Bath Spa Student program

Created on 07/04/14 by JW

Purpose: To provide information for students on the Bath Spa Humanities at work program. Through this program you will learn how to transcribe some 17th century documents, edit a wiki, research and write about different aspects of the documents and projects.

Week 1

Background Knowledge

Read through the Introduction to the High Court of Admiralty as background to the HCA documents. This will explain what the documents are about what they look like and give you some examples of the writing you will be reading. These are legal documents and so legal language is used, there is also some repetition of phrases which you will learn to recognize.

There is also an article that you can read outlining what was going on in Britain at the time the documents were being written. This was written by another student Rachel carter.

Tasks to complete for your ibook

1. Read though the introduction on the Online Training Activities and some of the transcriptions for HCA 13/72, here is a link to a Case about a ship called New England Merchant, the first statement is by a Richard Brogan - if you read through it you will find it mentions things like English stile referring to the English Calender, and you will see we are transcribing it as it is written using 17th Century spellings. More detail about this is found in the links in the Online Training Activities.

2. To gain some background knowledge read through [1], write a brief summary.

3. Read the following page to find out about the calenders used at the time [2]

Read up on 17th century – who was in power? Religious ideas, What was going on in Europe?

SKYPE call to discuss progress with facilitator.

Week 2

Palaeographical skills

This week you will start to develop your palaeographical skills. At first the pages are likely to appear incomprehensible but with practice they will soon start to make sense. One tip, practice little and often is better than leaving long gaps between looking at pages.

Start by reading through the Online Training Activities Task 1 getting started have a go at some of the tasks. You could record your early transcriptions in your ibook, and compare to the model transcription. Are there any letters or phrases that your find more or less difficult? The tasks set for your ibook this week are to help you develop your vocabulary for the documents you will be reading, they often refer to parts of a ship and it is useful to have some idea of what they are.

Tasks to complete for your ibook

1. Label image details from [3]

2. Read Blog on nautical terms [4]

Week 3 - 5

Palaeographical skills & Wiki skills

Now you have some background knowledge about the documents we would like you to concentrate on developing your transcription skills.

Aim to transcribe one page per week which will be allocated to you by your facilitator. Although it would be best not to do the second page until you have read through the first page with your facilitator.
you also need to upload any completed pages to the Wiki, your faiciltator will explain how to do this, below are some wiki tips to help you. Dont forget to use the wiki skills pages as well.

Whilst it is tempting to wait until you are sure of each word, you might get a better feel for the document if you read through the whole page transcribing those words you can and putting ?? in for the rest. By the time you get to the end you might find you can go back and fill in words you were unsure of first time round. Reading the transcription of the previous page or the following page if they have been done might also help give you a clue as to what the page is about.

Wiki Tips

At the top of each page there is an edit button, pressing this will enable you to start to edit a page. Once you have pressed it you will also see some Editing quick help at the bottom of the screen. If you are cutting and pasting your pages from word, it should be fairly straight forward, but you will need to put some things in bold by using the apostrophe key or highlighting the text and clicking on the B button at the top right hand side of the screen, you can preview your changes by pressing the preview button - when you are happy with the changes save the page. You can find more information about how to edit wiki pages and uploading your transcription on the wiki skills pages.

Remember to record evidence of transcriptions in your journal or ibook this could include screen shots of your transcriptions, along with any comments on things you found particularly difficult. Hopefully in a few weeks you will be able to look back and wonder at how much easier it is!!!

Weeks 6 - 9

Palaeographical & Wiki skills

During these weeks we will continue to work on your transcription skills by aiming to transcribe two pages, you also need to continue to upload any completed pages to the Wiki. You may be given pages in different handwriting which may be more difficult than the pages so far.

Within any volume there may be four and five different people writing the pages, and it would be useful for you to be able to read a variety of hands.
Having mastered what we think of as the easy pages (yes really!!), now is a good time to hone your transcription skills. Your facilitator will be able to give you some more difficult pages for you to try and transcribe, and a model transcription to see how you have done.

Weeks 10 - 14

Developing Research Skills
During the next few weeks in addition to your transcription we would like you to start doing some research on people or occupations mentioned in the HCA documents. The purpose of these is to help other people understand the documents and who these people were and what their lives were like. You need to research and produce 2 longer pieces of writing around the HCA documents. These could be;

a) A blog article - you might like to read some of the articles already written on our blog

• An article based around a whaling case [5]
• An article about Cannablism [6]
• An article about using google maps [7]
• An article by a previous transcriber [8]

b) You could research and write a mini biography about individuals appearing in the documents that could be put on the wiki to help the public understand the lives of 17th century sailors.

c) You could research and write about occupations that appear in the documents some of which may not exist today. You could research what training was required if any, what skills were needed.

Occupations that could be researched are:

1) Pewterer - this could be a good starting point [9]

2) Anchorsmith

3) Shipwrights - The Docklands History groups is looking for an article on this for their Symposium in Spring 2015. Some possible sources are;
[10]
[11]

4) Brewer

d) It would also be useful to write an introduction to the period 1650 - 1659 e.g. why Britain was not ruled by a monarch for much of this time, and what happened after Cromwell died. A good starting point would be here [12]. You could also include a little about the HCA documents some additional background reading could be The origins and Regulations of Eighteenth century British Privateering by David Starkey ib Bandits at Sea: A piracy Reader by C R Pennell (2001) - This may be in the University Library. There is also [13]