Why Are There Gaps in Merchant Records?

First checks before you go further

Gaps come from lost agreements, voyages under different articles, and records kept by shipping companies rather than the state. A gap between voyages is normal and is not evidence a seaman stopped sailing.

Records disagree more often than stories do, and that is useful: a disagreement points to a transfer, a renumbering, or a variant spelling, each of which can be tested. Where a clue comes from a relative, note who supplied it and when. A clue supplied decades later carries different weight from one written at the time. If you cannot fix the unit or the dates, fix what you can and search on that, rather than guessing the missing filter to make the search feel complete.

How do you work through it step by step?

If a step produces nothing, record that nothing. A documented negative result is part of the research, and it stops the same step being repeated blindly. Before the first step, gather every clue you already hold into one place. Steps taken with scattered clues produce scattered results.

• 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.

Making sense of what you find

What a record omits can be as informative as what it includes, but only if you know what that kind of record usually includes. Learn the form before you judge the gap. 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. Read for the unit, the ship, or the station as well as for the person. A person entry makes sense only inside the unit entry that surrounds it.

Dead ends to expect here

A gap of a few weeks in a diary, a log, or a file is normal. A gap of months, in the same record, is a question. Learn the normal gap size for the record type. A record that exists but is not digitised is not a dead end, it is a different route: a catalogue reference, a copy order, or a visit, where the holder offers one.

• A gap between voyages recorded elsewhere.
• A ship loss that scattered the surviving paper.
• A merchant record filed apart from a Royal Navy record.
• A common name with no discharge number to separate two men.

The next record in the chain

The neighbouring guides are not a reading list. They are the next links in a chain, and the chain order matters more than the reading order. The strongest timelines are short and referenced. Resist the urge to add unreferenced detail at the end of a session, when checking discipline is weakest. When you close this guide, close it with a question written down. Questions written down become next sessions; questions remembered become lost sessions.