Reconstruction of Ship Biographies Using “Ship Lists”

Ship Lists" are a valuable source of the history of the Russian fleet.This is probably the only printed work on the basis of which it is possible to reconstruct the biographies of non-self-propelled watercraft of domestic ports.In some cases, analysis of records makes it possible to identify distorted data, as illustrated by the example of the fire steamboat of the Kronstadt Steamship Plant.It is shown that in the course of the evolution of records, the place of construction first changed from Votkinsk to Kronstadt, and later the date of major repairs of 1885 replaced the date of construction of 1865.However, the more intense the period with records about ships, the more confidently it is possible to reconstruct ship biographies.As a result of the analysis of the records, it was possible to unambiguously link the fire steamboat of the Kronstadt Steamship Plant with the steamboat No. 141 of the Kronstadt port, and ultimately trace the biography of the vessel until the end of the 1930s, and also link it with the 12-horsepower steamboat laid down by the Votkinsk plant for its own needs in 1860.The insufficient saturation of the records of the "Ship Lists" of the period of the Russian-Japanese War regarding the new watercraft of the Kronstadt port led to a discrepancy between the list of built ships and the ships available in the port.As a result, based on the analysis of archival information, it was possible to identify five garbage boats, two provision barges and two dry cargo barges built by the Votkinsk plant for the Kronstadt port.As it turned out, all the ships appeared in the "Ship Lists", but without indicating the place of construction.