The papers all date from the period when Furnell was employed on passenger vessels in the East India trade. The journal and logbook record his voyages on the WINDSOR (1835) and SERINGAPATAM (1837) in 1842-1852. The two notebooks contain information used in his capacity as master, such as notes on navigation, religious observance and the treatment of medical conditions.

Administrative / biographical background
Furnell was born at Poole in Dorset in 1811. For much of his seagoing career, he was engaged on East Indiamen owned by Richard Richard of Blackwall. He was master of the WINDSOR in 1843-1845 and the SERINGAPATAM in 1846-1852. During a hurricane off the Cape of Good Hope in 1843, he was washed overboard from the WINDSOR and suffered from a broken kneecap for the remainder of the voyage. Furnell married Anne Wiles in the parish of Christ Church Greyfriars, Newgate Street, London, in 1839. He became deputy shipping master and then superintendent at the Sailors Home in East India Dock Road, Poplar, and was given the honorary rank of lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve. He died at Mile End in 1879.