GEN-EDITOR-L Archives

From: Sharon Sergeant <>
Subject: Mariner's Cd References
Date: 8 May 00 10:16:22 EDT

Hi,
I manage the Boston States Migrations web site and email list. In the course
of researching mariners between the eastern Canadian provinces and New
England/New York states, I found that the Ships & Seafarer's of Atlantic
Canada CD has a huge amount of worldwide mariner info.

Anyone writing article on mariner activities may be interested in looking at
the statistics we compiled for this CD coverage at
http://bostonstates.rootsweb.com/S&SCdstats.htm

Memorial University of Newfoundland created these databases (approximately
500,000 records) from a study on Atlantic Canada port registries and maritime
trade that was conducted some years ago. These databases also include a random
sample of other British port registry information.

While Atlantic Province ship specifications, shipbuilders, ship and managing
owners, master mariners, ports, voyages and crewlists provides dense material
for the Canadian ports covered, the details and patterns of worldwide mariners
and ports involved with the Atlantic Province ports has great breadth and real
depth in certain areas.

In addition to the worldwide statistic crossreference charts provided on the
web page, we have provided a downloadable zipped Word document of an index of
over 2000 Italian mariner surnames with their calculated birthdates and
birthplaces, if specified, that also illustrates the coverage.

Permission to excerpt information from the charts or analysis would be
granted, if you let me know what you would like to excerpt and where you would
like to use it. I may have corrections or other statistical summaries.
Articles could also provide hints for the patterns of transcription errors to
watch for, as well as hints for the rather cumbersome searches between the
various databases.

We have also compiled an everyname index of which databases the surname
appears in with calculated birthdates and birthplaces, if a One-name study
society would like to determine the depth of coverage for their members.
There are approximately 64,000 unique surnames with a number of spelling and
transciption issues. You can email me at for the stats on a
particular surname as that index is too large to post to the site. I can't do
specific lookups as I am still somewhat backlogged with prior requests from
the Boston States region. However, the surname index stats gives you a good
idea whether the Cd is a good purchase for your needs.

George Sanborn alerted me to this resource when he did the NEHGS review of
this CD. It is located in the July 1999 New England Historical and
Genealogical Register book review section pp. 370-372. I do not believe,
however, that the breadth of coverage and volume of data for non-Atlantic
Province researchers is widely understood. It seems likely that the sheer
volume of data makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. The CD contains
about 500 MB of data spread across several databases and the software has a
number of limitations for the crossreferencing tasks.

Let me know if you have any questions.

thanks
Sharon
http://bostonstates.rootsweb.com

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• Mariner's Cd References by Sharon Sergeant <>