Notariele akten over de Archangelvaart 1594-1724

Historic introduction: the Dutch trade with Archangel

Geographical location

Archangel was by no means an ideal port for exporting the goods of the Russian Empire. It was situated on the shores of the White Sea, on the extreme periphery of the vast Russian hinterland. It was also located far from the primary markets for Russian products in Western Europe. To reach the port, ships needed to undertake a long voyage round the Arctic Cape. Another drawback was the fact that the harbour of Archangel would freeze over for the better part of the year, which severely limited the shipping season. A seaport on the Baltic would have formed a far better hub for Russia’s trade with the West. It was the ambition of the Tsars Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584) and Peter the Great (1682-1725) to establish a Baltic port that would allow Russia to trade directly with Western Europe. During the Livonian War of 1558-1583, Ivan initially managed to take Narva, located on the Gulf of Finland, after which this town served for several decades as a meeting place for Russian and Western merchants. At a later stage of the war the tide turned and Narva was lost by the Russians. Pursuant to the Truces of 1583, the Tsar relinquished all claims to previous territorial gains. The Tsardom subsequently looked to its Arctic regions for possible port locations. The best option proved to be a kind of natural harbour near the Monastery of the Archangel Michael, at the point where the Northern Dvina branches into an estuary that exits into the White Sea. Founded in 1584 in the vicinity of this monastery, Archangel soon grew into the centre of Russia’s foreign trade.¹

Traded commodities

Trade at Archangel took the shape of an exchange between a vast, sparsely populated and relatively underdeveloped region and the strongly developed industrial centre of the West. Russia’s principal export commodities were forestry products and agricultural products. Arable farming supplied hemp, while stock breeding provided Russia leather and tallow (beef fat). The Russian woods yielded furs (mainly sable, marten and arctic fox), skins (including moose skins), masts and timber, potash, and tar. Hemp was primarily used in the West’s shipbuilding industry as a raw material for rigging and sails, tallow and potash served as raw materials for soap works, while skins, leather and furs were used in the production of clothing, shoes and costly furniture. Occasionally, grain was exported from Archangel, but this only occurred when regular deliveries from the Baltic ports were for some reason disrupted or insufficient, or if demand from the Mediterranean region was extremely strong due to severe crop failures. The import mainly consisted of a wide range of luxury products such as woollen cloth and other valuable textiles, jewellery, pearls, ivory, silver rixdollars, bullion, exotic foodstuffs like wine, pepper, spices and sugar, as well as gunpowder and weapons – particularly handguns. The Russian trade balance was passive: the value of its exports always greatly exceeded the value of the Western goods imported into the country.²

Merchants

In the sixteenth century, Dutch merchants still experienced stiff competition from their English colleagues, both in Narva and around the White Sea, but from approximately 1590 on, they succeeded in dominating the foreign trade with Russia.³ Around the same time that trade shifted from Narva to Archangel (in the years 1583-84), a similar geographic shift took place at the other end of the trade route when Amsterdam succeeded Antwerp as the centre of trade (in the years 1585-90). The exiled Antwerp merchants did not hesitate to continue their trade with Russia from their new home base, and by more or less forming a bloc, for decades they managed to maintain virtually complete control of the Amsterdam trade with Russia.⁴ Well-known merchants belonging to this group included Marcus and Gaspar de Vogelaer, Gommer Spranger, Balthasar de Moucheron, Isaac Le Maire, Pieter van Pulle, Dirk van Oss and Carlo du Moulin. Remarkably, Amsterdam-based merchants who had been born in Germany or were of German parentage, like Jurriaen Everhard Klenck, Jacob and Jan Lups, Georg Swellengrebel and Christoffel Brants, also played an important role. Initially, the trade with Archangel only involved very few merchants who were actually born in Holland, although their numbers grew as time went by. A splendid example is formed by the members of the Mennonite family of Thesingh – which originally hailed from Stadlohn in Westphalia, incidentally – who held an extremely prominent position in the trade with Archangel.

