Scanned images of historical UK tide gauge ledgers from several sites along the Mersey Estuary and the Thames Estuary (1832-1987)
This dataset consists of ~18000 scanned images (available to download in .jpg, but high resolution .tiff images are also available) from historical UK tide gauge ledgers. In 1993 the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) acquired the registers from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC). These registers were in the form of large, leather‐bound volumes dating back to 1853 for Hilbre Island and 1857 for Georges Pier. The earlier books for Georges Pier and Hilbre Island contain 1/4 hourly heights and the remaining volumes mainly list high and low waters. Some of the ledgers include metrological data alongside the tidal information. There was also one ledger from the port of Sheerness. There were 142 books included in this project. The majority of the sites were in the Mersey Estuary, with one in the Thames Estuary. The sites are listed below, with the time period covered (gaps not shown): Dutton Locks Lower Gauge, River Weaver (53.28778,-2.62111) 1897-1917 Dutton Locks Upper Gauge, River Weaver (53.35111,-2.90694) 1897-1906 Eastham Lock, Mersey (53.3167,-2.9499) 1892-1981 Fiddlers Ferry (53.36667,-2.65) 1891-1974 Frodsham Bridge, River Weaver (53.30167,-2.70833) 1891-1917 Garston Dock, Mersey (53.40528,-2.99444) 1892-1917 George’s Pier, Liverpool (53.28333,-2.85) 1857-1912 Hale Head, Mersey (53.38333,-2.6) 1891-1917 Hilbre Island (53.3833,-3.2276) 1853-1987 Liverpool, Gladstone Dock (53.44969,-3.018) 1971-1981 Liverpool, Princes Pier (53.4083,-2.9983) 1971-1981 Stanlaw, Mersey (53.39556,-3.00833) 1891-1917 Sheerness (51.44564,0.74344) 1832-1849 Tranmere (53.3756,-2.9978) 1974-1981 Warrington, Mersey (53.28722,-2.6225) 1891-1912 Waterloo (53.4125,-3.0031) 1986-1987 Widnes, Mersey (53.32361,-2.79306) 1892-1917 Woodside Landing, Birkenhead (53.35,-2.73333) 1847-1897 The ledger scanning was put out to tender. Most of the ledgers were quite old and fragile, the books had to be preserved in their original format and binding and care had to be taken to prevent further deterioration as they were irreplaceable. It was specified in the tender that a specialist organisation was required with a proven track record of handling antique books. They had to use an archival quality overhead flatbed book scanner/ planetary scanner to preserve the pages and spines of the books. Some of the ledgers were quite large and required a scanner that could accommodate them without damage. The aim of this project was to digitise and scan historic analogue chart and manuscript sea level records held in the archive of the British Oceanographic Data Centre and to make these records available to the wider community. These data are unrepeatable scientific measurements and we want to encourage their reuse. Extending back and infilling tide gauge records will help with, among other things, climate change research, storm surge predictions and coastal land movement studies. BODC received a grant from the JISC eContent Capital Programme 2011-13, Strand B: Mass Digitisation to carry out the scanning of the ledgers.
Simple
- Alternate title
- British Oceanographic Data Centre record 1048JISCtideledgers
- Date (Publication)
- 2017-10-03
- Date (Creation)
- 2016-07-04
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-04-21
- Identifier
- http://www.bodc.ac.uk/ / EDMED6548
Owner
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Unknown
(
Unknown
)
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
Originator
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Unknown
(
Unknown
)
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
Custodian
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Director
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
Distributor
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Director
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
- Maintenance and update frequency
- asNeeded As needed
- INSPIRE themes
- MEDIN metadata record availability
- SeaDataNet PDV
- Vertical Coverages
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- No limitations apply
- Other constraints
- Data are freely available
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- No conditions apply
- Spatial representation type
- Text, table
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
-
- Elevation
- Oceans
- Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
N
S
E
W
- Geographic identifier
-
North Sea
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Geographic identifier
-
Irish Sea
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Geographic identifier
-
Mersey Estuary
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Geographic identifier
-
Thames Estuary
- Date (Revision)
- 2021-10-28
- Begin date
- 1832-01-01
- End date
- 1987-12-31
- Unique resource identifier
- urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
- Codespace
- OGP
- Distribution format
-
-
Image
()
-
Image
()
- OnLine resource
-
BODC online data delivery service
National Oceanographic Database data delivery service; pre-filtered for the data collection.
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Explanation
- BODC protocols are based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model enabling BODC to iterate towards compliance with the on-going evolution and development of community requirements including FAIR (Findable,Accessible,Interoperable,Reusable), TRUST (Transparency, Responsibility, User community, Sustainability, Technology) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics). Data managers quality assure submissions and assemble the metadata necessary for curation. Submissions (as received) are placed in a long-term accession and stored in triplicate across multiple sites. Appropriate data are transferred into a standard internal format with source variable names mapped to controlled vocabularies, documentation assembled, and metadata loaded into BODC databases. Access to these data is through direct request, the BODC website and through partner repositories such as SeaDataNet. Access control is attained by assigning a data policy to each set of data and this policy is used to administer access when data are requested. Discovery metadata is aligned with EU INSPIRE (through MEDIN) and SeaDataNet community standards. Data are converted to open community formats including Ocean Data View ASCII and SeaDataNet NetCDF, with data described using terms from the NERC vocabulary server. BODC submission agreements are documented on the BODC website and customer service is assured with a dedicated requests team that serve data following local regulations including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018 and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004.
- Pass
- Yes
- Statement
- In 1993 the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) acquired sea level registers from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC) in the form of large, leather‐bound volumes. The registers were quite old and fragile so the aim was to scan historic manuscripts to make these data available to the wider community, whilst ensuring that the registers themselves are preserved in the BODC archive in their original format and binding as they are irreplaceable. A specialist organisation with a proven track record of handling antique books was hired to scan the data using an archival quality overhead flatbed book scanner/ planetary scanner to preserve the pages and spines of the ledgers. The data are made available in jpeg and high resolution tiff images.
- File identifier
- 5c680ca7c5285413a6c58b5d5b070e28 XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2021-12-20T06:31:16
- Metadata standard name
- MEDIN
- Metadata standard version
- 3.1.1
Point of contact
British Oceanographic Data Centre
-
Polly Hadžiabdić
(
Head of the BODC Requests Team
)
Joseph Proudman Building
,
6 Brownlow Street
,
Liverpool
,
Merseyside
,
L3 5DA
,
United Kingdom
https://www.bodc.ac.uk/
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
Provided by
Associated resources
Not available