Rat traces in the archives

My quest for traces of rats in the archives occasionally yields some surprisingly literal results. I visited the National Archives in Kew recently in search of letters written by employees of the British navy detailing their concerns and the strategies of their ongoing war with rats, mice and other verminous creatures. The expansive catalogue of the National Archives contain not only such letters, but also tragic casualties of this war. Take, for example, the ship’s paybook of the Canterbury, which contains in exhaustive detail the records of the financial and labourious goings-on aboard the ship. In the archive’s catalogue, it is marked with a short description and a note: “Ship: Canterbury. Destroyed by rats”. 

With immense excitement, I requested access to this book. Was this a document about a ship that had been entirely destroyed by rats?! I picked up a large, heavy box from the collections and set about unpacking it. The book within was wrapped in protective paper, almost as if it was a gift from the eighteenth century to me, personally. I unwrapped the gift as carefully as its weight would allow, and found a giant book inside. Pausing for a moment to admire its plain beauty, I opened it, expecting to find panicked logs of expenditures as the ship fought its desperate battle against a horde of ravenous rats hell-bent on sinking the Canterbury.

Unpacking the ship’s paybook, which can be found at the National Archives under the reference ADM 33/224. Dutchman’s left hand for scale.

Instead, I found a gaping hole where the payments should be.

The sight was grotesque. This book had been gruesomely and savagely disembowelled by the Navy’s eternal four-footed enemy. It had become a casualty of war, ‘KIA’ in the line of administrative duty. I closed the book. My expectations were shattered. I realised that “Destroyed by rats” referred to the book itself. This was, perhaps, obvious in hindsight.

The great wound left in the book by the rats

While the most dramatic example I have found so far, this is far from the only destroyed piece of administration. The Dutch national archives, and surely every archive in the world, similarly contain documents that have been nibbled on.

Documentary nibbling at the Dutch National Archives, collection 3.01.27.07, inventory number 74.09

This issue was so pervasive that an administrator working in Deptford in the mid 18th century lost his entire administration. When tasked to send his accounts to the Admiralty for inspection, he wrote:

Hon^ble Sirs,

    In Obedience to your warrant
of the 23^d Instant, Directing me to let your
Honours know why any accounts where not
deliverd  in the navy Office. In Answer to
which I may leave to Acquaint your Hon^rs
that being removed into his Majesty’s ship
the Scarborough and there being a great
number of Ratts & other Vermin on board
all my Books and Papers where Distroy’d
by them and not being able to Gett any Copys
of them which is the True and just reason
of my not Delivering them as Directed by
my Instructions. I am
        Hon^ble Sirs
    Your most Obedient Humble
            Servant
            Tho^s Turner

Thomas Turner’s letter to the admiralty, which can be found at the National 

Archives under the reference ADM 106/1076/177

Indeed, rat attacks on paper gained symbolic meaning, at least in the Netherlands: in celebration of the end of the 9 years’ war in 1697, an extravagant victory column was built upon the decks of two ships docked side-by-side in Amsterdam. Among other things, the column displayed Bellona, Roman goddess of war, seated on a throne. Cast down at her feet were the trampled scales of justice, the mirror of clarity, the cap of freedom (pileus), an olive branch of peace and, crucially, a chest of letters devoured by rats. The destruction of administration, of bureaucracy, of the most mundane tools of the state’s power, was seen as equal to the end of freedom, clarity and justice. At stake was not merely the destruction of some mouldy books, but the fate of civilisation itself.

 

I  was unable to find an image of this column, only an extensive description of it in a newspaper. This is an “artist’s” impression of what the column might have looked like (thanks, MS paint!), depicting Bellona seated with a torch in her hand, tramping the olive branch of peace, with a burning city, Mars (another Roman god of war), and a big bag of plundered gold to her sides, and the four items described above cast down at her feet. The other sides of the column depicted the gradual (and somewhat ironic) defeat of the gods of war by gods of peace.

As much as anything, the Canterbury’s paybook was victim to differing priorities and value structures between the species. Man viewed paper bundled together into a codex as a prime carrier of information with which to facilitate the crushing bureaucracy of the nascent premodern state. Rat viewed paper as prime nesting material. Indeed, it is possible that rats hollowed out this book to sleep in it, or perhaps they slunk away with their scraps of nibbled paper to some dark hiding spot to keep warm, soft and safe. Either way, this paybook is a strong reminder to me, the historian, that I study not just the abstract problems of our ancestors. The hole, lined with discernible toothmarks, perhaps even containing the traces of their DNA, signifies a concrete statement – Nay, a manifesto! – as brief as it is bold: RATS WERE HERE! 

Rats were here. That is sometimes easy to forget when using rats as a heuristic tool to analyse the way people considered the natural world. These were living, breathing beings that valued their environments perhaps differently, but no less than humans did. And I can think of no better message to impart today, on World Rat Day 2025. Happy World Rat Day! 

- Daan