Separate studies have been devoted to the lives and business dealings of quite a few of these entrepreneurs. For example, a great deal is known about two pioneers of the Dutch trade with Russia: Olivier Brunel and Jan van de Walle. Both men, who originally came from the Southern Netherlands, were already trading in Lapland, on the Murman Coast on the Kola Peninsula in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Brunel was involved in expeditions aimed at finding a northern passage to Asia and was well-acquainted with the waters of the Arctic region. As early as the 1570s, he indicated where Dutch ships could anchor in the estuary of the Northern Dvina, as an alternative to ports in Lapland, and it is highly probable that this inspired the Tsar’s decision to found the new seaport of Archangel at one of these sites several years later.⁵ Jan van de Walle played a crucial role in the swift expansion of Amsterdam’s trade with Russia in the 1590s, as he allowed numerous other wealthy merchants to benefit from the privileges and facilities he had obtained for himself in Archangel and elsewhere in Russia. For many of these merchants, this was a first step towards regular trading activities of their own in the Tsardom. For this reason, Wijnroks has called Van de Walle the ‘Godfather’ of Dutch trade with Russia.⁶

One exceptional individual in the first half of the seventeenth century was Georg Everhard Klenck. Klenck managed to gain numerous privileges from the Tsar, was one of the most prominent foreign merchants in Moscow, and became extraordinarily wealthy, probably through trading in grain and caviar and working as a commercial agent for the Tsar.⁷ In the second half of the seventeenth century, the members of the house of Thesingh engaged in intensive trade with the city of Archangel for a number of decades. Hendrick Thesingh, his sons Jan and Egbert Thesingh, and – after Hendrick’s death in 1680 – his widow Anna van Gestel primarily focused on the trade in costly woollens, masts and timber. The wealth they acquired over time is testimony to their considerable success.⁸ For the period from the late seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century, we have sketches at our disposal of the firms of Christoffel Brants, Jan Lups and David Leeuw.⁹

The Dutch community in Archangel

Over the years, a relatively small number of Dutchmen took up residence in Archangel, where they formed a modest Dutch community. This colony, which was established over the first half of the seventeenth century, fulfilled an essential role in the local trade system.¹⁰ Its members maintained relations with their Russian suppliers and clients and invested time and energy in obtaining licences and privileges from the Russian authorities. During the long Russian winters, these merchants ordered goods to be shipped in from the Tsardom’s vast hinterland via the frozen rivers. They not only traded goods for their own account, but also acted as commercial agents for the Dutch mercantile houses that did not have their own representatives on location in Archangel. As a result, they played an extremely important role in trade in general. There were also Dutch merchants living in Moscow. During the summer, these traders travelled to Archangel’s annual fair. Although we do not know exactly how large the Dutch community in Archangel was, it is generally estimated at a few hundred individuals.¹¹

Shipping

Every year, two merchant fleets made their way from Amsterdam to Archangel. The first fleet, the ‘early ships’ (‘vroegschepen’), set out from Texel harbour at the end of May and arrived some four weeks later in Archangel. The second fleet, the ‘late ships’ (‘laatschepen’), was usually larger in size and departed from Texel in August or September. Many merchants boarded the ships sailing to Archangel in the spring and returned to Amsterdam at the end of the summer. The presence of the Dutch ships and Dutch merchants roughly coincided with the Archangel annual fair held during the summer.¹² The ships departed from the port again in September or October. In times of war, the merchant ships were accompanied by one or two escort vessels and the ships usually sailed in convoy for the entire voyage. A convoy only left once the last ship had been loaded, which was often as late as October. When ships only set out after the middle of October, they ran a considerable risk of ending up on the North Sea – and sustaining damage – during the autumn storm season.¹³ Between December and May, the Northern Dvina and the White Sea were usually frozen over.

The number of ships sailing to Archangel every year was far from impressive – usually a few dozen; seldom more than sixty – but they were larger and transported a more valuable cargo than the average Dutch merchant vessel.¹⁴ In addition, they completed a far longer route than the many ships sailing to the Baltic, Norway, England, France or Portugal – a voyage of nearly 4,000 nautical miles.¹⁵ The longest voyages possible within Europe were the long-haul courses from Archangel to the Mediterranean. These voyages usually had Genoa or Venice as their final destination and were regularly undertaken in the seventeenth century.

