Ship Ownership

Because sailing vessels were expensive items and subject to unexpected loss, they were not usually owned by just one person. It made more sense for someone to buy, say, a quarter share in four ships, that to have all their capital tied up in one vessel.

By the mid-nineteenth century it was usual for shares to be multiples of a sixty-fourth part; but before that time it was fairly random. Ownership by 64ths is still the norm.

The owners were usually a consortium of family, friends, and/or interested parties. For example, a collier sailing brig in the 18th Century may well have had a rope-maker, a sail-maker and a coal factor among the owners; and sometimes the Master of the vessel was also a part share owner. All this was clearly good practice. Some shareholders were simply making a disinterested investment (like shareholders today),
and this became increasingly the practice as the 19th Century wore on.

Shares could be bought or sold, like any other commodity (though if owned by a consortium they would have had their own rules about these things). These would, until 1787, be purely private transactions, and as such details of these sales survive randomly as they do for purchases of any other expensive item. They can often be found in the archives of local museums in ports or in the county record offices. 

Ships had to be registered from around 1787 and the registers listed the owners. Transcripts of these registers can be found at Greenwich and elswhere, on microfilm.

In terms of the business of running the ship, practice varied widely, depending on the nature of the ownership. If a vessel was owned by a small consortium, they no doubt all got together at the end of each season (or voyage) to check the accounts, divide the profits, and make plans for the future. 

There was usually a main owner, who took a more hands-on part in the running of the ship than the rest, responsible for handing over the money, maintaining contacts in other ports, arranging insurance and repairs, and being responsible for the
paperwork, etc. He may sometimes have sailed with the vessel. The main owner would be called the "ship's husband", especially when most of the owners were
simply cash investors.

I do not know of any contractural agreement between owners as to who should do what that has survived from the 18th Century, but there must be some somewhere, even though many of the agreements may have been purely verbal, or "understood". 

In terms of legal liability it is probable that all the owners shared this according to the size of their share.

In terms of decision-making among the owners, by far the most important was choosing a Master. A good ship's Master could not only sail a ship from A to B
and get the best from the crew; but could also negotiate for cargoes in other ports. There were lots of financial dodges a Master could get up to, so it was pretty crucial to have a Master you could trust.

It was not unusual for husbands to leave their "parts and shares" of ships to their wives in their will. If the husband was the major shareholder, the widow could run the ship, and often did an excellent job of it. Often the executors of the husband's will seem to have run the ship for some years after the death of the owner, either for the widow's benefit, or until a suitable buyer could be found. A lot would have depended upon character and circumstances. Many women in the 18th century seem to have taken an active part in their husband's job, both during his life and after his death, as had been normal since the Mddle Ages.