Database

The database behind the website is based on source material from the archives of major european ports such as Genoa, Pisa, Venice in Italy, Seville and Bilbao in Spain and others in France, Malta and the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands).

Each set of source material describes a case – a voyage that led to a declaration of average, and contains details on the vessel and her captain, the different legs of the voyage, the risks to the cargo, freight, vessel and crew, the testimonial of the captain as to what happened during the voyage that led to the declaration of average, details of the average declaration itself and the location of the source material.

There is a great detail of information contained in the source material, some qualitative and some quantitative. The aim of the database is initially to allow the capture of all the information and then allow its presentation as an online resource in a user-friendly, searchable format.

The central tables are ‘Voyage’ and ‘Average’ which represent the entire voyage or journey that a vessel undertook which resulted in one or more average calculations. Each set of source documents refers to one voyage record and each voyage can have multiple averages. This is quite important as it is the basis of how the database has been designed.

Each voyage record has details of the following:

• the vessel and its master
• the different legs of the voyage
• the risks to the vessel, cargo and freight
  
• the accounts of what happened from the captain
  
• the average calculations and all damages and expenses incurred
• the source documents and where they are stored

General notes

1. Normalised Dates:
   Due to the adoption of the Gregorian calender and the different times of the year that the new year started on, all dates in the database have been normalised. The dates as recorded in the source are also available in the 'Further information' sections.
2. Decimal numbers
   The website uses the european method of displaying decimal number by using a comma instead of a full stop or period.
   E.g. 1.5 = 1,5
   

Searching the database

To search the database, use the search box in the top right corner of every page on the site. This will match your keywords against all fields in every table of the database and display a link to the relevant page.

Weighting

The search engine will attempt to match some or all of the keywords against each record in the database. Records that match more keywords will appear higher in the search results than records that only match one or two.

Advanced Search

It is also possible to search the database in a more logical fashion, using specific database fields to build a more complex query.

Click here to use the Advanced Search, and here for further guidance.