This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Historians have created a first-of-its-kind online interactive map, using data from hundreds of thousands of pages of centuries-old port records to chart Britain's growth into a dominant global trading nation. The University of Southampton project used artificial intelligence to transform information from delicate handwritten "port books" into an enormous database of Britain's merchant shipping past.
It charts the country's growth into an empire from the late 16th to the mid-18th century—from the reign of Elizabeth I to George III. The researchers have recorded hundreds of thousands of voyages, including information about ships, ports, sea routes and goods. The project revealed that Europe accounted for the majority of Britain's overseas trade, more than its global colonies.
The researchers also discovered information about what was being traded, with coal as the top commodity, closely followed by ale. Children's toys, sheep guts and bowstrings were all popular items, along with a purported cure-all, "Venice treacle." The team used AI to help extract data from the vast number of voyages noted in the handwritten port books—historic documents that form an unbroken 200-year record of individual voyages, ports, ships, shipmasters and cargoes from 1565 onward. They scanned some 100,000 pages from the delicate, leather-bound parchment books at the National Archives in Kew.
The painstaking process used specialized software to recognize the text, learn and compile information about who was trading what, with whom, when and where. "This was a massive task, completed on a scale not seen before," said historian and lead researcher Craig Lambert, a professor at the University of Southampton. "Without AI extracting and organizing the data, this would have taken years.
It still needed manual checking, but it sped up the process enormously. "We taught AI to read the unique handwriting belonging to many different port officials and also the change in spelling of words across the decades." The historians worked with Southampton's GeoData Institute to translate vast amounts of information from the port books, along with other historical documents, into a database that forms the basis of the interactive map. The map allows users to explore maritime trade through time and from multiple points of interest and angles.
"We wanted to make the information as accessible as possible to the general public, scholars and citizen historians. People can easily explore the data for different periods, trading hubs, ships, goods, routes and more," says Jason Sadler, a professor at GeoData. The team identified more than 3,000 individual ports at home and abroad.
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