refuse and the section could be left blank. In some cases, the father’s occupation could also be included. Marriage certificates carry additional useful information, including the ages of bride and groom. These are generally reliable, but not always. A young couple marrying without their parents’ consent, for example, could easily add a few years to their age to get round the problem. Assuming the age is accurate, it is an obvious help in working back towards the birth certificates. The certificate will also give details of occupations and parentage. Death certificates often seem to be less valuable as sources of information, but they can be helpful in searching for wills and burial places. They also provide information on occupation, but not always in the case of women. A classic example of the lack of importance attached to women’s work is the case of Florence Nightingale. The most famous nurse in the world has her occupation given as ‘Daughter of William Nightingale’. This latter point is not so important in the case of shipbuilding as, apart from during war years, very few women were ever employed. One entry that can prove interesting is the cause of death: this was an industry with