The Archangel trade route is one of the few shipping connections for which researchers have studied the captains’ operational strategy. Scheltjens has studied the itineraries of the individual shipmasters who called at Archangel or a port in the Gulf of Finland (St Petersburg, Narva or Vyborg) between 1703 and 1740. This allowed the researcher to determine which impact the founding of St Petersburg – the new centre of Russian foreign trade – in 1703 had on Dutch shipping. He examined which shipmasters specialised in a certain route and how many, in contrast, followed irregular itineraries. In addition, Scheltjens determined when a specific port attracted shipmasters who were fresh on the scene and in which years it could only welcome back old friends. The foundation and development of St Petersburg proved to have had different consequences than one would expect. The shipmasters did not simply rechart their course from the White Sea to St Petersburg, but usually opted for Narva or occasionally Vyborg. Moreover, new sailing patterns emerged in which a ship was operational virtually the whole year round – for example, a return voyage to Narva in the spring combined with a return voyage to Archangel between the summer and the winter.¹⁶

Chartering

Thanks to research conducted by De Buck into the Dutch fleets of 1703 and 1709, much has become known about the business of chartering.¹⁷ These fleets, which numbered 46 and 53 ships respectively, departed from Archangel too late in the season, ended up in heavy weather and sustained tremendous damage. A great many sources have been passed down to us that focus on the settlement of this damage, which De Buck has used to clarify the relationship between the merchant and the charterer and to show how cargo was distributed across the vessels. In most cases, the charterer simply turned out to be a merchant who wished to arrange transport for his own cargo or that of his firm. The merchant Egbert Thesingh, for instance, chartered numerous ships in the fleet of 1703. Occasionally, a ship was also chartered by two to four individuals. The free space that remained in the cargo hold after the key charterers had loaded their goods was used by other merchants, who usually arranged the transportation of smaller consignments. These small-scale charterers are usually not mentioned in the charter parties, but there could be very many of them – as many as a few dozen per ship. Far more merchants were involved than becomes apparent from consulting the charter parties, in other words.

Furthermore, the chartering pattern was strongly defined by the nature of the cargo. Grain, masts and tar were mutually exclusive consignments. To accommodate the long masts, the ship needed to be adapted, making it difficult to transport other bulky goods. On board, tar tended to leak from its barrels, meaning that it could contaminate an uncontained shipment of grain. Consequently, virtually all the ships in the fleet turn out to have either had grain, masts or tar as their main cargo. In addition, nearly every vessel also transported a light yet sizeable consignment of hemp. The remaining nooks and crannies on board the ship were filled with goods that, although they did not take up much space, represented all the more value, such as barrels of tallow, rolls of silk and packs of Russia leather.¹⁸ Merchants distributed these goods across multiple vessels in order to minimise the risk of losses.

The trade with Archangel has contributed considerably to our knowledge of the development of productivity in the Dutch shipping sector. Specifically for this route, an exceptionally large number of notarial deeds listing contemporary freight rates have been preserved for posterity. It turns out that freight transport became less and less expensive over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: although nominal rates rose in this period of inflation, in real terms, the price paid for transporting a cargo dropped during this time. Real freight rates for transport via the Amsterdam-Archangel trade route kept falling until the mid-seventeenth century. However, in the second half of the seventeenth century, increase in productivity stagnated, and in the last decades of the century, shipping companies even started to charge increasingly high rates for their services. Indeed, this is the period in which scope developed for competitors, an opportunity that the English in particular where keen to take advantage of. After 1700, the share of English ships and merchants in the shipping and trade with Archangel increased hand over fist.¹⁹

The hey-day ends

Archangel’s prime extended into the eighteenth century. During the Great Northern War (1700-1721), Peter the Great captured a section of the Baltic coast, so that Russia finally gained its own Baltic port. In 1703, the Tsar founded St Petersburg as a ‘Window to the West’. Initially, the economy of the new town was still disrupted by the hostilities, but after the Treaty of Nystad (1721), most foreign merchants quickly moved their activities to St Petersburg. Virtually from one day to the next, Archangel’s appeal for foreign visitors waned dramatically. After some 130 years of trading, Archangel lost its position as the central hub for trade between Russia and the West. Although Western ships continued to set course for the White Sea port throughout the eighteenth century, the nature of the local trade changed. The range of goods exported narrowed, primarily consisting of products from the port’s immediate hinterland such as tallow, grain and linseed.²⁰ The number of foreign merchants who owned a home in Archangel quickly declined after 1721, since many of them opted to move to St Petersburg. The local Dutch population also dwindled as a result of the increasing tendency over the course of the eighteenth century to do business with the Russian trading partners by letter – a phenomenon that also occurred along other trade routes. In 1741, no more than 34 merchants resided in the city, who together with their families perhaps made up a community of around 100 souls.²¹

The long history of this project

This project has a very long previous history. In the mid-1960s, the Leiden historian Piet de Buck started collecting data regarding Amsterdam’s trade with Archangel. To this end, De Buck conducted research both in the Netherlands and Russia, with the source material in the Amsterdam City Archives proving superior by far. Over the course of several decades, he compiled a vast collection of data: first in the form of a card index and later also in the shape of a digital database. During this time, he published several articles on Dutch-Russian relations, as well as editing, in partnership with Th.J.G. Locher, a publication of Nicolaes Witsen’s engrossing report on his voyage to Russia in 1664-1665. The publications in question have been included in the list of cited literature.

