RESEARCH
FROM THE PORT OF GENOA TO THE AMERICAS
Notes for the creation of a database of the voyages initiated by ships departing from the Port of Genoa between the 19th and 20th centuries
1. Nautical Logbooks
The Archivio di Stato di Genova (ASG-Genoa State Archive) preserves 12.038 nautical logbooks, which belong to the vessels registered at the Port of Genoa during the period between 1883-1956 (another section of this archival deposit can be found at the Archivio della Direzione Marittima della Liguria- Maritime Head Office Archive of Liguria). Vessels registered within the maritime department of Genoa had to fill in four types of logbooks during navigation. The navigation logbook filled in by the captain and/or the officer in charge, contains route notes and data on the weather conditions and all the technical aspects of navigation. The cargo logbook had a detailed report on the nature, consistence, and movement of the goods on board. The engine logbook had to be filled in by the officer in charge to report observations on the state of preservation, maintenance and conduction of the engines and the boilers on board. The general events logbook was filled in by the captain, in accordance with R.D. no. 3612 of 17 December 1885, who had to note down important events during navigation, especially decisions taken during the voyage, the weather conditions, births, deaths on board, following proceedings established in the civil code, wills received at sea and the personal belongings and assets left by the deceased, the maritime and common crimes and offences committed by members of the crew and passengers, the punishment sentenced by the captain by virtue of disciplinary power, the actions of merit carried out by crew and passengers, as well as the illnesses and incidents on board, involving either crew members or passengers. A whole series of very precious information that helps to reconstruct the events of each vessel but also, and especially, of the many migrant passengers travelling to the American ports. An enormous heritage of unpublished documentary material that lends itself to scientific studies in different fields (social and cultural history, and also economic and navigation history) as well as to being exhibited in museums and didactic purposes.
From a still partial inventory (of 12.038 logbooks, 2400 must still be listed) we have been able to ascertain that the general logbooks amount to 1303. Among these, the oldest is the one written by the captain of the brigantine San Battistino dating back to 22 June 1886, while the most recent is the one belonging to the motor vessel Australia (1955). This figure, which makes reference to all the vessel logbooks, includes vessels that were not used for passenger transportation, but were vessels normally used on unknown routes with a research objective. The general logbooks are therefore a minority with respect to the other types of registers and constitute a series of records that are full of blanks. Different vessels, especially those belonging to the first period (from the end of the 1800s to the First World War), have very few general logbooks (for some, such as Nord America, Colombo, Regina d’Italia there is only one register), while for vessels and transatlantic ships in the following period, of great importance in maritime history, documentation is less blank (11 registers for the Augustus, 7 for Conte Biancamano, 9 for Giulio Cesare, 7 for Duilio and 5 for the famous Rex, to cite a few examples). It is therefore a question of documents that cover a time period that coincides with the history of Italian maritime transport and the most important migrant movement period, ranging from the small and less famous steamships to the great transatlantic ships that linked Genoa to the American ports between the two wars. Hundreds of unpublished letters that bring back to life hundreds of incredible, striking stories of vessels, passengers and sea voyages.
2. Voyages database
The Genoa State Archive (ASG) has financed and is carrying out a project to catalogue all nautical logbooks. The aim is to create a computer inventory (excel, office for windows) that will include the essential information of each logbook: the name and type of vessel (sailing ship, brigantine, steamship, motor vessel), the type of document (general logbook, navigation logbook, cargo logbook or engine logbook) and the chronological data included. Information is missing on the technical characteristics of the vessel (licence number, tonnage, ship owner etc.), the routes and especially ports of destination. Taking into account that not all vessels were on course for American ports and that among those that were many often changed route and destination, it has become necessary to carry out preliminary work to sort out and analyse documents (which has already been carried out to a great extent, at least for the period between 1880 and 1915) to find the effective number of vessels on voyage across the ocean. This has allowed us to determine the registers which contain the account of the voyages (return voyages) and define therefore the documentary corpus on which to create the database.
Creating an online database on nautical logbooks means to order a mass of documents, which are apparently a series, using the computer inventory of the Genoa State Archive (ASG) as a starting point and predisposing a work plan that foresees further development. A first phase, bound by human and financial resources, could be to insert all the general logbooks of a certain number of vessels in a database, without preventing the possibility of inserting other types of registers in a second phase or the vessels which were initially excluded.
An archive model of all the data included in the logbooks could be the one already used by different universities and foreign research centres (Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge) and the most important Italian universities (Rome, Milan, Pisa and Parma. The Department of Modern and Contemporary History of the University of Genoa has recently adopted this archive system in its laboratories as well as ALSP –Archivio Ligure della Scrittura Popolare-Popular Writings Archive of Liguria). It uses an open source software called DSPACE (technically an institutional repository) that can collect, preserve and manage documents in digital formats of various types (videos, images and texts). Apart from the technical aspects and the different archive models that could be adopted (these aspects could involve the experts who have worked on the elaboration of the computer Console Dal porto al mondo), the database should include the previously mentioned information.
A hypothetical visitor would have all the technical data for each vessel at his disposal (licence number, tonnage, ship owner, year built and out of commission) and would eventually have a photograph or short film (films of vessels in the 30s preserved by the Ansaldo archive come to mind). The visitor could choose the voyage, obviously among those available, the route and the port of destination, and set off on a virtual voyage through the written account made by the captain. The visitor could therefore leaf through pages of logbooks, reproduced fully in digital format, but also read the text transcription directly. The possibility of having full-text access to digital documents would allow for multiple research possibilities. A single voyage could facilitate the retrieval of crew member and passenger names mentioned by the captain in his logbook, help to find names of people born, injured or, in the worst of cases, who died on board during the voyage (events which were all too frequent), and, all in all, to know about all the extra-ordinary events on board.
The database could then have links with those produced by other research centres (Ellis Island, Fondazione Agnelli, Memorial do Imigrante of Sao Paolo), and with the crossover of data it would be possible to retrieve the passenger list onboard a specific vessel. I am thinking of the steamship Nord America, of which the Genoa State Archive (ASG) preserves a general logbook, that after a long voyage full of difficulties, reached the port of New York on 6 December 1908. The Ellis Island database could easily have the list of passengers onboard the Nord America who disembarked, which would in turn increment the data included in the log books.
The systematic use of this mass of documents and its online diffusion, even if through modulated access, could give rise to a constant increase of information. In fact, being able to add to the database through other documentation is not excluded as a possibility. The notes of one of the passengers could be retrieved, perhaps even a voyage diary preserved in a private archive or in Italian centres that have this type of documentation (Popular Writings Archive of Liguria –ALSP- in Genoa, the National Diary Archive in Pieve Santo Stefano, the Popular Writings Archive -ASP- of Trento, but also many other research centres and emigration museums spread throughout the national territory), belonging to an emigrant who went onboard a vessel departing from Genoa. The database would therefore become a sort of “open” collection of digital documents, a reservoir constantly refreshing and updating itself, with access all over the world.
The accomplishment of this project would, ultimately, mean to present CISEI, and the city of Genoa as a port of embarkation for emigrants, with a documentary heritage which is unique in its genre, of great value and notable relevance not only at a national scale.
Genoa, February 2007
Carlo Stiaccini
