The Cozens/Byrnes - Updated 30 July
2008
File formats on this website
(various-format files for use and/or for download)
This webpage presents a guide to various-format files for download from this
website.
Our thanks to Computer programmer, Graeme Wright of Wrightway Design (websites and multimedia) of Uralla NSW. Graeme has used his LAMP and PHP programming skills to finish off a database idea for use by maritime historians. The test version of the database has been online since its launch date of 29 July 2008.
You can consult the database here.
Or, if you want to fully note the address: http://dbyrnes.wrightwaydesign.com.au/index.php
(1) July 2008: The Merchant Networks Project team is pleased and proud to announce the unveiling of a newly-finished database for work on maritime history. The database test version was placed on the Net from 29 July 2008 at the above URL:
The database was designed in two stages, firstly by this website's editor/webmaster, Dan Byrnes, as an Access database (a version by Microsoft).
Byrnes in 2004 placed more than 1000 separate ship voyages into the mix; data mostly lifted from the appendices to Charles Bateson's book, The Convict Ships. Sydney-based programmer Brian Robson contributed much to the early development of the data model used to help construct the database. A few years later, New England-based programmer Graeme Wright suggested he could adapt the existing database idea for an online, browser-based version, using PHP. Wright's treatment of the database seems very workable, by 20-7-2008.
So the next question arising is: will contributors be allowed to log on to the database and add to it? Probably not. It is probably better if the database is only added to by one skilled operator - the webmaster. But public access to the database will be unrestricted. There is by the way, no reason why the database could not be used respecting shipping operating anywhere in the world, at any time. - Dan Byrnes
A set of detailed explanations as how/why the database works as it does will given at the very bottom of this webpage (scroll down to there now if you wish to).
Slave Ship Voyages (British)
(2) Another file made available here is Slaving Summary 1770-1782, by
Tony Palwyn (UK) an extraction from Lloyd's Listings of ship names/captain
names of British ships on slaving voyages (1770-1782).
This file is a Microsoft spreadsheet, (.xls format, name= "slavingsummary.xls" in a newly-made directory, "guides".)-
The format for the layout of the data on the spreadsheet is given with headings
which read (from left to right) as;
Lloyd's date (d/m/y),
Vessel,
Master (captain),
Of (ship's home base),
From/At,
Via, (going by ports various),
For/At (destination/delivery point),
Slaves (number of, not given in all entries),
Remarks (annotations, brief).
View/download the file here (it is 386kb): SlavingSummary
Theme Song
(3) Below you can click to a theme-song file for the website.
Play a theme song for this website (available only with Internet Explorer, not with Firefox).
(? Check your sound volumes
on your machine first. Sound will probably play only via the browser, Internet
Explorer, depending on your settings.)
So, depending on your settings, for any second hearing, simply refresh your browser! Voila!
At right is a graphic named "greenbird.gif"; it is the motif for
the sound file given here, the Beatles' song (two minutes only) from their Revolver
album, And Your Bird Can Sing, (via a MS .wma file).
We greatly
admire the lead guitar work! Voila! Yet another timeless Beatles' masterpiece!
The greenbird image here has been colour-modified from
an original b/w image by artist Stephen Bobroff, in the book, p. 146, Alan Aldridge
(Ed.), The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. London, Macdonald Unit 75, 1969.
© Permission to play the sound has not been sought from Beatles' estates,
or anyone else, and we hope they don't mind, etc. -Ed
Notes on using the shipping database
(4) Netsurfers will not be able to contribute to the database, or modify it in any way, but they should feel free to consult it and/or to suggest listings to the webmaster. The final database is based around a voyages table which references to a ships table and a people table (captain's name, owners' names).
Initially, however, not all the names associated with voyages matched names placed in the people table. This situation will be improve in time. Some detailed fields are for information on births, deaths, spouses (Spouse1, Spouse2), etc.
Care has been taken with the database design for provision of fields for explanatory notes and hyperlinks to interesting websites (including genealogy websites). Graphics/photos of ships and people can also be added if the database operator wishes. Extra work planned for the database will mean it can include "distiguisher" fields which can relate first name, last name, to a person distinguisher, such as "name the third" or Junior or Senior, or a military/naval rank, or an honorific. The database should work acceptably with both Internet Explorer (Microsoft) and Firefox (Mozilla, open source browser) but has not yet been tested for other browsers.
Notes on the data model now in further development
The developers' discussions of the data model decided that the central item for the database was a ship voyage (not a ship name, or a ship name associated only with a departure date). Ships also have an arrival date. Or, arrival dates plural if a ship makes multiple calls on its voyage/way home. Of course, any voyage duration can be torn apart by a shipwreck or some diaster, which obviously will intrude on the owner's or captain's original business plan.
And here, a point. Particularly with the case of convict ship voyages to Australia (which suffered surprisingly few shipwrecks or disasters), it has seldom been recognised that the transport's owners utilised both a voyage plan (a navigational/geographic factotum) and a business plan, or decision. Two of the non-naval ships of Australia's First Fleet were reconnaissance vessels for England's whaling industry (the South Whale Fishery). This website's research team has devoted considerable time to investigating the owners of those two ships, and their commercial motives for wishing to bother with making any such voyage into the Pacific in 1788, and if the pun will be pardoned, this has sent the researchers into uncharted waters.
Ships' voyages, including slave ships, could also suffer mutiny. The most famous ship with commercial motives for its voyage, interrupted by a mutiny, is of course, HMAS Bounty, Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and all that. So the data model was worked-around the duration of any ship's voyage. Durations of voyage can vary for rational or irrational or chancy reasons, which should be recognised.
Given that the research team is interested in shipowners and their commercial activities, the career of any ship voyage can thus be associated with both a captain's name (a prime identifier of any voyage) and owners' commercial decision-making, as well as with the more mundane shipping details such as tonnage, type of design (brig, barque), etc.
Obviously, multiple listings of any shipowner's name(s) will help to sketch a picture of that owner's commercial activities, regardless of which ships captains he employed.
And so the research team behind the presentation of the database hope that users of the database will find the listings presented in a more refined context than is usually offered by shipping registers.
What is the physical capacity of the database, how many listings can it carry? We have literally not yet had time to ask. Is use of the database available for sale? Yes. Questions of that nature should be directed to Graeme Wright, Uralla, Australia. Feel free to contact the webmaster on this. - Dan Byrnes
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