Seafaring men of modern times: seafaring professions, coastal links and hygienic conditions – GEMER

Methods and approaches: 1 have a clear idea of ​​the existing archives and the different repositories; 2 carry out the imaging and naming of probably two million archive photos; 3 host these photos to allow access to all those involved in the GEMER project, including students (masters and doctoral students); 4 sorting of said photos on access databases according to the different formats linked to the different sources (crew roles, registration numbers, sea reports, baptism, marriage and burial registers (BMS), notarial, tax, legal, medical, administrative documents, etc.). We are currently at the end of this long stage, hoping to complete it at the end of 2024. The work is carried out in a network, particularly for notarial and tax archives, bringing together both local scholars and master's students. The next stage will focus on aligning the databases, namely merging the three databases linked to the three territories concerned by the project.

Once this has been done, a migration to Heurist will take place, with the development and expansion of the database in connection with the analyses. Data cleaning operation: historical data, often from nominative sources, such as BMS or other types of registers (tax censuses, notarial deeds for example), have the characteristic of mentioning quantitative elements (ages for example), mentions of dates (births, deaths, marriages, event records), and textual elements (names and first names of people, localities, countries, professions). These latter elements, often poorly harmonized, require processing in order to make them usable on heterogeneous corpora, in time and space. Thus, it is necessary to use techniques for harmonizing these textual elements (lemmatization techniques, Levenshtein-type algorithms or phonetic algorithms to group spelling variants) on which part of the consortium is currently working. At the same time, preparatory work is underway on setting up a bibliography and writing the first chapters of the final work.

Both in scientific terms through several conferences and study days and in terms of promotion for the general public, the project is not lacking in interest and communication is an important means of promoting GEMER. Several conferences and study days have been organized by or with GEMER to date:

*December 12, 2022 in Lorient: Seafarers and their archives (GEMER organizer)

*June 8/10 in Douarnenez: as part of the Maritime Heritage Observatory on the importance of women in maritime history

*September 15/16, 2023 in Le Havre and Honfleur: Slavery: Norman memories

*October 19, 2023 in Cherbourg: Digital humanities, quantification and maritime history study days

*December 1, 2023 in Toulouse: GEMER study day, Educating, learning and transmitting on the coast from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era: boys and girls in the world of fishing

*November 21, 2023 in Lorient (Cité de la voile): conference on the socio-historical contexts of innovations in the navy

*March 15 2024 in Lorient and visio France: maritime history research seminar, Maritime History and Museum Collections in France Crossed Views and Perspectives on Seafarers (GEMER organizer)

*June 11/12, 2024 in Lorient: international conference, Asiamar, Asia through the prism of maritime history (GEMER co-organizer)

*August 27-30, 2024 in Aveiro (Portugal): XXII AIDELF international conference. Demography and mobility

Several articles have been published or are forthcoming as well as four books to be published.

Several conferences were organized for the general public, notably in Saint-Malo and Brest but also in Dakar

The GEMER project was the subject of a course at the University of Lorient, student work in Lorient and Poitiers, and discussions with students from Aix

Meetings were held in archive departments and museums (Rochefort, Martigues, Saint-Chamas, Lorient and Port-Louis, Saint-Malo and Cancale)

As regards promotion, aimed at young audiences, a manga is currently being created: L'ARCHE DES CIVILIZATIONS PERDUES

TV projects: two documentaries produced by France2 and Arte which will be released at the end of the year

This theme concerns more the hard sciences, but as the project progresses in time, some 17 master's theses having been defended, with 2 theses in progress, the GEMER project is gaining ground on several points. First, the database is arousing interest to serve as a model for future studies (new day on databases in March 2025 in Cherbourg). The project, with archives unknown elsewhere in Europe. Then, it is of interest to other European and North American countries (see the international committee of the project): a rapprochement is planned with a Quebec research project itself extended to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. The work of GEMER, concerning the transatlantic slave trade, is of interest to West African countries. Those concerning the exploitation of the Prize Papers, are of interest to Germany and the Netherlands. The data concerning the climate and storms, in particular with the recording of shipwrecks, contribute to the edifice of climate change. But above all, GEMER will result, with the usual corrections and essential adaptations, in a model for processing maritime archives that can easily spill over into the contemporary period. Several archivists would like to receive teams (retirees, students) trained on the GEMER methodology to boost their archives and connect them with other projects. The sea offers the advantage of having seafarers who leave for distant destinations while micro-mobility takes place for families who remain on land: mobility will be the subject of the terminal international conference which will take up the navigations and exchanges between sailors of axis 1, the intercommunal migrations of axis 2 and everything related to demography, accidentology and epidemiology of axis 3: note that the study day organized in November 2024 in Paris will focus on microbes carried by ships: another migration!

GEMER takes into account all the records concerning seamen. This project cross-references the divisions of seamen's registers and the crews books with the civil registers. This allows us to follow each seaman in his navigations, but also to study his coastal links (family, habitat, multi-activity) and get a more precise idea about the problems concerning health or hygienic conditions (anthropology, epidemiology, funeral rites). This is a whole population, "the people of the shores" that emerges and that during eight generations, faces crises, wars and diseases, endures the weight of the State and adjusts to the new social and economic conditions. The rich sources of information allow us to tell the story of all these women and men. These sources allow to retrace a culture both wordily and intangible, always shaped by tradition, sometimes shaped by renewal with its unavoidable disruptions, renewal which is based on submission or resilience. GEMER is therefore a database where there will be 20.000 seamen registered in the class records covering the period from 1690 to 1790: in this database, you will also find the relatives of these seamen, their ascendant, descendant or collateral kinships, as well as their godfathers and godmothers. Three territories having equivalent populations and geographic configurations have been chosen: Plessis-Bertrand Estate with Cancale, the maritime district of the Seudre with Marennes and the district of Berre Pond with Martigues. This research will allow us to carry out a wide and complex study in historical anthropology, by multiplying science-based measures on the three defined areas of interest which complement, support and cross one another. We will study the lenght of careers at sea, the duration of navigations, the number of accidents and epidemics on board, the death rate at sea, the organization of labour and the question of wages. Besides, when seamen go back home, they are reunited with their families. So our study will deal with the way the sailors’ wives, sisters or daughters handle the situation in their prolonged absence. The study will also deal with agency, solidarity amongst women, female multi-activity, additional incomes, relationship with the representatives of the Church (the priests) and relationship with the representatives of the State (the Admiralty officers, "la sénéchaussée", the Commissioner of the "Marine du Roi"). After observing the health conditions of the seamen and their families’ questions may be asked about fecundity and survival, mainly concerning mothers and their infants. The way of life of these populations and the dangers that threaten the seamen have an influence on this social group’s demography. Its components linked with historical demography (marriage rate, fecundity, mortality, mobilities and migrations) will be analysed. What’s the GEMER project? It is an open access database: it will allow us to organize several study sessions that will lead to many publications as well as an international conference with proceedings both in English and in French; there will be also a book including all the elements highlighted by this research and a website will be opened. GEMER will organize a travelling exhibition and a docu drama about a trip to the South Sea will be also made: this documentary fiction will speak about seamen who sail to Newfoundland but who also "discover" the West Indies and the transatlantic slave trade, then, they go to the Mediterranean and finally travel to China. When war breaks out once again, they are also formidable privateers. A close relationship will be established with learned societies in order to reproduce this pattern, as well as with the Education Office.