Merchant seamen: registers of service 1835-1857. 2.
Essential information 2.1 How do I access these records? All of the merchant seamen service records from 1835 to 1857 are available to view online at findmypast.co.uk. 2.2 What are merchant seamen service records from 1835 to 1857? Merchant seamen service records are made up of four different registers which cover different date ranges. Register of Seamen Series I in series BT 120 (1835-1836) Register of Seamen Series II, in series BT 112 (with its associate name index in BT 119) (1835-1844) Register of Seamen's Tickets, BT 113 (the surname index is in BT 114) (1845-1854) Register of Seamen Series III, in series BT 116 (1853-1857) You may find more than one service record for a merchant seaman if he served for a number of years. 2.3 Records of merchant seamen before 1835 Before 1835 central government took little interest in the activities of individual seafarers.
Those searching for further details of seamen, before 1835, must look elsewhere either in: 3. 3.2 What do the records look like? Merchant shipping: crew lists and agreements 1747-1860. 1.
Early musters No systematic records of the crew of merchant ships was kept until 1747. Until that date, the researcher must rely upon the chance survival of material amongst records kept for other purposes, especially State Papers and those of the Colonial Office, the Treasury, High Court of Admiralty and High Court of Delegates. Most of these records are not indexed in a way which will assist a search for a specific ship or seaman. Details of available sources are described in My Ancestor Was a Merchant Seaman by Christopher T and Michael J Watts (Society of Genealogists, second edition with addendum, 2004) and Records of Merchant Shipping and Seamen by K Smith, CT and MJ Watts. 2.
From 1747, masters or owners of merchant ships were required to keep and file a Muster Roll giving details of the number of crewmen and the ship's voyages. There is no index to the ships' or crew's names' and they are arranged by year and port of filing. British Coastguards 1841-1891. Merchant Marine Contents Provided to GENUKI by Stan Waight and his team of contributors.
Table of References Note: Most of the above files are large - typically 400-500 kbytes. Important Notes: Although the material from the censuses 1841-1901 is as comprehensive as possible, entries for service outside that period are not so. However, details from Establishment Books dating from the formation of the Coastguard service in 1822 are now available in the ADM 175 series at The National Archives. Lighthouse Personnel In England, Wales and the Channel Islands, c1790-1911. Merchant Marine Contents Provided to GENUKI by Stan Waight and his team of contributors - see Acknowledgments Table of Keepers Table of Stations by county Location map of the lighthouse sites Most of the pre-1939 records of the Corporation of Trinity House, the general lighthouse authority for England and Wales, were destroyed in the bombing of its headquarters at Tower Hill during World War II.
The periodical Service Lists were printed in the order of seniority of the keepers. The 1841 census gives no significant detail of date and place of birth, and ages of adults are rounded to the nearest 5 years below. The two tables that have been produced in the course of the project are an alphabetical Table of Keepers and a Table of Stations by county. The Keepers table often maps the whole of a keeper's career, and usually give an indication of where he met his wife and where their children were born - elusive details where a man spent much of his life outside his home county.
N.B. Maritime History Archive. Tracing Master Mariners. Debbie Beavis The filmed volumes of Lloyd's Captains' Registers found in large archives worldwide are frequently cited as the main, if not the only source, for tracing the career of a Master Mariner.
This is unfortunate as they are just one of the sources available and they do have limitations. The purpose of this posting is not to explain the reasons for and methods of compiling information at each source, which for most people is irrelevant. Rather it is to list the main sources available for anyone wishing to trace Master Mariners. It is not an exhaustive list. Before 1845 Masters and other Officers were not separately registered.
1901 Royal Navy Ships. Lloyd's Register Group - Lloyd’s Register: sources available to historical researchers.