Family Historian User Group

I have an ancestor who died at sea (Andaman Sea) about 400km off the coast of Thailand. I have his death certificate which, very helpfully, provides the latitude and longitude of the ship when he died.

I was wondering whether anyone else had recorded a Death at Sea, and how they recorded the place/address of death. Would you say the ship is the place of death, or would it be the body of water the ship was located in at the time, with the ship's name as an address?

Many thanks in advance

The posting missing map pins (17314) has some suggestions.

The important point is not to use a generic Place such as at sea.
Each Place must be unique to allow it to be plotted in the Map Window.
So maybe include the Lat/long coordinates in the Place name along with the ship and the sea.
Then you can enter those Lat/Long into the Place record for it to plot accurately.

tatewise wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 22:52

...
The important point is not to use a generic Place such as at sea.
Each Place must be unique to allow it to be plotted in the Map Window.

Within this it might be possible to be more useful in respect of "place"
Either:
Place: Wreck @ Lat Long
Address: Ship Name
Or
Place: 5 days out from Rio bound for Liverpool
Address: Ship Name

Then manually enter the actual/approx lat & long for the map pin. Hopefully no one has too many such examples!

I agree completely with Mike's points, but what works for you is important. To have the actual co-ordinates is unusual. Here are a few examples of how I have done this for "approximate locations".

I have numerous people in my tree who died at sea. I have edited the Sentence related to death by changing {place} to {_place}, so that the word "in" is removed, i.e. "He died in 1775 in at sea off the Guinea coast" becomes "He died in 1775 at sea off the Guinea coast". However, the death Fact still reads "Died in at sea off the Guinea coast". I imagine that there is a way to leave out the word "in" here, but I can't find it. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Not a death, but my GF was at sea on the night of the 1921 census. I edited the fact sentence to simply <para>{note}<para> and the fact note reads, "He appeared in the census on 19 June 1921 as a Signalman on board HMS Cleopatra, a light cruiser of the Royal Navy, then serving in the Atlantic Fleet. The position of the ship at midnight on the date of the census was recorded as 50°22' N 2°45' W - a location in the English Channel approximately 20 miles south-west of Weymouth."

Peter, you need to adjust the Template for the Facts tab via the Tools > Fact Types... dialogue.
Select the Death event, then Edit... and the Advanced... button at the bottom.
In the Advance Features dialogue tick Summary Template (e.g. for Facts tab Listings) and set the Template to:
Died {=TextIf(%FACT._SENT%,"","in ")}{_place}
That tests whether the specific local Sentence Template exists.
If it does then no text is displayed and if not then the word in is displayed.

However, it will still display in even if there is no Place name assigned to the event so the Template needs refining to:
Died {=CombineText( TextIf(%FACT._SENT%,"","in "), %FACT.PLAC%, )}
So now the in prefix is only displayed if the Place name exists.

Do the same for the Override Template if you want the same effect in the Records Window.