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Legacy of £100,000 to fund Whitby muster rolls project
THE legacy of a Whitby man will fund a £100,000 project to restore rare records which give a unique insight into the town's seafaring past.
The Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society has purchased the Muster Rolls of the Whitby Merchant Seamen's Hospital thanks to a substantial grant from the Thomas WV Roe Deceased Trust Fund.
Mr Roe was jet curator of Whitby Museum and died in 2007, leaving a 1m bequest to the society which runs the museum.
The documents were discovered in the 1980s in the attic of the Whitby Merchant Seamen's Hospital Houses in Church Street and were deposited with the society for safekeeping.
They represent 71 years in the history of the town's population and its ships and have been hailed as a rare survival of records relating to merchant shipping by the National Archives.
They begin in 1747 and continue up to 1818 providing an unbroken record of almost 4,500 rolls.
The documents list the names of the crew often with their age, place of birth, the port where and when they enlisted, when they left their ship along with its name and the name of the vessels' owners.
Honorary librarian and archivist at Whitby Museum, Christiane Kroebel, said: "Their importance to Whitby cannot be understated."
The muster rolls were the result of an Act of Parliament in 1747 to support maimed and disabled seamen as well as their widows and children.
One of its provisions was that every sailor over 14 years old was to contribute sixpence per month.
The fund was administered in town by the Whitby Merchant Seamen’s Hospital which was founded in 1675 to assist distressed seamen and for the relief of their widows and the education of their children in the town.
It still maintains a number of almshouses in Church Street for the benefit of seamen and their families today.
Although the rolls are in remarkable condition after all these years, they require extensive conservation work so they can be made available to researchers.
Neither the Whitby Merchant Seamen’s Hospital Houses nor the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society were able to undertake the conservation costs and Mrs Kroebel said the 100,000 has not only paid for the rolls but will also be used to conserve them for generations to come.
She said: “The conservation of the rolls will take place over the next several years, both here at Whitby Museum, using our new conservation room and at the county archives’ office.
“We are working with the county conservator, who will train volunteers to undertake cleaning and repair of a part of the collection, while the more difficult and fragile rolls are conserved in the conservator’s laboratory in Northallerton.
“Over the next six months, we will be looking for volunteers, who are interested in learning about paper conservation and are willing to give half a day each week to work on this project.
“It is very delicate work and needs precise attention to detail as the rolls require cleaning and minor repairs to the paper to be made.”
Following the conservation work, the next stage will be to photograph each roll which will then be transcribed so they can be indexed and the information made available online, something which will certainly be of interest to people wanting to trace their family history.
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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