Thanks Richard. I belong to the Queensland Family History Society, and one of our projects is indexing shipping lists for Customs department from our National Archives. My specific task is proofreading what our volunteers have indexed. It is very definitely not an A. B. on that list, although my experience suggested to me that it probably meant that. If I index it as E. B.. then very likely people would think our work was sloppy and was a transcription error. In cases like that, I like to add comments to show alternatives or explanations. Thanks for the Ancestry reference. Thank you for the information about the word Kok. It may be that whoever filled out the Arrival List wrote an E in mistake for an A. They were all probably quite relieved to be at the end of this voyage which took 130 days from New York to Brisbane. There's an interesting newspaper article about that voyage https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper [1], and use the search terms Esperance 1893 and New York. Bev ----- Original Message ----- From: richard.natvig@ahkr.uib.no To:<mariners@rootsweb.com> Cc:"Bev Bonning" <kosan@optusnet.com.au> Sent:Wed, 08 Apr 2015 11:08:10 +0200 Subject:Re: [MAR] crew occupations Hi Bev, is it possible that E. B. is a transcription error? I found a Danish ship Esperance arriving from Brisbane at Sydney, 29 Jan. 1894. On board were the Master (and his wife), the 1st and the 2nd Mates, the Steward, four ABs (able seamen) and five OS (ordinary seamen). My source is Ancestry.com. New South Wales, Australia, Unassisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1826-1922 [database on-line] (http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=nswunassisted&so=2&pcat=IMG_PASSLISTS&gss=angs-c&new=1&rank=1&gsln_x=XO&msady=1894&msapn__ftp=Brisbane%2c+Queensland%2c+Australia&msapn=93395&msapn_PInfo=8-|0|1652397|0|5027|0|30096|0|0|93395|0|&_F0005868=esperance&_F0005868_x=1&MSAV=1&uidh=iu2) Kok, by the way, is also Danish for cook or steward. In Dutch, able seaman is vol matroos, ordinary seaman is matroos. kind regards, Richard ------------------------- Email sent using Optus Webmail Links: ------ [1] https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper