Tools: Summer projects
Background
In week two of our summer programme we will introduce two collaborative research topics or projects, to run in tandem with our palaeographical work over the remaining nine weeks of the programme.
Jill Wilcox and Dr Philip Hnatkovich have both trialled mini collaborative research projects on last year's summer programme with members of their teams, and I would like to develop this idea further this year.
The potential outputs of this experiment might result in:
(1) An academic article and/or blog article and/or conference presentation on the process of collaborative research across academic/public history boundaries, to which participants might contribute as co-authors or reviewers.
(2) Synthesised collaborative research published on our wiki, and possibly resulting in the case of project A in an academic article and contributing in the case of Project B to a Radio Four script, currently being worked on by the freelance writer Lorna Bower.
The two projects will cut across the two teams, so that all nine summer programme participants have a chance to get to know each other and to benefit from each others experience and expertise.
Project A: Ship Economics
Project goal:
(1) To synthesise extensive but scattered primary source material already published on MarineLives wiki regarding the economics of mid-C17th commercial ships.
Methodology:
To be developed, but will require extensive searches of the MarineLives wiki using pre-identified (but flexible) search terms to discover, catalogue and synthesise material on a range of aspects of ship economics to better understand (a) capital costs (b) operating costs (c) revenues and other income (d) returns.
Implicit in the methodology will be an economic model of voyage and ship based economics. We have done a good bit of thinking about such a model, but this would now benefit from being tested with a few other interested people. It would also benefit from some contextual reading of early and mid-C17th accounting and marine instruction manuals and other practical and theoretical material from early/mid-C17th sources regarding accounting conventions and return on capital and other return measures.
See: Ship economics
Project B: The Three Silver Ships
The Three Silver Ships
Project goal:
(1) To create a timeline and contextual information regarding the infamous court case of the three silver ships which ran over a period of about eight years in the English High Court of Admiralty in the 1650s. This information would be of immediate use to Lorna Bower, who is working on a script for a forty-five minute Radio Four drama based on the Silver Ships court cases.
Background:
Three large ships (The Salvador, the Sampson and the Saint George) of supposedly Lubeck and Hamburg build and ownership were captured by the English in 1652 with highly valuable cargos of bullion. The ships were on their way from Cadiz with bullion from the Spanish West Indies going northwards. It was disputed in court as to whether the ships were bound legally for the Spanish Netherlands, or illegally for Amsterdam.
The case was endowed with political as well as commercial weight - the Protectorate was keen to have the bullion declared lawfull prize, but the Spanish government contested this. The many and varied court depositions and other English Admiralty (and English State Paper) records give very granular and highly colourful accounts of Seville and Cadiz, Hamburg and Lubeck, the Spanish Netherlands, the by-ways between the Spanish Netherlands and Amsterdam by which bullion could be smuggled overland and by canal, and the River Thames, where the ships and sailors were held following seizure. Thomas Violet, a rather dodgy goldsmith, was involved as an agitator on benhalf of the protectorate, and published a pamphlet pleading for reimbursement of his efforts, which supplements the HCA material on the MarineLives wiki.
See: sample witness statements below which could provide dramatic and narrative content:
Mariners on bullion ships
Christian Cloppenburgh of Hamborough Mariner Master of the shipp the Salvadore aged 44 yeares
Hance Ramke of Hamborough Mariner aged 40 yeares
English/Rotterdam merchant
Stephen Puckle of Eastsmithfeild neere London Merchant aged fifty nine yeares
Anglo-Spanish Jewish merchant on illegal bullion trade
Antonio Fernandez Caravashall of London Merchant aged 54 yeares
Three wonderfully incompetent spies for the Commissioners for Dutch Prizes
Abraham Johnson of the precinct of Saint Catherins neere the Tower of London Sailemaker aged 35 yeares
William Astell of the parish of Allhallows Barking London Chirurgeon aged 60 yeares
William Pembridge of the Parrish of Saint Magnus London Habberdasher aged 42 yeares
The Dutch wife of the sailmaker "spy" - wonderfully garrulous witness who says all the wrong things - plenty of comedy in her character
Magdalena Hendricks the wife of Abraham Johnson living in the Minories neere London aged thirty two yeares
Methodology:
To be developed, but again will require extensive extensive searches of the MarineLives wiki using pre-identified (but flexible) search terms to discover, catalogue and sythesise material on the silver ships.
