Our museums and galleries house fascinating collections, from living bugs to The Beatles, fine art to photography, the Titanic to ancient Egypt.

Follow us online: Facebook Twitter Flickr

National Museums Liverpool Blog - Disasters at sea and elsewhere

 Friday, February 25, 2011

Disasters at sea and elsewhere


Friday 25 February 11

Bound volume of newspaper reports September 1934Lloyd's Weekly Casuality Reports, September 1934

Lorna, Assistant Librarian at the Maritime Archives & Library, has been cataloguing our collection of Lloyd's Weekly Casualty Reports, which are useful sources of information for shipwrecks and other maritime mishaps.  We can tell something is up because she keeps laughing and reading bits out.  While the early Casualty Reports, ours start in 1890, are a fairly straightforward list of ships that have been wrecked, burnt or otherwise damaged, in later years they become more widespread in their tales of woe including, in September 1977, entries regarding a fire in a glove factory in Aberdeen and the kidnapping of a stamp collectors' daughter in Italy.  The editors appears to have become rather ghoulish.  However, the thing to remember when using Lloyd's records, which include many of the great sources for maritime research, is that it's all about insurance, not about collecting information for ship enthusiasts or family historians. If you had just been asked to underwrite a glove makers you would need to know that there had been a serious fire in no less than the 'largest manufacturers of knitted gloves in the western hemisphere' and if you're setting rates for life insurance, kidnappings are important. All that being said, I do have a suspicion that their correspondents were having a competition to see which is the daftest thing they can get published - for example a reported 'near riot' on 4th September 1977 at a music festival in West Germany caused by the 'absence of some well-known groups'.  1970s German rock music, I think I'd have rioted.


Posted by Sarah | 25/02/2011 12:58   | Comments [0]

Post a comment

All comments require the approval of the site owner before being displayed.
Name
E-mail

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):

Live Comment Preview

By posting your comment you have agreed to the terms and conditions below

Terms & Conditions

National Museums Liverpool welcomes your comments. All comments are moderated and will only be published if they adhere to the following standards. The editors reserve the right not to publish comments which they deem inappropriate:

  1. Our Maritime Archives and Library deals with enquiries relating to all aspects of Liverpool's maritime history including ships, passengers, seafarers, shipping and maritime companies. Their web pages describe the information they hold and how to get in touch, along with useful research guides on popular subjects such as tracing seafaring or emigrant ancestors. Please do not submit requests for this type of information as comments on this blog.
  2. Specific enquiries, as opposed to comments on blog posts, should be submitted using our contact system. Please note that we do not provide valuations.
  3. Posts must be text only and under 1000 characters (including spaces). Html code, links or multimedia are not permitted.
  4. We will aim (but do not guarantee) to publish approved comments within 72 hours although there may be delays over weekends and during public holidays.
  5. Please do not post anything that is libellous, abusive, obscene, prejudiced or unlawful.
  6. Do not contravene any rights to privacy (such as personal contact details), copyright or trademark legislation.
  7. Please do not spam or post commercial promotional information.
  8. By posting you agree that you are wholly responsible for the content that you post. Although the blog comments will be moderated National Museums Liverpool will publish comments in the good faith that they comply with the law.
  9. By posting your comment you agree that it may be reproduced by National Museums Liverpool online or in print without compensation.