Portal:Crew/Intro

Crew Lists and Logbooks

A Crew List (‘Agreement and Account of Crew’) shows, for individual crew members, their name, year and place of birth, capacity, previous vessel served on, date of signing on and off the vessel.

An Official Logbook may contain information on medical and disciplinary matters that relate to the crew or the passengers. Together the crew lists and logbook may contain anything from four to more than 20 pages per voyage.

The important collection relating to the City of Adelaide is the British Registrar General of Shipping and Seaman series known as the Agreement and Account of Crew and Official Logbooks for British Empire Vessels, 1863-1938, 1951-1976. Its original textual material occupies many kilometres of shelving.

Archives Holding Crew Lists

The millions of documents that accumulated were all kept at the British Public Record Office (now known as The National Archives at Kew, London). However those for the period after 1860 became so embarrassingly large that they occupied many kilometres of shelf space. In 1971 they were dispersed to nearly fifty different regional repositories around Britain.

The National Archives retained all surviving documents prior to 1860, as well as a 10% random sample for the period 1863-1938.

The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London took the records for 1861-1862 and a further 10% sample – all the years ending in ‘5’.

Each county record office in Britain was then offered the lists for its local ports of registration. Some record offices have nearly complete holdings, others have only a sample of the lists, while some offices refused the offer altogether.

The Marine History Archive of the Memorial University at St John's, Newfoundland has a special interest in preserving materials relating to the history of sea-based activities in the North Atlantic. They accepted the rest of the collection, including those remaining from record offices which only took samples, and their holdings represent about 70% of the original documents.

Holdings for the City of Adelaide

Because a ship could change her name and registration over her lifetime, the records are filed under the unique Official Number as a British Empire registered ship, and the Year in which each voyage terminated in a British port.

City of Adelaide Official Number : 50036

Year	Documents	Location	Comment
1865	Crew List	National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
1866	Crew List and logbook	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1867	Crew List and logbook	The National Archives, Kew
1868	Crew List and logbook	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1869	Crew List and logbook	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1870	Crew List and logbook	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1871	Crew List and logbook	The National Archives, Kew
1872	Crew List and logbook	The National Archives, Kew
1873	Crew List and logbook	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1874	Crew List and logbook	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1875	not known	National Maritime Museum, Greenwich	could not be found *
1876	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1877	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1878	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1879	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1880	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1881	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1882	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1883	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1884	not known	not known	to be found **
1885	Crew List	National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
1886	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland
1887	Crew List	Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland

* This was the voyage on which the ship was grounded on Kirkcaldy Beach SA.

** If the documents for 1884 have survived, they may now be in one of 47 regional record offices around Britain.