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This website contains details of every ship built in Hartlepool and West Hartlepool from the 1830s to the 1960s when the last shipyards closed. The amount of information varies, but where possible includes: ship specifications, owners, Masters, crew lists, photographs, plans and any other information that helps build a full history of each vessel.
The voluneers operating the site are also seeking more information, and invite any relevant photographs, objects or simply memories of any Hartlepool-built ships.
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This website claims to be the largest collection of White Star and Titanic memorabilia in Europe. While it is very much a commercial site, with many advertisements, the information will be of significant value to those interested in the Titanic, or in White Star in general. It also covers RMS Olympic; HMHS Britannic; fine art; books; newspapers; and uniforms.
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The website presents online discussion of, and information, on cruise-liners. It has a 'current news' section (providing information and pictures on cruise-liners), a featured articles section and an archive section. Many, if not most, of the links available direct the user to a separate blog which includes information and pictures on the cruise-liners under discussion. There is also information on 'future ships' (i.e. ships which are currently under construction, or in the planning stages).
We’ve just added two fantastic new electronic resources to our collection. Both are created from holdings at the British Library, and complement Early English Books Online and the Times Digital Archive as primary source material in digital form.
The first is 19th Century British Library Newspapers, a great new resource that contains the digitised content of 49 influential newspapers from the 19th century. The titles are both national and regional, and include the Daily news (1846-1900), the Morning Chronicle (1801-1865) and the Liverpool Mercury (1811-1900).
The British Library also hosts its own version of
the database, which is free to search but you will have to pay-per-view to see the digitised articles. It’s worth looking at this version however, as it offers some good background essays, such as this primer on the Napoleonic Wars. Perhaps best of all though, are the entire runs of the
Graphic and the Penny Illustrated News on open access.
The second new resource is the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection. This resource includes newspapers, pamphlets and broadsides from the very beginning of serial publishing, all of which were collected by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) and are now held at the British Library. Most of the material is from London, but there are also English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from America, Europe and India. Titles include the Daily Courant (1702-1735) and the London Gazette (1666-1792). You can find out more about the Burney collection from the British Library website.
Both of these resources are available free of charge from the Library and E-Library here at the museum. If you would like to know more or arrange a introductory session, leave a comment or email me at library[at]nmm.ac.uk.
Renee (Digital Resources Librarian)
To coincide with the Museum’s North West Passage exhibition members of the Archive team will be holding three Archive Journey sessions in July. We’ll be talking about items from our Polar Exploration box and there will be plenty of opportunities to view original documents up-close and ask questions about the things that you see.
The sessions will take place on 13 July at 3pm, 22 July at 3pm, and 30 July at 11am and are free of charge. You’ll find us in the entrance to the North West Passage gallery and there is no need to book in advance. So if you would like to know why Thomas James decided to sink his own ship in 1631 or what Sir Ernest Shackleton thought about the scenic beauty of Antarctica why not come along?
Regular readers of the blog may be familiar with our Archive Journey sessions but if not you can read a bit more about them by clicking on the tag at the bottom of this post.
Richard (Assistant Archivist)
We are pleased to announce that six of our most popular Research guides have been revised and are available on our website, see http://www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/library/. Researched and written by the highly respected merchant naval historian and genealogist, Dr Christopher Watts, they have been updated to include new online resources such as those in DocumentsOnline at the National Archives and commercial websites. They also contain detailed information, including the NMM’s records of the deaths of seamen (C9 & C10). The six guides are:
Research guide A3: Tracing family history from maritime records
Research guide C4: The Merchant Navy: Sources for enquiries
Research guide C5: The Merchant Navy: Sources for ship histories
Research guide C9: The Merchant Navy: World War One
Research guide C10: The Merchant Navy: World War Two
Research guide H5: Lloyd’s: Registers held by the National Maritime Museum
We hope you find the new guides useful.
Eleanor (Head of Archive & Library)