https://www.sealitproject.eu/digital-seafaring

• Ship Voyages (19th – 20th century)
  Ship Voyages is the first map visualization application in an online open access form, which is based on data from ship logbooks. Ship Voyages data are based on logbooks of merchant ships, an invaluable type of source, largely unexplored by the historians, who have used them only in a secondary and supplementary way. Ship Voyages is unique because it allows the user to follow the ship’s route as a whole and to also observe each separate point of the voyage (usually registered once a day, around noon, in the logbook). It also allows the user to visit the transcribed metadata from the source, to check the information, or to read other types of information from the logbooks which are not directly viewable on the map, like certain noted events, and also to retrieve the information. Therefore, Ship Voyages is a highly sophisticated platform, designed to enable deep level of analysis of metadata and of source contents. Thus, the application is not only informative, educative, and entertaining for the broader public, but also very important to academic users for research purposes. Additionally, it is unique in terms of historical subject, since it is about the voyages of merchant ships from the Mediterranean countries during the transition from sail to steam navigation (a historical subject not well researched). Thus, it offers the opportunity to study the evolution of maritime trade routes and the several aspects of navigation on two different technological systems of sea transportation: the sailing ship and the steamship. It also encompasses trade routes and various aspects of navigation in enclosed seas, like the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the English Channel as well as in oceans, like the Atlantic, the Indian, or the Pacific.

• Ship operation services (19th – 20th century)
  

  Since the age of sail ship operation services have been a sine qua non component of the mechanism of the shipping industry. These services include the supply of food, fuel, working materials and equipment, freight and insurance agency, ship repairing, towing, piloting, and everything else related to shipping operation. Among the most important professions and businesses engaged in these services are specialized merchants on maritime stores known as ship chandlers as well as ship agents, coal merchants, ship repairing and engineering firms, tugboat companies, water suppliers and stevedores.

  Ship operation services, an industry within an industry, played a vital role in the operation of the ships and occupied an important share of the operational costs, along with crew costs. Often, the professionals of this sector created business ties with the shipowners and captains of the ships they served, and maintained their collaboration throughout the working life of a ship, especially on the regularly visited ports. Some of these professionals, agents or suppliers, further solidified these business ties with shipping by purchasing shares in their clients’ ship. The purchase of shares of a ship by shipbuilders, contractors or suppliers is not a novelty in the shipping industry; it already existed in the age of sail. However, the network of shareholders in some of the Greek ships, including professionals and firms from ports ranging from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and the UK, indicates the degree of integration of certain Greek ship-owning firms within the steamship economy.

  Unpublished material from the archival sources enables us to reconstruct the full network of these businesses, which provided their services to ships across the globe. More specifically, the data on mapping come from account papers of four cargo steamships (see table below) belonging to the shipping firm S. G. Embiricos of Andros. The account papers of the archive of S. G. Embiricos are kept at Kaireios Library of Andros.

Creation of databases that include Greek-owned ships under any flag during the period 1830-2000 that were registered in specific ports and/or owned by Greek-owned shipping companies. Entries contain ship names, tonnage, ship type, flag, place of registration, date and place of construction, captain, ship-owning company, name of ship-owner, locations of shipping companies. These two databases gave us the backbone of Greek-owned shipping, as they provide all the necessary information about ships, places, shipowners.The databases are Pontoporeia I (1830-1939) with 20,000 entries and Pontoporeia II (1950-2000) in collaboration with Ioannis Theotokas with 25,000 entries.

Inquires for the databases to gelinaharlaftis@gmail.com

Bibliography:
1) Gelina Harlaftis and Nikos Vlassopoulos, Ιστορικός νηογνώμονας, Ποντοπόρεια. Ποντοπόρα Ιστιοφόρα και Ατμόπλοια 1830-1939 [Pontoporeia, Historical Registry Book of Greek cargo sailing ships and steamships, 1830-1939], ELIA/Niarchos Foundation, 2002
2) Ioannis Theotokas and Gelina Harlaftis, Leadership in World Shipping: Greek Family Firms in International Business, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009
3) Gelina Harlaftis, “Greek Maritime History: Navigating Greek Maritime Historiography in Domestic and International Waters” in Katerina Galani and Alexandra Papadopoulou (eds), Greek Maritime History. From the Periphery to the Centre, Brill, Leiden, 2022, σελ. 8-51.

