Mark
I am sure that you will know much of what follows, but I give it for the sake of others less familiar with the set up. The administration required of the captain of a ship of war – and of his departmental heads – was so formidable one wonders how they ever had time to fight. There were muster books, log books, pay books, journals, ticket books, slop books, sick books and bounty books to be kept and submitted at regular intervals and innumerable forms, dockets, chits, affidavits, certificates and vouchers which had to be completed whenever any activity was undertaken involving expenditure on the ship, the crew, the stores, the guns, the sick, victuals, supernumeraries and prisoners. To make life easier and ensure uniformity, the Admiralty supplied blank printed versions of all these documents which could be completed in ink. There were specific instructions as to when each had to be submitted to the Admiralty - weekly, monthly, two monthly or at the conclusion of a voyage.
The most comprehensive list of all this paperwork is in a 1794 book-cum-instruction manual with vast appendices of printed forms and books by Robert Liddell entitled THE SEAMAN’S NEW VADE MECUM - CONTAINING A PRACTICAL ESSAY - ON - NAVAL BOOK-KEEPING - WITH THE - Method of Keeping the Captain’s Books - AND - COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS - IN THE - DUTY OF YHE CAPTAIN’S CLERK On page 2 of his introductory instructions says.
“The Captain fhould alfo have an Order Book and a Letter Book, in the Order Book fhould be entered Copies of all Orders which the Captain may at any Time give to junior Captains or other officers, with Particular care as to the wording, and Dates of fuch Orders, and in the Letter Book fhould be entered Copies of all letters which the Captain may at any Time fend upon His Majesty’s service.”
Nothing else is said. No ‘standard’ pro-forma is given, and here are no instructions about submitting these Books to the Admiralty. Likewise nothing is said about in-coming orders and letters. However, I have no doubt that the Captain and his Clerk would have kept similar Order and Letter Books for incoming correspondence as well. The reason these are not mentioned in the instructions (including Liddell’s) is, I think, because -
a) the bulk of naval documents, forms, vouchers etc were about expenditure or had financial implications; and were described in vast detail in order to control spending and to prevent waste. Little attention was given to a thing that was simply a useful administrative device with no financial purpose, like an Order Book or a Letter Book.
b) Liddell’s instructions (and official regulations) are headquarters-orientated. In other words, they laid down exactly what the Admiralty and its Boards wanted to receive from the captain in a standardised form that would enable them to cope with the avalanche of paper pouring in from hundreds of ships at sea. They were little concerned with what might be useful to the captain. It is not surprising that a non-financial document which is only useful to captains like an In-Letter Book is therefore either forgotten or unmentioned.
What happened to the Letter Books? Good question. The only entries under ‘Letter Books’ I have seen in the TNA catalogues are for the correspondence of London departments, overseas naval bases etc (ie institutions not individuals like captains). The collections of Personal Papers in the NMM on the other hand, frequently include the Letter and Order Books of the individuals concerned. From this, my guess is that at the end of a voyage, officialdom was not much interested in these Books which (if they were handed over with the mass of material which was required) were put aside and eventually ‘weeded’; or else the captains themselves kept them a personal records and mementoes.
Brian
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