how are seamen listed in the census?
I suspect that my Grandfather, who was born in 1891, was at sea for the 1911 census as he is not listed with the rest of the family. He would be age 19. I do have records of him on crew manifests in later years.
Thank you.
Rob
Best Answer
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"How are seamen listed in the census?"
If you've looked for him using all spelling variants - the answer is that he probably isn't in.
I had a look round and found a couple of responses to previous Rootschat queries from Stan Mapstone (my italic emphasises below):
1) "Any attempt to describe the enumeration of the merchant marine in the censuses is a very complex business. In "Making Sense of the Census" Edward Higgs takes four pages to cover the subject. You need to know which Census. The enumeration of the crews and passengers of merchant ships who were on board on census night is complex and has to be treated on a census-by-census basis.
"For example the instructions for the 1861 Census meant that only British Ships in the coasting or home trade which arrived in port within a certain period, or British ships in the foreign trade which were in port on census night, should have been issued with ships' schedules. British foreign-going ships in foreign waters before 8 April should not have been given schedules. Some ships which were in the Baltic and Mediterranean on census night and appear in the schedules were apparently foreign-going vessels which were mistakenly given schedules by the custom officers."
2) "British Ships in the coasting or home trade which arrived in port within a certain period, or British ships in the foreign trade which were in port on census night, were issued with ships' schedules.
"On the 1911 Schedule for Vessels, the instructions were [that] if the vessel was on voyage at midnight on April 2nd, to describe the place of mooring on arrival in port. When the vessel arrived in port, the census schedule was handed to a Customs Officer. In the 1901 census this applied to all British and foreign vessels engaged in the UK coasting trade which arrived in port from the 1st April to the 30th June, and I assume was the same in 1911."
Stan distinguishes Home & Coastal shipping from "Foreign". Exactly what drove the census distinction of those trades, I'm not sure, but there is a distinction in the way that Crew Lists are compiled that may be the same. Essentially, a "Foreign-going" ship compiled one Crew List per voyage (from the UK and back to the UK), while Coastal shipping, doing much more frequent voyages, did theirs periodically. Cunard etc ships almost certainly fall into "Foreign".
Now if you think about the practicalities of distributing and collecting census forms, it's possible to distribute and collect census forms to and from coastal shipping if you're happy for the process to take 3 months (as per the 1901 census). However, when you think that some vessels in the foreign trade were sailing ships that took 2 or 3 years to complete their round trip back and forth across the oceans, picking up trade here and there ... well, it's impractical, isn't it, to still be collecting census data 2y after the nominal date?
My best guess, therefore, would be that
- If a foreign-going ship like a Cunarder was in port on the census night, it would be issued with a census form and it would be completed;
- If a foreign-going ship was not in port that night, then they'd forget about it.
Hence, that's why I say that if you can't find him - he's probably not there.
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Answers
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Most times you can find military census information by using keywords like military, naval or name of base or ship
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Thank you but he wasn't military he worked for a shipping line. Probably White Star or Cunard. I know that in later years he was on RMS Scythia which was Cunard.
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Thank you for the comprehensive answer. Very helpful.
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