• The Website Explained
• Toolkit Index
• Welcome to the MHA [Video]
• Anatomy of an Agreement
• Indentifying Ships & Voyages
  • Introduction
  • A Foreign-Going Seafarer
    • At Home
    • On the Move
    • Interpreting Crew Agreements
    • Johnson's Voyages 1866-1871
    • Mate and Master 1876-1886
  • Home Trade: Willliam Cram's Story
• A History of the Agreements
• Archiving the Agreements
• Finding Official Numbers
• Reading the Handwriting
• Understanding the Currency
• Abbreviations used on the site
• Glossary of the site
• Selected Sources

Johnson's Voyages from Foreign-Going Agreements (1866-1871)

On the Juno Agreement Henry Johnson’s previous vessel was named as the Kewadin. From Kewadin researchers were led to Venus, Eastern Belle, Imperial and Blair Athol, in reverse order of sailing. Five years' voyages (1871-1866) were traced in this way, with one of our more interesting discoveries about Johnson postponed as a result of this "backwards" negotiation.

We could have stumbled along this track. An official number was needed for each vessel before we could determine whether an Agreement survived for the voyage Johnson made. The MHA recommends the Merchant Navy List [MNL] as the source for researchers, and provides online access to this vital publication for selected years. Just one vessel named Kewadin was listed in the MNL for 1868 (on p.217).

But with our next step, tracing Johnson's earlier ship, we were initially thrown by shipowners' partiality to "Venus" as a vessel name. The MNL for 1876 listed more than forty Venuses registered in that year: only one, however, matched the register port entered in column 5 (details of the vessel of the previous voyage) from Johnson's entry made on his joining the Kewadinin 1869. The Windsor Venus' managing owner was Jacob Curry, a name that clinched the connection with Johnson. Curry's name had appeared on the Juno agreement as that vessel's managing owner. The master of Juno was a Curry as well, and a younger member of the Curry family was amongst the crew. Johnson was indeed linked with one of Windsor, Nova Scotia's, important shipping families. The Curry's business networks, providing their means of access to freights and to capital, spanned the North Atlantic, and much of their business was done in England, out of Liverpool. The Currys shipped in the cotton trade, thus explaining the deployment of Juno to New Orleans in 1870. Their vessels, however, were built in Atlantic Canada and amongst the part-owners of vessels in the Curry fleet were craftsmen as well as shipmasters from the region. Perhaps the ship's joiner, blacksmith and builder who held a small number of shares in the Juno when first she was registered in 1865 had taken a hand in the vessel's construction. The Juno's statutory register certificate, a source that is not to be confused with the official published lists in the MNL, can be consulted for a list of her shareholders (British National Archives [BNA] BT 108/301, folio 266a). Elsewhere on this site the register certificate is reproduced in full and the sixty-fourth share system is explained.

The connection between Johnson and the Currys was beginning to look significant, at least in terms of what these connections might have meant to a Nova Scotia sailor seeking advancement in his career. The need to maintain contacts with family and friends in Atlantic Canada undoubtedly made his situation different from the men who joined in Cardiff with little intention of remaining beyond the Juno's arrival in New Orleans .

Between the voyage completed on the Juno in 1871 and the voyage started in the Venus in 1869 Johnson visited at least six different ports in the North Atlantic region. Earlier voyages (on the Imperial and Blair Athol) had involved a trip to the Cuban port of Matanzas and along the St Lawrence to Quebec City. In these cases the commercial base was not Liverpool, but the Scottish port of Greenock. Johnson was a seafarer acquiring valuable experience on Atlantic and Caribbean routes.

One lengthy voyage, made between 1867 and 1869 turned out to be exceptional in his career. Johnson was 24 when he joined the Eastern Belle at Glasgow for a voyage to the Indian Ocean. At Bombay and Calcutta the vessel loaded cotton and dye-stuffs that were ultimately delivered at Liverpool. This square-rigged vessel of 1103 tons was crewed by two mates, and sixteen ABs: it had a carpenter, sailmaker and bos'un [boatswain], and carried both a cook and steward. This was one of the largest and most diverse crews with which Johnson ever sailed. In his later career as mate and master his vessels and crews were much smaller. The vessel he commanded in 1878, the Electa (466 tons), was manned by a mate, bos'un, cook/steward and six A.B.s. To the best of our knowledge Johnson did not repeat the Indian Ocean voyage of his younger years. A break in the paper trail frustrated a complete record, and when we found him again on the other side of his Juno employment, Johnson had settled for North Atlantic routes, with the occasional voyage extending to Continental Europe.