Fowey Harbour has a long history of not only handling cargoes but also of vessels being built in the harbour or operated by ship owners having their vessel registered in the port of Fowey.
C.H. Ward Jacksons' book "Ships and Shipbuilders of a West Country Seaport Fowey 1786 - 1939 provided a base to start researching more details on all the vessels on the Fowey Register between 1857 and 1940. The record highlights those vessels built in the port together with those from many others including from across the Atlantic in Nova Scotia.
About the record of vessels registered in Fowey from 1850 to 1940.
Include in the records are the details of 665 vessels that were registered in the port during this period. The Port of Fowey extends between Dodman and Seaton so includes vessels whose home ports may have been Looe, Par, Charlestown or Mevagissey as well as those owned in Fowey.
Some of the records are detailed whilst others may contain only minor information. Where possible they include the masters of the vessels with dates that they were shown to be captains of the vessels. In many cases they would have been longer. The Owner are given as the registered owner as appearing in Lloyds or other registers. Each vessel may have as many as 64 share holders and in some cases, these are shown in this record or other related documents.
Much of the information has been obtained from the Lloyds registers, from The Register of British ships (Through Clip), books including Ward Jacksons and others such as Coastwise Sail, Old Cornwall records, Capn Harry and Greenhills’ Schooners as well as record from old newspapers
The records record the loss of many detailing 80 wrecks on the shore, 79 vessels that foundered at sea and another 26 that went missing although this figure could have been much higher, but their fate not recorded. 33 were lost because of collisions with other vessels and here the schooners usually sank very quickly. 12 record of lost in war are include and at least 63 vessels lost the whole or majority of their crews.
The detailed results are to be found in the excel spread sheet attached below. It contains details of some over 500 plus vessels with records of their registered owner or Managing owners (MO) and what happened to them.
The next step will be including reference annexes on some of the vessels.
If there is any information readers have that will add to the records please use the contact link. Thankyou.
| fowey_register_of_vessel_1830_to_1940_august_2023_1.xlsx |
