404 redirect problems

Hi everyone,
I've created a .htaccess file containing 301 redirects and the 404 redirect for a temporary site, the 301's work correctly but the 404 doesn't, yet both index.html and 404.html are in the same htdocs directory. The .htaccess file is placed 1 directory above in the parent directory.

I'm new to .htaccess and would appreciate any help as to why the 404 doesnt work yet the 301 redirect does.

Redirect 301 /careers.php http://www.example.com/newcareers.php
Redirect 301 /contact.php http://www.example.com/contact_us.php
ErrorDocument 404 /http://www.example.com/404.html

The new site I'm working on is hidden in a sub folder, but strangely the 404 redirect points the user to the 'new' home page of the new site and not to the current 404.html page.

Can anyone help?

Thanks

Code:

---

ErrorDocument 404 /http://www.example.com/404.html

---

Maybe it's because of the forward slash you accidentally placed before your http

Hi aj_nsc
Thanks for the tip. Stupid of me.

Also trying to reslove the following dynamic redirect. I've added code the htaccess file to test 1 redirect of:

www.example.com/vessels.php?p=leviathon

to

www.example.com/leviathan.php

with the following code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=leviathon$
RewriteRule ^/vessels.php$ http://www.example.com/leviathan.php? [L,R=301]

but for some reason it's NOT working??

I'm new to this so any help would be appreciated

Thanks :)