I was searching for my ancestors in the 1881 census for Great Yarmouth. I found the family I was looking for and then looked at the neighbouring families to see if there were any more of the names associated with my family. There were.
As I was looking at the various houses in the neighbourhood, I saw "The Naval Hospital" and all the people in it.
However what I discovered was that next in the neighbours were vessels that were moored in Great Yarmouth during the 1881 census!
The 1881 census was conducted on 3rd April.
The vessel was named. Included in the census were the names of all those who worked on the vessel; their relationship (in each case it is "Other since they are not related to each other"); married (M)or unmaried (U); whether male or female (all are males); their age; where they live; and their occupation on the vessel.
I found there were 98 vessels altogether.
Go here to see the vessels, and those who were on them:
(These are a Powerpoint presentation so might take a while to load. Please be patient. They open in a new window. They do NOT appear to open in Firefox.)
You will notice that these are NOT pleasure vessels. They are probably fishing boats that have their base in Great Yarmouth in 1881. I don't think there are many fishing vessels in 2006 in Great Yarmouth and certainly not 98 as there were in 1881.