In 1992, De Buck offered the then Institute of Dutch History (ING) to process the data after the example of Dutch Asiatic Shipping (DAS), a printed repertorium of the Asian voyages of ships of the Dutch East India Company. Like DAS, this information could be published as volumes in the ING series Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën. The ING gladly accepted the offer. The idea was to publish multiple (print) volumes that would bring together as many details as possible about the voyages and the shipmasters and merchants involved, collected from various Amsterdam sources. The research into the key sources, the Amsterdam notarial registers for the period until 1724, had already been more or less rounded off by De Buck. He intended to add data from other archives to this collection, particularly those of the Board of Muscovy Trade. These archives contain records of the lastage paid by ships sailing to Russia (galjootsgeld), a serial quantitative source for research into the trade with Russia in the eighteenth century. In addition, De Buck planned to write an extensive historic introduction.

Piet de Buck passed away in 1999. At that point, he had not yet rounded off his study of the complementary sources, nor had he written the introduction. However, in view of the tremendous wealth of sources that he had collected, both his circle of colleagues and the ING felt a strong wish to finish the project. On the one hand, they were helped in this undertaking by De Buck’s extensive card index, and on the other, by a variety of digitised documents. After Piet de Buck’s death, the card-index boxes were kept by his colleague Jan Willem Veluwenkamp (RUG). Digital files and code books had been stored at the Netherlands Historic Data Archive (NHDA), a forerunner of DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services). After De Buck passed away, Ineke Huysman (ING) copied the most recent digital versions of the files from his computer. Nevertheless, completing a project without the aid of the original researcher is a complicated and labour-intensive affair, which meant that De Buck’s legacy was not worked on for approximately nine years.

At the end of 2008, the ING decided to take up the project. Rik Hoekstra compared the various digital files produced by De Buck and identified the most recent and complete versions. As there were no descriptions for the files, this was an extremely complicated task. Ultimately, several files from De Buck’s hard drive were selected to serve as a point of departure for further processing. The researchers were then confronted with the issue that numerous variables like ports had been entered in code. Heiko Tjalsma (DANS) found the cipher to unlock these data in the documentation that De Buck had filed with the NHDA. Hoekstra used this cipher to successfully decode the data. Together with Jelle Gerbrandy, Hoekstra converted the data from the SAS/SPSS format to make them suitable for input in a relational database. Jelle Gerbrandy ensured that the data were entered in an application that allowed researchers to check and supplement them. Meanwhile, Milja van Tielhof (ING) studied the content of the database to determine the significance of the variables and to reconstruct the selection and processing of data as performed by De Buck. On the basis of her project plan, it was decided to once again focus on the core of the collected data: the notarial deeds from the period 1594-1724. This gave the project the character of a database on source material rather than a research project. Accordingly, in 2010 Sebastiaan Kerkvliet (ING) went through the entire database with the aid of De Buck’s card index and complementary research into over 100 deeds in the Amsterdam City Archives. In the process, Kerkvliet edited and supplemented the database, as set out in the Project Account. In the period 2009-2011, a Supervisory Committee advised on historical and technical aspects of the project. The members of this Committee were the aforementioned Jan Willem Veluwenkamp, Rik Hoekstra and Heiko Tjalsma, as well as Thomas Lindblad (Leiden University). The researchers were able to round off the project in 2011.

Project Account

Between 2008 and 2010, the data collected by Piet de Buck were converted into a database on notarial deeds from Amsterdam, i.e. essentially an instrument giving access to source material. All calculations previously made by De Buck – regarding the average size of the ships, for example – have been removed, in other words. In addition, the publication does not include any data relating to voyages to St Petersburg and other Baltic ports, nor data relating to the years after 1724. This is due to the fact that these data stem from sources other than the notarial archives. In geographic terms, the database therefore covers voyages from the Dutch Republic (nearly always setting out from Amsterdam) to Russia’s Far North (Archangel, Lapland and the White Sea). In a number of cases, the voyages involve long-haul courses from Arctic Russia to Western and Southern Europe. The chronological framework is 1594-1724, as this is the period for which De Buck had collected Amsterdam notarial deeds. Although Dutch shipping to Archangel continued after 1724, this choice of end date is understandable. Between around 1721 and 1724, the main current of foreign trade with Russia definitely moved from Archangel to St Petersburg.

