Code the City 19

Since our service closed on 19th March, the archive has had to become more creative in the way in which we continue to operate. As a team, we have tried to keep up our online presence and part of this has been the arrivals transcription project. This has been an ongoing partnership between Code the City and Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives.

Part of the donation made by the Aberdeen Harbour Board was a collection of ledgers. The 151 arrival ledgers from 1831-1957 record the ship’s name, home port, master, the port which it has sailed from, the cargo and the day’s weather. They are a great way to understand how commerce in Aberdeen has change over time. Cargo entries in the 1831 ledger show coal, lime, ballast and timber, which suggests that building materials were in demand. In 1957 research gear and gas oil were more common. The registers can also reveal key trading and sailing routes. Ports such as Dundee, Faroe, Kirkwall and Hull are common occurrences, but the inclusion of locations of ships from as far afield as New York, Buenos Aries and Magadan on the east coast of Russia indicates that Aberdeen was an important global hub.

Although it would have been amazing to transcribe them all, this could have potentially taken years. Instead we chose a block from 1914-1920 which were particularly special as the clerk decided to create a day to day record of the events of the First World War which will allow us to see the impact of the conflict on the City. It will also form a great resource for researchers as we can identify where vessels were coming from, what they were bringing in and how the weather was on that day.

[Note from the 11^th November 1918 declaring the Armistice]

The project was created in conjunction with a local charity, Code the City, who aim to develop open data and digital skills. Transcription was originally intended to be part of the physical Code the City 19 (CTC19) event in April 2020 but in anticipation of the nationwide restrictions, it was decided to move entirely online. In the week before we were required to work from home, I photographed each individual page (all 649 of them) from the arrival registers from 1914-1920 and uploaded them to the Google Doc Excel system which had been set up by Ian Watt, Code the City CEO. This meant that we had a large amount of material which could be worked on for an extended period.

After creating a set of guidelines and helpful links, we invited the public to work on transcribing and checking entries from March 27th. As the online CTC19 event was scheduled for 11-12th April this allowed us two weeks to create enough data to be useful to the coders over the official weekend. The data which had been transcribed was used to create a website by coding enthusiast, Andrew Sage. His hard work means that we can now see information in a collated and organised way – this has been extremely useful to inform other transcriptions as well as understanding what information we have got. So far, we have managed to fully complete 1914 and are working through the rest of the years.

[The ‘on this day’ feature at http://www.tulip.asae.co.uk/]

The arrivals transcription project started as a great way to highlight an important time in the history of the Harbour which has always been a big part of Aberdeen. However, given current circumstances, it has also become a great opportunity to give people something to focus on whilst they are home.

If you are interested in contributing to the project, you can find more information at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gr-501asOIg-YLTWkkeX3iWwVR1ROnHfX4swNKinRUk/edit#gid=0