“The Ever-Living, Ever-Working Chaos of Being”: Global Tales of Shipboard Life and the “Particular Instance” Paper Problem

The first Records Administration Officer of the Public Records Office, John H. Collingridge, knew the delicate balance that needed to be struck between public interests, public records, and “the amount of storage space which can reasonably be provided at public expense.” In the midst of the wholesale reorganization of the PRO in the 1950s, he and the other archivists had to decide what to do with the enormous quantities of what they called “particular instance” papers. Whole lots of documents, going back a hundred years, were up for incineration, among them thousands of boxes of Crew Agreements – contracts signed by seafarers as the beginning of each voyage – dating to the height of Britain’s maritime predominance. Though unable to ensure their survival, Collingridge didn’t doubt their value: “‘History,’ as Carlyle said, ‘is the essence of innumerable biographies.’”

There is a dramatic tale to be told of the rescue of these documents from destruction, interwoven with the rise of public interest in genealogy and the promise of historical methods foreseen in technologies-yet-to-come. Yet the problem which threatened their survival decades ago presents difficulties to professional historians – not so much for family historians. What balance can be struck between these often-fragmentary papers, full of ‘particular instances’ and often short on continuity, and the cohesion needed for academic histories? This talk will discuss what has been made of these papers, the ways in which they can tell historical stories of global significance, and the promise of public-facing and public-interactive projects with today’s technologies. These documents hold the key not just to (quite literally) a million revelatory microhistories, but to the hitherto-hidden subaltern strata of shipping, and the unseen sinews of global empire: the people, ships, and journeys which defined imperial power.