When converting the collected data, the researchers worked on the principle that each record in the database related to a single notarial deed. In other words, the records, which have each been assigned a unique ID number, simply state the data of the deed in question. It may occur that two or more deeds relate to the same voyage. Consider a charter party, for instance, drawn up prior to a ship’s setting sail, and an attestation drawn up after the ship was wrecked, in which the crew make a statement about the circumstances of its demise. As a consequence, data occasionally needed to be split between multiple records. Each record is accompanied by a source reference. De Buck had planned to include these references (in the projected print volumes) in an extensive list of notes and glosses, but now these sources can simply be found in the records in the database.

It was likewise deemed appropriate to remove all data from other sources than the notarial deeds. Accordingly, we have ignored all information from other sources added by De Buck to the data from a deed. For example, details about the ships, the voyages or the individuals located by De Buck in the galjootsgeld registers have been removed. Nor have voyages that are only mentioned in sources other than the notarial deeds been included in the database. The result of this rigorous approach is that the current records only state those data that can be retrieved from the relevant notarial deeds.

Another principle that was adopted when converting the database was that it should only include systematically collected data. In the case of most variables, it was entirely clear whether or not they had been collected methodically – the only data for which this could not be ascertained concerned the ships’ weaponry. Sampling the archives showed that a specific ship’s artillery was occasionally included on a deed, but was not listed in De Buck’s card index. It could not be determined whether this amounts to a few mistakes or is an exponent of the fact that De Buck refrained from systematically recording these data. Ultimately, we have entered as many data on the ships’ artillery as possible in the database, but point out that the records may possibly be incomplete in this area. In addition, we have adopted the notes included in De Buck’s card index regarding the statements made by seamen about the course of their voyage. This involves heterogeneous information, of which we are unable to determine how methodically it was collected and recorded by De Buck.

De Buck had not yet included the ships’ names in the digital files. We have entered them in the database with the aid of the card index, which listed them in their original spelling. We have however added a normalised name to these entries – for example, ‘De Sevenster’ can also be found under ‘Zevenster’. Widely-known place-names have been changed to their current name, i.e. Constantinople has been renamed Istanbul. In the case of smaller locations in Lapland and on the boards of the White Sea, we have adopted their spelling in Damsteegt, Nieuwe spiegel der zeevaart. The spelling of personal names has been uniformised. This work had already been done by De Buck, and we have left it this way.

Namesakes have been identified by De Buck on the basis of the year or the period in which the individuals in question are referred to in the deeds. We have included this information separately in our comments. For example, according to De Buck, Willem Arentsz (1609) and Willem Arentsz (1635) are different people. Among other things, he based such distinctions on a comparison of the individuals’ signatures on the deeds. While we are aware that such identifications (like the uniformisation of the names) are based on subjective interpretation, we nevertheless believe they could be of great value to the users of this database. Naturally, it is possible that individuals are erroneously presented as one and the same or as different people.

The original SPSS databases, which retain all the data that have been removed or adapted by us in their original state, are stored at DANS and will be made available for perusal to interested parties in the near future. To make them easier to use, DANS plans to process these files and provide a more detailed explanation of them.

Sources

The sources for this project are notarial deeds stemming from notary’s offices in Amsterdam. These documents are stored in the Amsterdam City Archives. Next to 3,165 charter parties, the database contains 1,126 attestations, 155 letters of attorney, 100 notices of a claim, 34 bottomry deeds, 26 authorisations, 19 receipts, 61 other types of deeds and 29 deeds of an unknown type. The total number of documents is 4,715.

The lion’s share of the documents are charter parties, in other words. An elaborate description of this type of contract and its provisions can be found in Winkelman, Bronnen II, pp. XV- XLVIII. This publication also includes transcriptions and photographs of two charter parties for voyages undertaken to France and the Baltic Sea, on pp. X –XIV and behind p. L. The significance of charter parties as a source for research into the history of Dutch trade and shipping has been extensively commented upon by Van Tielhof and Van Zanden in ‘Productivity changes in shipping’. For specific details on the Russian trade route, you are referred to the publications by Knoppers and Hart listed in the bibliography, which have drawn a lot of information from these contracts.

