How Do I Use Merchant Ship Photographs?

What should you look for first?

Merchant ship photographs can identify a ship and its period, but they rarely name a crew member. Use them to confirm a ship's appearance and era, then return to the discharge book for the person.

Do not trust a result because it is the only result. A single result with one matching filter is a lead that needs a second record, not a conclusion. The strongest first check is a boring one: does every filter agree, or does only one agree and the rest stay silent?

A step by step way through

Before the first step, gather every clue you already hold into one place. Steps taken with scattered clues produce scattered results. The sequence below is a default, not a law. If a step produces a surprise, follow the surprise, and return to the sequence afterwards. If you are unsure which step comes first, choose the step that fixes a date. Dates order everything else, and an unfixed date disorders everything else.

1. Fix the seaman identity details, name and any discharge number, before opening ship records.
2. Use the discharge book to list ships and voyages in date order.
3. Open the crew agreement for each ship and voyage, and note its reference.
4. Test every ship movement against the discharge book before adding it to the timeline.

Making sense of what you find

Read the entry in the terms of its own period, not in modern terms. 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. Check whether an entry was written by the unit, by a clerk, or by a later compiler. The writer decides how much weight the entry can carry.

Common traps in this record type

If a published list and an original record disagree on a name, prefer the original, and note the list variant as a search term for future searches. A trail that goes cold at a particular date often restarts under a different number, a different unit, or a different holder. The date of the break is the clue to which. A missing sheet, a closed record, or a file held by another holder are three different problems, and each has a different next step. Do not treat them as one problem called missing.

Where to go next from here

The cluster around this guide is a chain, not a shelf. Reading it in chain order, following the links at the foot of each page, keeps the person in view. Return to the pillar guide when you lose the thread. Pillars exist to restore the shape of a section when detail has obscured it. When two records disagree, note both and look for a third that explains the difference.