The Amphitrite database was created from records of 20 port cities in 10 countries and contains the voyages of Greeks during the 18th century until 1821. It includes 15,000 voyages of Greek-owned ships (which were Venetian, Ottoman, Russian and other subjects) to Mediterranean ports from 1700-1821. Amphitrite revealed a great wealth of information on the maritime economic activities of Greeks, Ottoman and Venetian/Ionian subjects, during the 18th century until the Greek Revolution in 1821. This database made it possible not only to quantitatively analyze the voyages of Greek captains to the port cities of the western Mediterranean but also the islands and ports from which they came.

Inquires for the databases to gelinaharlaftis@gmail.com

Bibliography:

1) Gelina Harlaftis and Katerina Papakonstantinou (eds), Η ναυτιλία των Ελλήνων, 1700-1821 [Greek Shipping, 1700-1821. The Heyday before the Greek Revolution], Kedros Publications, Athens, 2013  
2) Gelina Harlaftis, «Τhe ‘eastern invasion’. Greeks in the Mediterranean trade and shipping in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries» in Maria Fusaro, Colin Heywood, Mohamed-Salah Omri eds., Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Braudel’s Maritime Legacy, I.B. Tauris, London, 2009, pp. 223-252
3) Gelina Harlaftis, “Greek Maritime History: Navigating Greek Maritime Historiography in Domestic and International Waters” in Katerina Galani and Alexandra Papadopoulou (eds), Greek Maritime History. From the Periphery to the Centre, Brill, Leiden, 2022, σελ. 8-51.

The database, Poseidon, contains 40,000 records covering the voyages of ships of all nationalities from the main port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea to Marseilles and London. Contains figures for ship arrivals at London (every five years, i.e. 1830, 1835, 1840, etc.), as published in British Customs Bills of Entry, and at Marseilles, as published in the Semaphore, a French maritime and commercial newspaper of Marseilles. These voyages contain valuable information, on the basis of which the business networks of Greek shipowners and merchants could be identified.

Inquires for the databases to gelinaharlaftis@gmail.com

Bibliography:

1. Τζελίνα Χαρλαύτη, H ιστορία της ελληνόκτητης ναυτιλίας, 19^ος-20^ός αι., Νεφέλη, Αθήνα, 2001
2. Gelina Harlaftis, Α Ηistory of Greek-Owned Shipping. The Making of an International Tramp Fleet, 1830 to the present day, Routledge, 1996.
3. Gelina Harlaftis, “Greek Maritime History: Navigating Greek Maritime Historiography in Domestic and International Waters” in Katerina Galani and Alexandra Papadopoulou (eds), Greek Maritime History. From the Periphery to the Centre, Brill, Leiden, 2022, σελ. 8-51.

www.blacksea.gr

The database consists of five sub-databases named after the ancient Greek myth of the Black Sea, the Argonautic expedition. In this way “Jason” contains the businessmen, “Argo” the ships, “Golden Fleece” the trafficking of trade by ship, “Argonauts” the Greeks who stayed on the Black Sea, especially in Odessa, and “Medea” those who left the Black Sea, the migration from Odessa to Buenos Aires.

• The database “Jason”, contains 2,200 entries with names of merchants, shipowners and bankers that were active in the Black Sea port-cities from the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Every entry has the surname, the name, the date of birth, the nationality, the profession, the guild, the size of imports and exports, the ships owned, the archive where the information comes from.

• The database “Argo” contains 1,900 entries of ships registered in the Black Sea port cities. Every entry has the name of the ship, the type, the tonnage, the flag, place of built, date of built, the captain, the owner, the place of registration, the archive where the information comes from. This database is interrelated with the database Jason. Both Jason and Argo are interrelated and they are published in http://blacksea.gr/db/

• The database “Golden Fleece” contains 23,679 entries, voyages of ships from the beginning of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. It concerns arrivals and departures from Odessa and Constantinople, and arrivals to the ports of Marseille from the Black Sea ports. Every entry includes the date of arrival/departure, the name of the ship, the flag, the tonnage, the type, the port of origin, the type and quantity of cargo, the merchant to whom it is addressed and the archival source from which the information is derived. The database is in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
• The database “Argonauts” contains 22,106 entries of baptisms, marriages and deaths of the Greeks from Odessa from the beginning of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. Every entry contains the date of the event, the surname, name, nationality, age, gender, name of parents, their profession and nationality, the name of the godparents/best men or women, their nationality and the cause of death. The database is in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
• The database “Medea” contains 6,060 entries of immigrants from Odessa to Buenos Aires. Every entry contains the name of the immigrant from Odessa to Buenos Aires. Every entry contains the name and surname of the immigrant, the nationality, the place of origin, the age, gender, and the ship with which he/she sailed. The database is in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.