From Woolwich to the web: The journey of digitisation

The collection holds an estimated 1.1 million documents relating to ships that Lloyd’s Register classed from the 1830s to the 1960s. This collection holds a plethora of document types, from handwritten correspondence and telegrams, to survey reports, ship plans and photographs. In total, 572 metres of shelving is needed to store the collection; the equivalent of six times the height of Big Ben.

Offering an incredible source of information on maritime history and trade, the collection is a great resource for research in a number of areas (maritime history, ancestry, cartography, economic). By digitising the collection, the Heritage Centre is maximising the material’s educational potential to reach a global audience. Offering these resources for free will help us fulfill the Centre's mission to increase understanding across the world of the importance of maritime safety to a sustainable and efficient ocean economy.

Originally, the collection was held at White Lion Court after Lloyd’s Register’s then Chairman, Thomas Chapman, ordered that the Society retain its ship plans and survey reports. When Lloyd’s Register moved to 71 Fenchurch Street, the collection followed, before later being stored at the Royal Museum Greenwich’s Brass Foundry in Woolwich.

Today, the collection is stored at a specialist archive facility in Woolwich. The space also houses the Heritage Centre’s project team. The digitisation team Max Communications, are close by and having the digitisation specialists working so closely that potential risks are mitigated, including transportation damage, loss, pest control and more.

First and Famous was the Heritage Centre’s earliest digitisation project. Acting as a pilot for the wider digitisation project, Project Undaunted, First and Famous concerned documents for significant ships that were classed by Lloyd’s Register in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The pilot focused on ships that were either famous (Mauretania and Cutty Sark) or were innovative (Fullagar – first fully electrically welded ship). In total, over 6,900 documents were digitised as part of the pilot; all of which are now available here.

The Mauretania, and her sister ship Lusitania, were designed by Leonard Peskett, Cunard’s senior naval architect who had also worked on the Aquitania and Carmania. She was built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson in Newcastle. Her design meant that she would be able to travel at no less than twenty-four knots and, to make her more powerful, she was equipped with new turbine technology and a fourth funnel.

Mauretania was launched by the Duchess of Roxburghe in 1906. At the time, she was the largest moving structure ever built, measuring five-feet longer than her sister ship. She operated on the Southampton-Cobh-New York City route. Her interior featured Edwardian style furnishings and décor and included a relatively new concept of lifts. On 16 November 1907, Mauretania departed Liverpool on her maiden voyage. On the return voyage she captured the record for the fastest eastbound crossing of the Atlantic. Two years later, she was awarded the Blue Riband for the fastest westbound crossing, a record that would stand for more than twenty years.

The huge engines of the Mauretania and Lusitania plagued both ships with vibrations making the second and third-class areas uninhabitable. White Star’s new Olympic Class vessels, Titanic, Britannic and Olympic were launched a few years later. Larger than Mauretania and offering more luxuries and amenities including swimming pools, Turkish baths, gyms and squash courts.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the Mauretania was requisitioned by the government as an armed merchant cruiser, but her size and fuel consumption made this impossible. She was transformed into a troop ship and used during the Gallipoli Campaign. Her speed enabled her to avoid U-Boats. She was later transformed into a hospital ship with distinctive white funnels and red medical crosses. In 1918, she was repainted with dazzle camouflage.

Mauretania returned to civilian service in 1919 but was slower than before the war. Her speed record was broken by the German liner, Bremen. In 1930 she became a dedicated cruise ship. Outdone by newer competitors, when White Star Line merged with Cunard in 1934, Mauretania was considered surplus and withdrawn from service. Her scrapping in 1937 was met with an outcry from many of her loyal passengers including Franklin D Roosevelt.

Many of Mauretania’s furnishings and interiors were saved and still adorn several buildings and locations across the world and her legacy has inspired poetry, music, literature and films.

The Dunedin was built by Robert Duncan and Co. at Port Glasgow for the Albion Line and was launched in 1874. Her first trip to New Zealand took place in 1874 under Captain Whitson. All seven of her trips carrying emigrants from England to New Zealand were completed in under 100 days, an impressive feat for the day.

In the nineteenth century, due to the increasing population of Britain, local meat was in short supply causing prices to increase. It therefore was vital that Britain was able to import meat from countries like New Zealand. New Zealand, meanwhile, was seeking to establish a meat export industry thus increasing trade and income and so a refrigerated ship would be mutually beneficial to both countries.

In 1881, Dunedin was fitted with a Bell-Coleman refrigeration machine. The machine would cool the entire hold, even in the warm climate of southern New Zealand.

On 15 February 1882, the Dunedin sailed with 4,331 mutton carcasses, 598 of lamb, 22 pig, 250 kegs of butter as well as quantities of hare, pheasant, turkey, chicken and 2,226 sheep tongues. On the voyage, the crew noticed that the cold air was not circulating properly. To save the cargo, Captain Whitson crawled into the hold and sawed extra holes. He almost froze to death in the process, but his crew were able to save him. 98 days later, the cargo, the ship and her crew arrived safely in London. The meat was sold at Smithfield market by John Swan and Sons. There were concerns about the quality of the meat due to the experiment however, butchers were impressed by the size of the animals, and only one carcass was condemned.

The experiment had been a success which meant that New Zealand would lead the way in the refrigerated meat industry. Within five years, 172 shipments for frozen meat were sent from New Zealand.

The Centre’s digitisation partner, Max Communications have been working with the Heritage & Education Centre since 2015. Max Communications first worked on the pilot digitisation project, First and Famous and were later selected as HEC’s digitisation provider for the entire historic Ship Plan and Survey Report collection. The main digitisation project began in early 2018 and has already made 200,000 documents available online.

We have worked on many interesting and important heritage projects for over twenty years but it has been rare that the significance of the collection and dedication and enthusiasm of the collection’s staff, their governing board and senior management have been so well aligned, both in vision and execution. It is truly a privilege to play a part in such an important project.

David Cordery, Managing Director of Max Communications 

We used the following methodology to digitise the collection:

1. Numbering: Prior to a document being captured, it is numbered with a unique reference code, ensuring it is tracked and can be synced with its catalogued data and imagery.
2. Capturing: The document is then picked up by the capture team. Specialist camera rigs have been designed to photograph every document size, from small telegrams to massive ship plans.
3. Indexing and Splitting: The document images are then uploaded to Themis - Max Communications’ browser based tool for digitisation management and metadata indexing. A document’s images are split and given page numbers. This is then combined with the unique reference code so that the cataloguers can map the correct metadata for a document on a specific page.
4. Transcribing: Now that the digitised documents are organised with their metadata, cataloguers transcribe the information contained within the documents directly from a digitised image.
5. Quality Assurance: Catalogued documents are then assessed by the Max Communications quality assurance team. Checks include correct document numbering is used, changes in ship name map accordingly and that the digitised images are of good quality. If any issues are raised by the Max Communications QA team, members of the Centre’s digitisation team provide support and clarification.
6. Digital Preservation: The final digitised document and data is then transferred into the digital preservation server and then the Centre’s Content Management System (CMS). From the CMS, the documents are published to the HEC website and made freely available to a worldwide audience for research

In order to properly store and manage the digitised documents, a bespoke collection and content management system (CMS) was built. This CMS stores individual document metadata as well as the photographs of the scanned documents. The system then transfers this information to the live version of the Heritage & Education Centre website.

The website, launched in January 2019, hosts all of the Centre’s digital resources, library catalogue, blogs, event information and much more. 

The Heritage Centre is continually committed to opening access to all of our resources. Over the coming years, wider digitisation projects will bring to life archived data and material.