In a message dated 5/28/2011 12:01:16 PM Pacific Daylight Time, piers@ps-c.demon.co.uk writes: In the original ledgers, certainly in the early years, an appointment as mate was indicated by the vessel's name being underlined. Thanks VERY MUCH for your helpful reply, Piers. Hector and Gaelic are indeed underlined and Cuzco might be underlined (the xerox copy is faded), so it appears that my John Kelly was a member of the crew on these voyages. I can look into crew agreements to pin this down. Your point about steamers having sails at this time is well taken. I'd forgotten about that. Something else I pondered for a long time in these entries were notations that looked like "PP" following the ships' official numbers. I wondered if this might be a clue to Kelly's role on the ship but then decided it was actually "SS" for steamship. They are lower-case S's with long opening flourishes, making them look like P's. These hand-written documents are full of potential misdirection. Your help with interpreting them is (as always) much appreciated. Harold