Introduction'The British Board of Trade began a central index for merchant seamen on foreign voyages in 1913. During World War 1, the seamen's union successfully resisted attempts to make them liable for conscription, which was introduced for the UK apart from Ireland in January 1916. The origin of the seaman identity card scheme is in the manpower crisis caused by British Army casualties on the Western Front in spring 1918. The British Government extended conscription age limits and decided to check that registered merchant seamen were going to sea regularly. The original index cards are held in Southampton Civic Archives and cover a multinational workforce of 300,000 seamen. (CR10 series) All jobs and ranks are covered. Each card lists personal and foreign voyages detail for the seaman together with a photograph to match that on the seaman's identity card. The overall standard of the photographs is very good. The system operated from early September 1918 until December 1921. It included seamen in the home trade for the first time but very few of their voyages were recorded which suggests that this part of the reporting system was relaxed even before the end of World War 1 in November 1918. The system was simplified in 1922 with no photographs and home trade seamen excluded once more. In 2002 I found and used 50 of these CR10 cards for Rush born seamen as an important part of an exhibition I put on in Rush, County Dublin. One of my objectives was to coax the local community into giving me more information. The photographs of local seamen as young men proved to have tremendous drawing power for their children and descendants. I was delighted with the feedback of memories and documents. Father Kit Sheridan, who opened the exhibition, described the photos as 'visual DNA'. His grandfather, great uncle and great aunt's husband looked down on him. In late 2006 I decided to try to get details of all the Irish born seamen on to a database. I was fortunate that my wife Pat and younger daughter Jenny were prepared to join the research team. My brother, sister and sister-in-law joined us to complete the initial data collection in Southampton in November 2008. The final total will be around 23,000 Irish born seamen. We are now correcting some of our errors and omissions. |
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