The notes made by clergy record their visits to ships bound for ports all over the world, but also static craft such as coal and powder hulks. They encouraged regular religious services afloat and in port, and delivered library boxes containing free Bibles, hymn and prayer books, etc. for the use of crews and passengers while at sea. Some of the notes later appeared in printed reports for subscribers to the mission and its overseers within the Church of England.

Administrative / biographical background
St. Andrew’s Waterside Church Mission was established in 1864 to serve the spiritual needs of merchant seamen, fishermen and emigrants passing through the Church of England parish of Holy Trinity at Milton-next-Gravesend. From the 1880s onwards its operations were connected with Tilbury Dock and Railway Parochial Mission, formed to meet the demands of the new population around Tilbury Docks. Its work among the waterfront communities of the River Thames was replicated at branches in ports at home and abroad before it merged with the Missions to Seamen in 1939. Among the contributors to the diaries was Rev. Francis Clement Naish (1848-1931). Naish was curate-in-charge of the mission in the newly settled district of Tilbury. His efforts to raise funds for the establishment of a distinct parish finally came to fruition when the new church of St. John the Baptist was opened at Tilbury in 1904.