There are 33 boxes, mainly containing notes, letters, articles and cuttings relating to Sindall's research and writing on sailing vessels in the Australia trade and other aspects of shipping:

Boxes 1-5
Notes and cuttings, etc., arranged alphabetically by subject.
Box 1/ Subjects A-C
Box 2/ Subjects D-K
Box 3/ Subjects L-R
Box 4/ Subjects S
Box 5/ Subjects T-Z

Boxes 6-20
Notes and cuttings relating to named vessels, arranged alphabetically under first letter and then first vowel.
Box 6/ Vessel names beginning AB-AM
Box 7/ Vessel names beginning AN-AZ
Box 8/ Vessel names beginning BA-BY
Box 9/ Vessel names beginning CA-CL
Box 10/ Vessel names beginning CH-CY
Box 11/ Vessel names beginning DA-EU
Box 12/ Vessel names beginning FA-GU
Box 13/ Vessel names beginning HA-JU
Box 14/ Vessel names beginning KA-LU
Box 15/ Vessel names beginning MA-MU
Box 16/ Vessel names beginning NA-OU
Box 17/ Vessel names beginning PA-QU
Box 18/ Vessel names beginning RA-RU
Box 19/ Vessel names beginning SA-TY
Box 20/ Vessel names beginning UD-ZU

Box 21/ Notes on Bluenose (Nova Scotian) sailing vessels.
Box 22/ Notes on shipping companies and their fleets.
Box 23/ Plans of crew and passenger accommodation, with an index book (129 plans).
Box 24/ Mainly visual material relating to different types of sailing vessel, including small craft.
Box 25/ Mainly visual material relating to different types of steamers.
Box 26/ Mainly visual material and articles relating to vessel designs.
Box 27/ Notes on steam propulsion applied to ships.

Box 28/ Notes on Green and Wigrams, Blackwall Yard, hulks in New Zealand, tea clippers, shipping company house flags, and Lowden Connell & Co. of Whitehaven. Newspaper cuttings from the ‘Sailing Ships of the London River’ series by Frank C. Bowen. ‘Trident’ magazine, September 1957, including an article on Devitt & Moore. Supplement to ‘The Times’ dated 28 September 1964, marking the 125th anniversary of Royal Mail Lines Ltd.

Box 29/ Indexes to Sindall’s research material. Also indexes to vessels mentioned in the books 'The Good Old Days of Shipping’, ‘The Colonial Clippers’, ‘The Old Country Trade’ and ‘Wooden Ships and Iron Men’. Cuttings from ‘The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph’, including articles in the ‘Ships of Yesterday’ and ‘Sea Breezes’ features, 1940-1946. Advertisements for Orient Line cruises.

Box 30/ Notes on Green’s Blackwall Line, Money Wigram, Devitt & Moore, Blackwall Yard, and other firms. Cuttings from the ‘Butterfly Boats of the London River’ series by Frank C. Bowen. Book of articles relating to shipping subjects, including London tugs, the convict ship SUCCESS, and the career of Sir Charles G. Matheson, former Commodore of the Orient Line.

Box 31/ Notes and articles on Buckler’s Hard and its ships, steam navigation, the centenary of the Aberdeen Line 1825 to 1925, and Blackwall Yard. Cuttings from the ‘Gravesend to the Sea’ series by Frank C. Bowen. Other cuttings relating to the local history of the River Thames. Album of photographs showing the construction of a model of HMS VICTORY at Portsmouth Dockyard.

Box 32/ Bills of sale, cargo documents, balance sheets, legal briefs, copies of affidavits, etc., relating to Norris, 20 Bedford Row, circa 1840-1862. An index of name changes to sailing ships. Scrapbook including the ‘Speed at Sea’ series by Gerald Aylmer, articles by Frank C. Bowen, Orient Line pamphlets with maps and guides to ports, and articles on coastal excursion steamers and fast sailing ships.

Box 33/ ‘Notes of Ships Protests’ book relating to the port of Freemantle, kept by the lawyer Septimus Burt, 1876-1885. Scrapbook of Sindall’s own articles and letters to editors, circa 1933-1938. Typescript copies of various articles by Sindall, relating to old Blackwall, Tilbury Docks, the Orient Line, house flags, and the ‘Ships of the Past’ series.

Administrative / biographical background
Sindall was born at Rotherhithe in 1873, one of the sons of Robert Langford Sindall and his wife Ann Brown Sindall née Cambridge. From 1887 onwards he worked as a mercantile clerk, following his father who had been employed by the shipbrokers Devitt & Moore and F. Green and Co. As a teenager, Sindall went on board the sailing ship SOBRAON (1866) as she was towed to Plymouth at the start of her last outward voyage. Later in life he was a cargo supervisor for the Orient Line at Tilbury and wrote articles on shipping for local newspapers and shipping journals, including ‘Sea Breezes’ and ‘The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph’. His series on ships of the past for ‘The Log of the Nautical College Pangbourne’ was written under the pseudonym L. Ladniss. Sindall named his house at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex after the MACQUARIE (1872), the last sailing ship to be built on the River Thames. He retired from the Orient Line in 1939 and died at Westcliff-on-Sea in 1965.