Hi all, Can anyone help with info on our seafaring ancestors... 1838 - Ninian Stewart (Stuart) Fisheries Officer of Grobsness Delting, North Shetland died age 43yrs(assumed drowned/fishing vessel sunk) - six years after his son was born. He was one of three Fisheries Officers that lived in "Grobsness Haa". Other fisheries officers that lived in "Grobsness Haa" were - John Couper, Robert Cowie. "Grobsness Haa" was built in 1800 for George Barron, merchant. I can imagine being a fisheries officer in and around the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea would be pretty risky. 1879 - Ninian's son Robert Stewart (Stuart) aka Robert Charles aka Robert Bannatyne Stewart..born 1832 "Grobsness Haa", Delting, Nth Shetland - Sea Captain/Master Mariner - died age 47 on the 1st Nov 1879 at or off New Haven, Connecticut (presumed drowned/shipwreck). His wife Mary died 8 yrs beforehand, his son James would have been 15 yrs of age. 1862 he married 1862 Mary Kennedy Allan in London 1864 his son James Nicholson Stewart born Limehouse London (shipping port) 1871 his wife Mary died in Bow Bethnal Green (perhaps very impoverished?) Thank you Noni Brown

I don't think I've heard of this before so apologies if everyone else is already aware of it. I learnt today that the British Library are busy digitising a whole load of old newspapers, apparently quite separate to those available through Gale with which many of us are familiar. They are scanning 8000 pages a day, and pages are intended to be fully searchable. At this point there seems to be no date as to when the collection is likely to "Go live", except that it is expected to be Autumn 2011 and that they will launch with a million pages and expect to expand to four million within a couple of years. The project is in collaboration with findmypast, but I can find no mention on the website as to whether access will be free (as with the Australian Trove collection) or not. One suspects a subscription to findmypast will be required to repay what no doubt will be a considerable cost. As for coverage, they say they are planning to focus on events such as wars and particular geographical areas. This won't necessarily help our nautical or family history research much, at least at first (the cities they mention - Birmingham, Derby, Manchester, Nottingham, Norwich, Leeds and York, along with local titles from London boroughs - don't strike one as particularly nautical) and one hopes that they will be systematic about giving good coverage, but I guess they have to start somewhere; scanning 200-odd years of newspapers is a huge task. Hopefully it will grow to be an invaluable resource. See the website at www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk for further details, and to register to be notified of progress. Cheers Piers