Filed under Merchant Navy Records: A Method Guide
First checks before you go further
A crew agreement is the contract for one voyage, listing the crew, their ratings and their terms. It proves service on one ship for one voyage, so a full career needs many agreements, one per voyage.
Start from the person, not from the record type, and fix name, number, unit and dates as firmly as you can before you open anything. What you do not know matters as much as what you know, because a search built on an assumed date or an assumed unit will miss the right record.
The order to work in
Do not skip the step that checks the filters. It feels redundant when the filters seem obvious, and it is the step that catches wrong persons. Before each step, ask what it would prove and what it would disprove. A step with no test value is a detour, however interesting it looks. If a step depends on a relative memory, record the memory, the relative, and the date it was given. Memories without provenance cannot be weighed.
- Fix the seaman identity details, name and any discharge number, before opening ship records.
- Use the discharge book to list ships and voyages in date order.
- Open the crew agreement for each ship and voyage, and note its reference.
- Test every ship movement against the discharge book before adding it to the timeline.
How to read this kind of entry
A term that appears only once in a file deserves more care, not less: a single unusual entry is often the clue that explains a transfer or a change of role. Do not modernise a place name, a rank or a trade in your notes without keeping the original wording alongside it. The original wording is what the next search needs. When a file is thin, read it twice: once for what it says, and once for what kind of file it is. A thin file read as a thick one will be over-interpreted.
Where this kind of research usually stalls
A name that appears in a local list but in no national record may be a local spelling, a nickname, or a different person entirely. Test all three. A transcription error can hide the right entry completely, because you search for the correct spelling and the index holds the wrong one. Try variants deliberately. A trail that depends on a single fragile link, one spelling, one initial, one date, will break. Strengthen the link with a second record before you build on it.
What to open after this one
If you feel the urge to keep reading guides rather than opening records, stop. Guides orient research; records advance it, and orientation without records is drift. Note the reference of this record before you leave it. A timeline without references cannot be revisited, and a revisit is where most errors get caught.
When two next steps present themselves, take the one that can disprove something, not the one that can only confirm. Disproof strengthens a timeline faster. Leave the timeline in a state a stranger could retrace. That stranger, in six months, may well be you.
Primary sources for this guide
Everything here is kept general and tied to official holders, so check the current position with the holder for your own case. The guide is educational information only: it is not personal professional advice, it is not a lookup service, and it settles nothing about any one person's service.