Question

Shipping Line category for ships?  I usually find that I have the name of the ship and the shipping line and that is all.  Is it permissible to have a category called Ships by Shipping Line as a place to park such records?  Failing that, is there a database of shipping lines and the countries to which they belong?

Comments

By the way, nice looking profile for Mr. Barrow!

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Thanks.  That one took a lot of time, but it's an interesting one.

Answer 1

The ship category is already confusing, but I have not used it much myself. Seems "Shipping" is for Australia, while "Ships" is everything/everywhere else commercial?  

And [[Category: Ships]] covers:
1.1 Convict Transportation
1.2 Immigration Ships
1.3 Naval Ships
1.4 Sailings by Decade
1.5 Ships by Country
1.6 Ships by Decade
1.7 Ships by Name
 

Why not simply cross-reference or link categories as an alternative?

Comments

I have long seen the use of "Shipping" strictly for migrant ships to  Australia to be out of step. From the name, "Shipping" should really be under the "Industries" category, with "Ships" (and probably "Shipping Lines") each under "Shipping". However, with the huge number of migrant ships to Australia having the "Shipping" category, it seemed like too much work to rearrange things. (However, the last time I considered the issue was before I had ever heard about EditBot, so it might be doable after all.)

Answer 2

Malcom,

Interesting idea.  I had started down a similar path when working on railroads.  The  idea was was to create a hierarchy of companies.  What I discovered was that, at least in the United States, the relationships are worse than genealogy.  Companies were bought, sold and merged,often multiple times.

If we create a hierarchy of shipping companies I suspect we would have the same problem.  In addition ships are often renamed when they are sold, new ships of the same name are built and companies come and go.  

All of this said, I am not sure it would be worth the effort to connect the ships to companies.  However it might be useful to have more development of  more categories for ships.  The idea being that all of those on board a ship could be categorized together.  I doubt if there is a solid genealogy reason to do this, but it could be interesting, and a massive amount of work.

Comments

Agreed.  It is all complicated.  I find navigating round categories hard work.  It occurs to me we could have a way of viewing a hierarchy of categories along the lines of the Descendants view of a family tree.  It would mean working with the API.  I have a software background and could probably set it up, if only there were time.

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Regarding passenger line mergers, I just put in reciprocal links between the affected lines, and don't even try to build a hierarchy among them.

Regarding ship name changes, what I do is link up from the sailing to the category for the ship (where all the sailings under a given name link up to a category for that name), but then link from the ship category to the free-space profile for that ship, which I always name according to the name at launch. The free-space profile also gives all the names (and owners) the ship sailed under, and connects to all the appropriate categories, so the free space profile becomes the main point of reference for each ship.

Regarding the genealogical value of doing this, I started out doing this just because I wanted to know which ships my assorted ancestors took to get here. (I have this fantasy of getting scale models of each ship, and displaying them in my living room.) But after I'd been researching for a while, I discovered that some family members ended up marrying people who had sailed on the same ship, so those passenger lists can be helpful in sourcing people. I have also seen a few cases where Royal Navy officers ended up marrying the daughters of more senior officers they served under. At least in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Royal Navy seems to have had way more family connections between officers than I ever imagined.

Answer 3

 - hi Malcolm - ? have you thought of starting a 'space' page for your thoughts  - - that way you can add what you wish with your own 'conventions' before launching into 'categories' - - HMS ships have their own, but you may wish to List companies, and add ships with 1x: and 2x: to indent comments and profiles where found - -   =       https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?action=newspace  

I did this with my = Cottesloe Scout Group   until I was ready to create a profile etc. - - - Good thinking - john.a

Comments

Interesting suggestion.  Thanks.

Answer 4

There is an existing [[Category:Passenger Lines]], which, I suspect, should probably be paralleled by a [[Category:Freight Lines]], both of which could link up to [[Category:Shipping Lines]], which should, in turn, link up to [[Category:Shipping]]

Comments

It's not that easy to distinguish passengers and freight in the 19th C.

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Well, I wouldn't be all that bothered if we decided to go with a single category of [[Category:Shipping Lines]] linking up to [[Category:Shipping]], and thence to [[Category:Industries]], but that header text would need to be changed, and all the ships which are currently in [[Category:Shipping]] would need to be recategorised.