The following section provides a brief explanation of the deed types most frequently come across.²²

Attestation (attestatie): A testimony by one or more individuals regarding matters that they have seen or heard, or that they personally witnessed, which they are prepared to provide on oath. In this context, an attestation usually concerns a ship-declaration: a statement made by the members of a ship’s crew at the request of the shipmaster or a third party regarding the circumstances leading to damage to a ship and/or cargo.

Authorisation (autorisatie): Letter of authority

Charter party (bevrachting): A freight contract between one or more charterers who charter a ship for a certain voyage or period, and a shipmaster acting on behalf of the shipping company. The charter party specifies which route the ship will take and which amount will be paid to the shipmaster for carriage of the charterer’s goods.

Bottomry (bodemerij): Money loan taken out on the bottom or keel of a ship, in which the lender runs the risk of shipwreck or damage at sea. The contract can be entered into by the ship-owner or the shipmaster. On the ship’s safe return, the borrowed amount is paid back to the creditor with the agreed-upon interest.

Notice of a claim (insinuatie): Summons or caution issued by a notary informing a party of the legal rights held or assumed by a third party, so that the recipient is aware of his obligations in this area.

Receipt (kwitantie): Remission of debt

Letter of attorney (procuratie): Warrant or mandate

Search instructions

The search form

The search form features an open search box that can be used to look for specific words and letter combinations. Search terms do not need to be capitalised. If one is looking for deeds containing the name ‘Thesingh’, for example, one can suffice by entering ‘thesi’ in the search box.

Clicking on the link ‘more options’ to the right of the search box will open a number of fields that allow the user to fine-tune the search. For example, the user can limit the results to notarial deeds from a certain period, of a certain type (e.g. attestations) or to deeds that refer to a specific ending of the voyage (for example, ‘shipwreck’).

Search results

The standard table with search results has six columns that each contain a different variable: ID number, date (of registration), shipmaster, origin (of the shipmaster), ship and charterers. By moving the margin slightly to the left, you can, where desired, view a seventh column specifying the deed type. You can make the columns wider or narrower. In addition, you can hide them by means of a small clickable options menu at the top of every column.

Results can be sorted according to your preferred variable by clicking the title of the column in question. For instance, you can move the oldest deed to the front of the selection by clicking on the date column. A second click will sort the results in reverse order, placing the most recent deed at the top.

Deed details

By clicking on the data of a specific deed, the details of this document are displayed to the right of the table. Besides the variables already included in the table, this list also provides extra information, such as the ports of call, the freight rate, the source reference and possible remarks. In the case of most variables, moving a mouse over them will generate a popup giving a brief explanation. A slightly more extensive explanation can be found at Explanation of the fields.

Downloading the results

At the bottom of the table with results, the user can find the links [Download as an Excel file] and [Download as a CSV file]. Clicking one of these links allows you to download the results of a search query to your hard drive. It is also possible to download the overview of all the deeds.

Explanation of the fields

ID number Each deed has been assigned a unique, randomly selected number.

Date of registration Date upon which the notarial deed was drawn up.

Source reference SAA NA 5287/595 means Amsterdam City Archives (Stadsarchief Amsterdam), Notarial Archives no. 5287, page or folio 595.

Deed type The type of deed – e.g. charter party, attestation, letter of attorney or notice of a claim. For an explanation of the various deed types, see the section on Sources.

Charterers The party chartering the ship.

Shipmaster Name of the shipmaster. The spelling of individuals’ names has been uniformised.

Origin of the shipmaster The shipmaster’s home town. Place-names follow modern-day spelling.

Ship’s name Name of the ship. The spelling of ship’s names has been uniformised.

Ship’s name, original Name of the ship as recorded in the source.

Length of the ship in feet Ship size was expressed in feet – sometimes even precise to a quarter-foot or a few inches. The unit of length usually used was the Amsterdam foot (28.3 cm, with 1 foot equalling 11 inches). Source: Verhoeff, De oude Nederlandse maten en gewichten.

