We can then place this detail within the context of the specific vessel on which they were serving. We are recording 12 pieces of information about each sailor, including things like their names, ages, nativity, and pre-service occupations. They contain a remarkable level of detail about the men who made up individual ships’ crews-detail we want to use to capture both the sailor’s personal information and to recreate their shipboard communities. Held at the National Archives, these recently digitized musters were taken every three months aboard U.S. Launched in September 2022, the project is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and is a collaboration between historians at Northumbria University and information scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Koblenz-Landau, together with partners such as the United States Naval Academy Museum.Īt the heart of Civil War Bluejackets is a call for citizen volunteers to aid in the transcription of tens of thousands of wartime muster sheets.

The aim of the Civil War Bluejackets Project is to create new resources for historians and genealogists interested in the backgrounds and experiences of these Civil War sailors, and to use them to expand our knowledge of this fascinating group of men. In contrast to the army documentation, the majority of these records have now also been digitized, creating a unique opportunity which the Civil War Bluejackets Project hopes to capitalize on. But it is to our great benefit that the Navy created copious amounts of records relating to these men-data that allows us to follow them from initial enlistment to on-board service, and often into the post-war decades in the form of pension records. The majority of these naval recruits were drawn from the lower echelons of New York society-individuals whose life-detail has proved particularly challenging for us to uncover.

Nowhere supplied more “Bluejackets” for the decks and engine rooms of the rapidly expanding Union fleets than did New York, a service in which c. But New York, and in particular New York City, was also the key provider of the Navy’s most vital commodity-manpower. Navy of locations such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where so many vessels were constructed, outfitted, and repaired. It is difficult to overstate the importance to the U.S. Less well known is the central role that the Empire City and State played in bringing victory in the War on the Waters. The mammoth contribution of New York to the armies of the United States is a topic on which much ink has been spilled.

Civil war union navy vs british navy