Adventures in Digitizing Files

Every file laid out on a six foot table.

Digitizing files can be dangerous work, let me tell you. Tim here, your museum interpreter for the summer. My first major project at Admiralty House has been the digitizing of our research files on the S. S. Florizel and her final journey. I was given a scanner and a box with folders for every man, woman, and child on the Florizel, and asked to organize and scan every last bit of it.

At first, the most dangerous part of the work seemed to be papercuts. As the week progressed, I realized that the hardest part of this process was not a physical threat but rather reading the stories within.

 

Having just finished my undergrad in history, I can say that it is very easy for the events, objects, and people of history to become far removed from our present reality. It is easy to read a statistic on those lost in a disaster and feel nothing more than a momentary sense of pity. Scanning these documents one at a time has forced me to confront that mentality head on.

As I was scanning the 139 folders, I began to read through them. This is where the danger in digitizing files lies: the sobering reminder that these folders contain the memories of real people. These people, most of whom were from the very town I call home, suffered a tragic fate and yet I allowed myself to reduce them to a name on a folder. Perhaps it would have been easier on my heart to allow them to remain meaningless names on paper, but to do such a thing now would be to consciously dehumanize those who suffered on the wreck of the S. S. Florizel.

Three generations of descendants
of Newman Sellars, a passenger who
died on the Florizel, at his
gravesite

It is this realization that inspires me to work on adding information to these folders. We will be spending time throughout the summer hunting down missing information on them, trying to find pictures, and even going to visit some of their gravesites on a journey to help others remember the humanity of those on the S. S. Florizel.

We will also be blogging throughout the summer with new finds, stories around the Florizel and her passengers and crew, and other interesting facts about it. If you want to learn more, feel free to contact or come visit us at the Admiralty House Communications Museum in Mount Pearl.

Also, if you or anyone you know has any information, photographs, stories, or anything related to those involved in the wreck of the S. S. Florizel and are willing to share it with us, please feel free to reach out to us!