Early Boat Records: 1795 Act

“An Act for requiring all Boats, Barges, and other Vessels, of certain Descriptions, used on Navigable Rivers, and on Inland Navigations, in Great Britain, to be registered” (35 Geo III c.58) was enacted on 5th May 1795. It passed through both Houses of Parliament without any officially recorded comment as to its intent. It seems reasonable to assume, though, that it was a complement to the Quota Acts – contemporary legislation designed to raise men for the Royal Navy. War with France was not going well, and the Admiralty was pressing government for more ships and men.

Every inland waterways vessel capable of carrying more than 13 tons of cargo was to be registered with the local Clerk of the Peace or equivalent local officer. Registration could be made in any county or other administrative area within which a vessel normally worked, or within which its master usually lived. Vessels belonging to the Royal Family, and those used solely for pleasure, were excluded.

Certificates of Registry were issued to each informant, who could be either the vessel’s owner or the owner’s agent. A fee of 2s 6d (12½p) was exacted for the privilege of each registration. The local official was then to extract the information from the Register, into “a Book to be provided for that Purpose”, and send it to the Commissioners of the Admiralty.

The Act required that all existing relevant vessels be registered by 15th June 1795, little more than two months after its enactment. The penalty for not registering was a £20 fine for the owner. If an unregistered vessel was used, it could be seized, and the master fined £10. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the short timescale and harsh penalties caused some difficulty. A further Act (35 Geo III c.112) was quickly passed on 26th June, deferring the registration date to 1st September 1795.

When did the Acts operate?

The Act would provide a snapshot of the vessels and boatmen that were immediately available to assist the war effort. Although it was also required to register vessels that began working after the registration date, the only date specified for sending information to the Admiralty was 15th August 1795.

The first Act’s final clause specified its continuance until 5th April 1798, “and from thence until the End of the then next Session of Parliament, and no longer”. This gave an effective expiry date of 27th August 1799, which was not extended by the second Act. However, once passed, applied and lapsed, the Acts themselves seem to have dropped out of sight of government. It was not until 1871 that they were formally repealed, by the Statute Law Revision Act.

The Records

The first Act specified three forms of record: Registers of boats, barges and other vessels; Certificates of Registry; and Register extracts for the Commissioners of the Admiralty. They should have been created only between 1795 and 1799. Not all surviving records are dated, but the majority that are do fall within this period. Several, though, have been found catalogued with date ranges extending into the 19th century. There are several possible reasons.

At its time of enactment, the first Act’s expiry date, at the end of a future Session of Parliament, would have been unknown. In some areas, registration might just have been continued, unknowingly, beyond its time. Hopefully, the registration fee did not provide local officials with an incentive to do so! Alternatively, the Registers, especially, might have been re-used when further, similar, defence-related legislation was enacted.

This certificate provides proof of registration for the boat of 40 tons capacity with master William Lee usually navigating between Leicester and Pinxton on the Cromford Canal, and dated an unspecified day in August 1795. It appears to also name the owner of the boat: Messrs Coleman & Co. From the layout of the form, it is clear that the important information is the number of men employed on board (apparently in addition to the master) and their jobs: “One to assist the master and the other to drive the horse haling the boat”.

The Information

What information did these records contain, and what survives today, of interest to inland waterway and family historians?

The Registers: These recorded the type of vessel, its tonnage, the name of its master(s) and their “place or places of abode”, together with the number of men employed on the vessel and their capacities on board. The waterway upon which the vessel normally operated was also recorded, the places navigated from and to, and the distance between them. The Certificates of Registry: As well as recording the information required for the Register, the standard form of Certificate allowed a vessel to be named or otherwise uniquely identified. This information was not specifically required to be entered in the Register, although it might have been. The Certificate, indicating also the county or other official place of registration, was signed and dated by the local official. The Admiralty Extracts: The original Act required the local official to forward Register extracts to the Admiralty by 15th August 1795. The penalty for neglecting to do so was £100. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that the second Act, which deferred the Registration date to 1st September, did not also put back the submission date.

One standard form of extract was required to be completed for each inland waterway upon which vessels were recorded as plying in each registration area. Each form recorded the navigation’s extent, navigable limits, and location as well as the details of vessels registered.

Finding Surviving Registers

Some Registers and related records are now preserved in local archives repositories, usually within Quarter Sessions Records. Survival seems by no means comprehensive, but a search of the electronic archives catalogue Access to Archives (A2A) has revealed many relevant records in England.

Records may also have been created in Wales or Scotland – the Act covered all of Great Britain – but no relevant records were found listed in ANW or SCAN, A2A’s Welsh and Scottish equivalents. Despite A2A’s immensely valuable centralised data mass, it still holds only some 30% of the archives catalogues for England and Wales. It is therefore always worthwhile contacting an archives repository local to a waterway of interest, to see whether they hold relevant records.

The Registers are the most commonly found record, either as volumes or as collections of forms. Usefully for the historian, they furnish all the collected information for one area, in one body. The ephemeral Certificates, normally issued to individuals rather than being centrally held, are naturally much less likely to have survived.

The Admiralty Extracts would provide the single most valuable source for all recorded inland waterway vessels operating in 1795. Regrettably, they cannot be traced in the catalogues of the Admiralty records held at The National Archives. Their immediate use fulfilled some two centuries ago, it seems likely that they, too, have not survived. Although the 1795 Acts were shortlived, and the records coverage is now patchy, the surviving Registers, especially, have become as rich and useful a source for inland waterway and family historians today, as their extracts were, hopefully, for the Admiralty Commissioners more than 200 years ago.

This Register entry lists boats operating between Melton Mowbray and the Erewash and Cromford canals. Names of boats sadly are not recorded, but their ‘burthen’ (ie capacity) is, and the inclusion of the master’s name could be of great value to family historians.