Have you been wondering why we are asking our Zooniverse Citizen Scientists to draw boxes around Muster Roll transcriptions? To answer that question- and to give you an insight into the exciting machine learning software we are developing as part of Civil War Bluejackets- team member Dr Morgan Harvey explains all in our new video!
Not long ago Bluejackets team member Professor Wayne Hsieh discussed the Civil War Bluejackets Project in a talk for the American Civil War Museum. Wayne’s talk is a great introduction to what we are doing and what we hope the results will be. It is now available on YouTube, so if you would like to…
For our latest Bluejacket Community Discoveries post, we take a look at the only muster sheet that relates to the unfortunate U.S. schooner Annie. The sheet has been worked and commented on by a number of our Civil War Bluejackets Community, including @mermex, @Beth52 and @KaiserSnowse. The reason it has drawn particular attention is its…
A number of our previous posts have examined the international aspects of the wartime U.S. Navy, demonstrating just how cosmopolitan ships’ crews could be (e.g. see here). Recently one of our Zooniverse Community members @KaiserSnowse has been keeping an eagle-eye out for interesting nativities among the muster rolls, identifying a range of examples that serve…
The Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine Transcription Tuesday event has arrived! We are delighted to welcome today’s transcribers to our maritime community! To mark the occasion, we have added some new vessels to those currently available for transcription. Up to know, the ship’s musters we have been working on were all related to…
Every year, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine holds a major online transcription event entitled “Transcription Tuesday.” It calls on those interested in family and social history to support a number of not-for-profit transcription projects by transcribing some of their available documents (read more about Transcription Tuesday here). This year is the seventh annual…
Service in the Civil War Navy brought with it a much reduced risk of injury or death when compared to the army- but it was far from safe. Sailors consistently faced risks such as disease, shipboard accidents and drowning during their time as Bluejackets. Inevitably, casualties also occurred in combat. For those who recovered, the…
There is no doubt that the Civil War Bluejackets “Where Born” Workflow on Zooniverse offers some of the most compelling detail about our sailors. The entries in that column lay bare the wide range of ethnicities that could be present on a single vessel, each of them contributing something different to the onboard community. Occasionally…
With the help of our Citizen Scientists, Civil War Bluejackets is setting out to reveal new insights into the life of the common U.S. sailor during the American Civil War. The project blog has already examined the experiences of some African American, Irish, British and native-born white American sailors- representatives of the groups who made…