Hi Joan I spent a few months tracking down my gg-grandfather, James Wood, who was captaining steamships out of the Humber in the 1830s. It also drew me into looking at the other early pioneers in steamships on the Humber. I downloaded the Lloyds Registers for the years before 1850 and I used the lists of shipping movements as published in the local papers. I'm pretty sure they were supplied by Lloyds. I soon found out that the two sources of info were barely alike. The Lloyds lists were often out of date in respect to the captain, some ships were not registered even though there was evidence that they were sailing between Hull and Hamburg regularly and I even found instances of where a captain was in charge of more than one ship! The St George Steam Packet Company was a concern that seemed to be very cavalier with registering ships - very few of their Hull ships seemed to make it onto the Register. In fact they were passing themselves off in the Irish Sea as a different company with a name that implied they were a government concern (I can't remember the exact name at the moment- I have it somewhere on my computer!). This led to questions in the House of Commons about this unacceptable practice! It seems that the early lists were as good as the info supplied by the shipping owners. Some was good, some was indifferent and some was non-existent. Usually the Register lagged a year or two behind the facts. A change of captain was seen immediately in the shipping movements but would not appear in the Registers until at least a year later. I have no experience of researching them after 1840 - hopefully they became more reliable. Regards Peter Holford On 28/06/2011 01:11, Joan Fawcett wrote: > has anyone any experience as to how reliable Lloyds Shipping Registers were > ? > > My dilemma is this: > > I am chasing James Dillon, who in 1827 was in command of the ENTERPRIZE / > Enterprise, 151t, Heaviside owner. > Dillon took the vessel from London to Bombay via Deal, with a supercargo who > took over the command of the vessel once they got to Bombay. > > > From 1828 neither Dillon nor the Enterprise can be found in Lloyds or other > India shipping records (online at least). > And in 1828 a vessel called the Enterprize was wrecked enroute from Bombay > to Pondicherry (her master's name was Cook). > And from 1828 I cannot find Dillon in command of other vessels. > > But whilst researching in the 1830's Lloyds registers, I found that in 1834 > the Enterprize suddenly shows up again on the Lloyds registers, with James > Dillon in command, 152 tons, J. Allan as her owner, and of the port of > London, but no other details for this and subsequent years. > > With a bit of research I found that in 1834 the societies who published the > Register Books of shipping annually finished up, and this new (and > subsequent) editions were > LLOYDS REGISTER OF BRITISH AND FOREIGN SHIPPING, established 1834. > > > So, did the Enterprize keep function with Dillon as master and simply escape > the attention of the Lloyds registers from 1828 - 1833, or, when this new > LLoyds began in 1834, were they accessing/using outdated ships > registers/information ? > > > cheers > Jenny Fawcett > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MARINERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message