Posting on behalf of Pete Owens, Crew List Index Project. The Bridget/Budget discussion nicely illustrates several points about records of shipping. All of these records started out as hand written and transcription from them is never easy. That applies to everyone - with all respect to distinguished researchers, they are as prone to error as anyone else. What they record is NOT definitive. We and our CLIP transcribers have probably transcribed as many maritime records as anyone but we freely admit to errors in our transcription. We use several data-checking systems and any CLIP database record has been looked at by at least two people, but we still would not claim an error rate of much better than 1% on the more difficult records. We would be sceptical of anyone who claimed to do better, especially if they are working single handed. That 1% is still less than the discrepancy rate between sources used at the time, such as the Shipping registers, Appropriation Books and MNL, if you cross-check them. The Victorian clerks were themselves working from hand-written records, and made mistakes like anyone else. There's some circumstantial evidence that some of it was dictated from one clerk to another - discrepancies which are sound-alikes are common (Bridget/Budget is a good example). There are also examples where errors propogate through several editions of MNL and are then corrected, and it's not clear what sources were being used and what checking was done. The shipowners and masters who should have know best of all, were themselves quite flexible in their spelling of the name of their vessel, though they do seem to have got the ON right, most of the time. Printed sources of any sort are no more reliable just for being printed. Anyone who has read a newspaper report of an incident in which they have been involved will have been amazed at just how wrong the report can be. The same applies to online catalogues and databases - the catalogues of some major institutions crawl with obvious errors. It should be basic good practice to quote your source for every last bit of data you present - then other researchers can follow your trail. The approach we take with CLIP is to work from original sources as much as possible, make the most reliable transcription we can manage, always make clear what our source was, and make an image of the source available if we can (not all there yet, but we're working on it). We leave it up to others to enjoy the discussion as to what the vessel's name actually was. Best wishes Pete www.crewlist.org.uk

Hi Pete and listers, This is why I have gone on and on until I was satisfied the information was correct or at least something more concrete to work with. We genies always say you should have at least two example of record for the person or Ship whatever of interest. Edie >From Pete who sums it up nicely. It should be basic good practice to quote your source for every last bit of data you present - then other researchers can follow your trail. The approach we take with CLIP is to work from original sources as much as possible, make the most reliable transcription we can manage, always make clear what our source was, and make an image of the source available if we can (not all there yet, but we're working on it). We leave it up to others to enjoy the discussion as to what the vessel's name actually was. Best wishes Pete ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mick" <mick@irishshipwrecks.com> To: "Mariners List" <mariners@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 7:07 AM Subject: [MAR] Transcription Of Maritime Records > Posting on behalf of Pete Owens, Crew List Index Project. > > The Bridget/Budget discussion nicely illustrates several points about > records of shipping. >