Catalogue description Board of Trade and successors: Marine Department and successors: Shipping Casualty Investigation Papers

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Details of BT 369
Reference: BT 369
Title: Board of Trade and successors: Marine Department and successors: Shipping Casualty Investigation Papers
Description:

This series contains shipping casualty investigation papers of the Marine Department and successors.

Most of the records are verbatim transcripts of the proceedings of formal investigations into shipping casualties held before a Wreck Commissioner. Some records consist of reports of preliminary inquiries. Among the records selected are the minutes of the proceedings relating to the sinking of the 'Lusitania' by two German submarine torpedoes on 7 May 1915; an act which contributed to the demise of Woodrow Wilson's neutrality policy, and the eventual entry of the United States into the War of 1914 to 1918 on 6 April 1917.
Date: 1910-1988
Arrangement:

Casualty investigation papers have not been arranged in any relative order. However, the files concerning each specific incident have been arranged chronologically within each collection of papers.
Related material:

For the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen's inquiries into deaths at sea, see BT 341
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 400 volume(s)
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 1999 Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
Custodial history: Transferred to Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in 1997.
Selection and destruction information: Records have been selected for preservation if the incidents to which they relate were controversial, concerned 'causes celebres' or were catalysts to changes in shipping safety policy and practices.
Accruals: Series is accruing
Administrative / biographical background:

The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 authorised the Board of Trade to set up preliminary inquiries and formal investigations in respect of shipping casualties.

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