How we research maritime history

Every fact is tied to a source, and every open question stays open.

Where the records come from

• City of Gloucester Lost at Sea register (PDF dated July 29, 2010), compiled by the city's Archives Committee. We transcribed all 6,626 entries and publish the full index, searchable and downloadable, with every entry linked to the city's own page. The city says the register is incomplete.
• D. F. Lamson, History of the Town of Manchester (1895). Public domain. We transcribed its 131-line lost at sea list and checked it against the page images.
• The Fishermen's Own Book (1882) and other public domain books and newspapers, including Library of Congress Chronicling America pages.
• Federal records, such as Maritime Administration vessel status cards, Coast Guard reports and congressional documents.
• Down to Sea (downtosea.com), a long-running private site about Gloucester's losses. We use it only as a research lead and credit it as one. We do not copy its accounts; we follow its references to original sources.
• Collections that require permission, including the Essex Shipbuilding Museum's vessel list and the Cape Ann Museum's archives, are used only for private research until permission is granted, and never in our pages, downloads, lessons or images.

Rules we follow

• Roles are distinct. A person may be a victim, survivor, captain, crew member, owner or rescuer. We record only what a source documents and never call someone a victim without evidence.
• Places are distinct. Residence, birthplace, homeport, building place and incident location are separate facts. A wreck off Rockport does not make the crew Rockport residents.
• Events are distinct. Grounding, sinking, disappearance, rescue and a later total loss decision each get their own date.
• Dates keep their precision. Exact, month only, year only and disputed dates are labeled. A date recorded in a register may be a sailing, last-seen or loss date.
• Names keep their spellings. We show every variant as written and never merge two people or two ships because their names match.
• Counts are careful. The number of names indexed for a vessel is not its crew size. We publish a crew count only when a source documents it.
• Conflicts are shown. When accounts differ, we print each version, say how we resolved it or say that it is unresolved.
• Verified means checked. A fact is marked verified only when an official or primary source states it or two independent sources agree.
• The editor approves. No record, anniversary or story is published until our editor approves it.
• No invented images. We never present generated images as historical photographs, and we publish historical images only with documented rights.
• Respect. We write plainly about loss, without sensational detail, and we leave out recent losses where families may still be grieving unless a family asks us to include them.

Corrections

We correct errors openly. Changes to a record are logged with the original wording kept. Send a correction or addition.

Reuse

Our records are free to reuse with credit under our Free Access and Attribution Policy, subject to each source's own terms, which every resource page lists.