Author Topic: Ship's Inventory  (Read 296 times)

Offline griceylipper

  • RootsChat Extra
  • **
  • Posts: 2
  • Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
    • View Profile
Ship's Inventory
« on: Sunday 12 May 19 04:44 BST (UK) »
I'm trying to work out the details of a ship's inventory from 1674. I have managed to transcribe (nearly) all the items, however I'm a bit puzzled by the three columns on the right.

Seeing as most items with figures in the columns have the phrase "pvis nett as L est" (which I am assuming is "provisions net value in pounds estimated" - am I right?) - my initial thought was that this was pounds, shillings and pence, however there's some odd figures, like the very first item: Barrels of nails - £601, 0s, 14d. 14 pence seems odd when there are only 12 pence in a shilling - why not £601, 1s, 2d? There are some items that have values as high as 21 in the last column. Have I misinterpreted this?

Here's the document in question:
(apologies if this appears sideways on this forum - if you view the image directly on wikimedia commons it should appear upright)


This is part of my research into the Battle of Ronas Voe, a naval conflict in my local area back in 1674. If you're interested I have written a Wikipedia article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ronas_Voe

P.S. I am posting this at silly o'clock, going to bed and will check responses after I wake up. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Offline horselydown86

  • RootsChat Marquessate
  • *******
  • Posts: 3,418
  • Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
    • View Profile
Re: Ship's Inventory
« Reply #1 on: Sunday 12 May 19 06:54 BST (UK) »
Welcome to Rootschat.

Headings for monetary amounts are quite standard over the centuries around this time and will be:  li - s - d

li = libra (pound) - s = solidos (shilling) - d = denarius (penny)

So, with li being in the last column here, we know it's not money.

In this list the three columns primarily correspond to the provisions which come in barrels or casks (with the exceptions being the Twine, Anchors and Grapnells).

I think the three columns are possibly for weight.

However I'm not sure what the first two signify.

The first symbol is an O, (based on One punchion).

The other may be ys or qs?

I'm also sceptical that it is p(ro)vis(ions).  At this time a standard mark was used for contraction of the pro letter sequence and it's not seen here.

I think this is poiz, but I'm not sure what the meaning is.

These are just tentative thoughts.

A member here - Old Bristolian - has done a lot of work on ships' manifests, so with luck he or someone else will add proper knowledge.

ADDED:

French avoir de pois = goods of weight.

See:  https://www.britannica.com/science/avoirdupois-weight

The poiz only appears on entries which have the three columns (except for the butter, which only needs a pounds column).

Is it possibly just a shorthand for weight?

Offline griceylipper

  • RootsChat Extra
  • **
  • Posts: 2
  • Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
    • View Profile
Re: Ship's Inventory
« Reply #2 on: Sunday 12 May 19 13:17 BST (UK) »
Aha, now this is starting to make more sense! So, we have pounds (lb, not £) on the right. Could qs be quarters? There's 28 lb in 1 quarter, and the highest value of lbs is 21, so that checks out. Also, there's no value greater than 3 in the qs column, which also checks out. So does this mean O is... hundredweight? Cwt? Is that definitely an O? And if so, how would that relate to hundredweight?

Offline horselydown86

  • RootsChat Marquessate
  • *******
  • Posts: 3,418
  • Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
    • View Profile
Re: Ship's Inventory
« Reply #3 on: Sunday 12 May 19 17:11 BST (UK) »
Is that definitely an O? And if so, how would that relate to hundredweight?

Identical capital letter forms appear twice in the list - in Oyle and in One (referring to the punchion of damaged Beef).  These aren't crossed, but I would expect the crossing on the column header to signify that it represents a larger word.

So it should definitely be an O.

I've cast around the internet but so far haven't found anything relating O to a weight.

At this time a standard mark was used for contraction of the pro letter sequence and it's not seen here.

For the record, there is one example of the pro contraction on this page.  It's in the first line:

...P(ro)vic(i)ons Rec(eive)d...