Research
Gathering the record
Notes bring together crew lists, family knowledge, newspaper reports, public records, court material and ship-history references into one linked workspace.
Research method · sources · AI transparency
The Arctic Viking Obsidian Research Vault
This project is built from a private Obsidian vault used to collect, organise and connect the evidence behind the story of the Arctic Viking H452.
What the vault is
A working archive, not a finished book
The Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault is the author's working research system for the Arctic Viking project. It holds notes on the ship, crew, Boyd Line, wartime service, the final voyage, the Ministry of Transport inquiry, the Waddy court case, wreck-site material, newspaper clippings, timelines, places and family history.
Obsidian allows notes to be linked together, so a crew member, vessel, date, place, newspaper clipping or court detail can be connected to the wider story. That structure is especially useful for a project like this, where personal memory, official reports, newspaper accounts and maritime history overlap.
The research itself has been done manually: reading, transcribing, clipping, cross-checking, organising and making judgments about what belongs where. The vault is a tool for keeping that work visible and traceable.
This website is a research-led personal history, not a final academic edition. It may contain mistakes, incomplete interpretations, transcription errors, or details that are later corrected as new evidence is found. Anyone using information from the site should treat it as a starting point and fact-check it against original records, archive material, newspapers, official reports and other reliable sources.
Some of the writing uses dramatic licence to make the story readable and emotionally coherent, but that licence is based on the known facts, source material and survivor accounts. Where the record has gaps, minor assumptions may be made to connect the narrative, and those assumptions should not be treated as proven fact.
How it has been used
From fragments to narrative
Structure
Connecting evidence
The vault links people to places, dates, vessels and events, making it easier to see patterns across the final voyage, earlier incidents and later legal aftermath.
Writing
Shaping the story
Website copy and biographical pages are drafted from the organised notes, with care taken to distinguish firm facts from incomplete or uncertain details.
AI transparency
Manual research, AI-assisted writing
All research for this project has been carried out manually by the author. However, some of the content, structure and writing would not have been possible in its current form without advances in AI technology.
AI tools have been used to help organise material, summarise notes, draft page structures, refine wording, and turn a large body of research into readable web pages. AI has not replaced the research process; it has acted as a writing and organisation aid for material gathered by the author.
Some images used on the website are AI-generated. Real images, archive images and original source material have been used wherever possible, but AI-generated visuals may appear where no suitable real image is available or where an illustrative scene is clearly being used to support the storytelling.
Copyright and takedown
A note on images, clippings and newspapers
This website is a personal-history and documentary research project. Where possible, copyright ownership and source details are acknowledged. In some cases, especially with older images or clippings circulated without clear attribution, copyright ownership may be unknown.
Newspaper articles and clippings are acknowledged as newspaper material, but no permission has been sought for every item shown or referred to. Information and extracts from newspapers are used for research, commentary, historical context and criticism, with the intention of relying where appropriate on the UK's fair dealing principles. This is not a claim of ownership over those materials.
If you own copyright in an image, clipping or extract used on this site and believe its use is inappropriate, please contact the author. The item will be reviewed and, if necessary, removed or corrected.
Research tool
A note of thanks to Obsidian
This project has been built inside Obsidian, a plain-text note-taking app that has made it possible to hold a complicated family and maritime history together without losing the threads.
For the Arctic Viking research, Obsidian has been more than a filing cabinet. It has allowed people, ships, dates, court evidence, newspaper reports, wreck-site notes and family memories to be linked across the vault, so that a small detail in one source can find its place in the larger story.
The site and book would have been much harder to shape without that linked research structure. Obsidian has helped turn scattered fragments into something that can be followed, checked, questioned and returned to.