Beam of the ship in feet Idem

Depth in hold of the ship in feet Idem

Deck of the ship in feet Idem

Foot unit used The Amsterdam foot = 28.3 cm. The Edam foot = 32.3 cm. The Hoornse, Enkhuizen or Medemblik foot = 32.6 cm. The Zaandam foot = length unknown. Source: Verhoeff, De oude Nederlandse maten en gewichten. In many cases, the foot unit used is not specified. In these cases, it can be assumed that the unit in question is the Amsterdam foot of 28.3 cm. When listing decimals, it has been assumed that 1 foot = 11 inches, as in the case of the Amsterdam foot.

Lastage of the ship The ship’s load capacity in terms of deadweight.

Last unit used This can be rye last, tar last, etc. For the equivalents of these measures, see: Hart, ‘Amsterdam shipping and trade’, p. 105 and De Buck, ‘De Russische uitvoer’, pp. 183-184.

Artillery Details regarding the ship’s weaponry. Please note: research into the ships’ weaponry was possibly not conducted methodically. This means that notarial deeds can specify artillery without this being referred to in the database.

Ending The ending of the voyage, for example, a shipwreck. In the case of charter parties, this field is empty, as these deeds were drawn up prior to the voyage.

Port of departure The port where the ship took sail.

Destination ports ‘Mogelijke haven‘ (possible port) means that the notarial deed lists a number of options, for instance Genoa or Livorno. In that case, both ports are possible destination ports. Locations are referred to by their modern-day names, e.g. Constantinople becomes Istanbul. For the location of small towns in Lapland and around the White Sea, see: Damsteegt, Nieuwe spiegel der zeevaart.

Total freight rate Freight rate for the entire shipment, in guilders.

Monthly freight rate Freight rate on a monthly basis, in guilders.

Freight rate per last Freight rate per last, in guilders.

Terms of freight rate Specifications or conditions relating to the agreed-upon freight rate. For example, the freight rate in question applies to a shipment of rye, while a shipment of wheat is subject to a higher rate. In addition, the terms can indicate that the freight rate only applies if the ship leaves Amsterdam with the vroegschepen (‘early ships’), i.e. the first fleet, or with the first convoy. A different rate is agreed upon for a ship leaving with the laatschepen (‘late ships’) or the last convoy.

Total alternative freight rate The alternative freight rate for the entire shipment, in guilders. Occasionally, this is specified with the phrase ‘per last ordinaris averije’. This probably means: ‘including the usual minor expenses’.

Monthly alternative freight rate The alternative freight rate per month, in guilders.

Alternative freight rate per last The alternative freight rate per last, in guilders.

Terms of alternative freight rate Specifications or conditions relating to the alternative freight rate.

Remarks Other relevant information, for example information relating to the cargo, the ship type or how the voyage progressed. This field also makes reference to routes that were too long or complicated to be included in the other fields. Occasionally, the field lists references to other deeds that have something to do with the same voyage. Finally, this field indicates when a distinction should be made between two namesakes. Individuals who have a namesake in the database are identified on the basis of the date or dates that they appear in the deeds. For example, Willem Arentsz (1609) and Willem Arentsz (1635) are different people. Piet de Buck identified different namesakes on the basis of a comparison of their signatures as well as his extensive knowledge of the people involved in the trade with Archangel. Naturally, it is possible that individuals are erroneously presented as different people.

De Buck number The deed as numbered by Piet De Buck. Where the number is 0, the deed in question has been filed by De Buck under another deed that in his view related to the same voyage.

Cited literature

Balbian Verster, F.F.l. de, ‘Christoffel Brants (1664-1732) en het Van Brants Rushofje’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 26 (1928) 105-159.

Boey, Thymon, Woorden-tolk of verklaringe van de voornaamste onduitsche en andere woorden in de hedendaagsche en aloude regtspleginge voorkomende (Den Haag 1773).

Brakel, S. van, ‘Statistische en andere gegevens betreffende onzen handel en scheepvaart op Rusland gedurende de 18^e eeuw’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 34 (1913) 350-404.

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Colophon

Research between ca. 1965 and 1999:

Piet de Buck

2008-2011 Project:

Research: Sebastiaan Kerkvliet

Project management and accompanying text: Milja van Tielhof

Selection and conversion of the old digital files: Rik Hoekstra, with the help of Heiko Tjalsma and Jelle Gerbrandy

Development of the web application and website: Jelle Gerbrandy

Supervisory Committee: Rik Hoekstra, Thomas Lindblad, Heiko Tjalsma and Jan Willem Veluwenkamp