Fourteen Years! 1998-2011
The Maritime Heritage Project started as a high school paper in 1997 when my daughter was asked to write about a notable person. She choose Captain James H. Blethen, her great-great-great grandfather, who was a noted sea captain in the 1800s in San Francisco. Information about Captain Blethen uncovered during that research led to ongoing research and a growing respect for captains and their ships for their enduring commitment in protecting shorelines and in moving merchandise, livestock, and people around the world under unpredictable and often dangerous conditions.
More than 30,000 hours have gone into the project and it continues as new sections are added or expanded. (This does not include 45 years of travel and research: Refer to Bibliography.)
For more than a decade, The Maritime Heritage Project has been considered a valuable reference web site, receives more than 80,000 accesses per month, and is well-regarded by researchers, educators (4% of all page views), genealogists, and professionals in the maritime field.
Comments include: "There is no other site like it in the world," "For the first time during years of research, I found information about family members," and hundreds of notes from educators who acknowledge the importance of the site to their students.
The site also illustrates that America belongs to everyone; the health and wealth of this nation was formed by individuals from every nation who migrated to its shores seeking refuge and opportunity. The Maritime Heritage Project is not a commercial website. It is basically the creation of one person with minimal income through affiliate marketing and through modest donations. If you find value in this project, please contribute to its growth.
Site Statistics (as of November 1, 2010)
Statistics are supplied through Urchin (charts available for verification upon request) and Alexa.com
Monthly Average: 234,926 requests handled
(up from 19,791 in January 2009)
Average Monthly Page Views: 54,778
(up from 33,660 in September 2007 and 47,553 in January 2009)
As of November 2010, individuals speaking 35 languages visited the site, 75% of visitors were from the United States; the remaining were from the U.S. Government (including U.S. Military), educational institutions and other non-profit corporations, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Thailand, India, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, the Faroe Islands, the Russian Federation, etc.
Visitors view as many as five pages and a significant number stay between 5 and 30 minutes.
Testimonials
Testimonials started arriving the month this site was launched in 1998; among the first eMails came from an English gentleman who had been seeking his great-great grandparents for many years and found them on this site.Reference Site: The focus will continue as a content/reference site for maritime history in and around San Francisco Bay and will focus on the build-out of specific areas, i.e.:
That email was shortly followed by requests from a French student writing on the French in California during the Gold Rush.
A personal favorite is from James P. Delgado, author of To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush. He wrote that this is the only site of its kind in that it is listing all ships and passengers arriving at the port of San Francisco.
- Thank you for Captain E H Hitchcock. Your efforts to transcribe Daily Alta California list of Ship Arrivals lead to location of Fred's Wife's ancestor. All we had was Betty Hitchcock's "Gone to California as ship's captain" info. . . We really appreciate this.
-- G. Cramer- Thank you very much for your help. You told me in a previous message that you are working on this project by yourself. I'm impressed with your work and recognize pain of research. -- Regards, L. Mims
- Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction. Very handy site you have; it has been of great value to my research from here. You must visit New Zealand again. -- Regards, D. Armitrage
- I have enjoyed your site, located the arrival of my 2nd great grandfather in August of 1849 on the Humboldt. Lots of information on the site. Thank you and all the others for all the work it took to place the information on the net for all to discover. -- Barb
- I've enjoyed your web site while looking for photos and marine drawings/plans of side wheel steamers built by William H. Brown during the 1850s . . .. We are trying to build a scale model (of the S.S. Pacific) for display. -- Thank you, M. Boyd
- Guess you've heard it before, but you've got a fantastic website. Great job and thanks for the enjoyment. -- D. Hunt
- Captains
- Ships: Hundreds of people have asked for images of a given ship, captain or personage arriving in San Francisco during the mid-1800s.
- Civil War Troop Ships in San Francisco
- Passengers: Additions to the lists, valuable to genealogists around the world, an increasing number of which are arriving from Australian's seeking ancestors;
- Routes and Ports
- What They Found On Arrival
- VIPs with details of their contributions to the State of California
From maritime-related entities, i.e. shipping lines, cruise lines, maritime products, etc., which have resulted in logos placed on the site.
Affiliate Marketing partners such as Amazon.com, Ancestry.com, InternationalHarbors.com, each of which has provided modest (but growing) income to The Maritime Heritage Project through online purchases through the site.
The site is listed on major maritime search engines around the world, including maritime museum sites, shipping lines such as American President Lines, and merchant marine sites. The Maritime Heritage site is also used as a training/reference site by the San Francisco Maritime Museum and J. Porter Shaw Maritime Library in San Francisco.
The market is international: Given the aging of America, family historians/genealogists are blossoming. San Francisco Bay Area has 6,605,428 residents, many with ancestors who arrived by ship. Internationally, 72 cruise ship lines carry more than 1 million passengers annually and that industry is growing (it is expected to exceed oil revenues). Thousands of families have an "historian" (one genealogical library received 30 million viewers, although a timeframe was not given nor numbers substantiated).
Management and Organization
The Maritime Heritage Project is a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity with a governing board with a goal of providing free information to researchers seeking ancestral travel to the West Coast of North America.
Expenses and Financial Plan
Expenses are minimal and include salary for the project director and fees for copying, travel (mostly local to/from historical societies), acquisition and/or reprint rights of prints, maps, etc., i.e.
