Merchant Navy Seamen on FMP - Henry Bowin

[BlueSavannah]

Hi All,

I have seen a record on the above for a Henry Bowin. I am trying still to locate any info about this man with regards to his occupation and hopefully a death.

He gives his occupation on his marriage certificate and the 51 census as a Mariner. I believed that a mariner and merchant navy seaman would be different occupations but could they be the same?

There is a record on FMP of a Henry Bowin which gives very vague info. Birthplace does match (Hull) and the age would make a similar birth year.

I don't understand the numbers etc on the actual image and wondered if anyone who has any knowledge of these records might be able to help me with an explanation of what they mean?

This is my previous thread about Henry http://www.genealogistsforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=15499&highlight=henry+bowin

I still haven't found any death for him :(

[Phoenix]

I think that the first number is that of the port the voyage started from, and the second the number of the ship. I had an idea 75 was London, but I could well be wrong.

I talked once with Chris Watts, who wrote a book on Merchant Seamen, who said that he had not found anything which listed the numbers of the ships to provide a key. Computers may well have sorted that out.

[kiterunner]

You can look ship numbers up on here:
http://www.crewlist.org.uk/data/vesselsnum.php

[kiterunner]

Also I have merchant seamen in my family tree who are also referred to as mariners.

[Shona]

If he was from Hull, he's most likely to have worked as a distant water trawlernen - fishing for cod in Icelandic waters. There was also some river trade in the Humber and in coastal waters.

[merleyone]

The numbers shown on early seamens' records can be confusing and the system used to record details became somewhat of a shorthand system leading to local abbreviations not necessarily used elsewhere before a standard format emerged after a few changes. However, all Masters of ships had to provide crew lists twice a year which were lodged at the ship's port of registration in June and December for those ships involved in Home Trade. Masters of ships involved in foreign trade had to lodge a crew list at the port of return from foreign trade at the time of return. In Henry Bowin's record the first two entries relate to ships involved in Home Trade during the 1/2 year ended in June 1836. The first was for the Grange and the numbers 85 is the reference for the ship's port of registration, Scarborough, and 105, in theory, is the Port Rotation number, which is unique to a ship for the year and should list the ports visited in rotation. The letters S, C are abbreviations for his rank, S for Seaman. The only rank to go with C is Captain, which he may have been. Ck is the recognised abbreviation for Cook, so he does not appear to have been that. The second entry is for another ship in the same half year, with crew list lodged at Sunderland (92),Port Rotation number 740 and once more the same two rank abbreviations S & C.
The following two entries relate to ships involved in foreign trade with the first having a crew list lodged on 11/9/1837 at Liverpool (62) etc and the final one having a crew list lodged at Cork (20) on 25/10/1839, both showing him a a Seaman. None of this helps with your search for his death details unfortunately.
There are some links on FMP to more information provided by The National Archives about the detail in Seamens' records, including some images with explanations.

merleyone

[BlueSavannah]

Thank you so much for all the advice/help :)