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Andrew Shilling

English naval officer in the East India Company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ18783558 ↗
Source-derived summary

Andrew Shilling (c. 1566 – 1 January 1621) was an English naval officer.

Biography

Early life

Shilling was born in Cley next the Sea, Norfolk and christened on 30 July 1566, the son of Henry Shilling whose occupation is unknown and Elie Michelson, sister of William Michelson (d. 1587), a sea captain based in Ratcliff, Stepney, Middlesex, late of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Andrew Shilling was named after his grandfather Andrew Michelson (d. 1565), a ship-owner of Cley next the sea.

Career

Originally a petty officer in the Royal Navy, from this position he gradually raised himself to the higher ranks of the service, and on 30 May 1603 he became for life one of the six chief masters of the navy. In 1617 he obtained leave from the admiralty to take part in the fifth joint-stock voyage undertaken by the East India Company, and he sailed from Gravesend on 4 February as master of the Anne Royal, one of a squadron of five East India Company's Marine warships under the command of Martin Pring. On 6 February Maurice Abbot, Deputy-governor of the EIC mustered the men, paid their wages and the fleet left the Downs on 5 March. They arrived at Saldanha Bay (now Table Bay) on 21 June.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Andrew Shilling” is english naval officer in the East India Company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Andrew, Shilling and English, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1566, 1621, 1587, 1565—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1565. For this dossier, Andrew, Shilling and English is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “english naval officer in the East India Company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18783558. VIAF identifies the subject as 10246619. The Library of Congress control number is nr94039492. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1566, 1621, 1587 and 1565.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Andrew Shilling”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Andrew Shilling primary sources, Andrew Shilling archive and Andrew research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Andrew Shilling”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Andrew Shilling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.