We are pleased to be joining Jenny Wraight, the Admiralty Librarian at Naval Historical Branch, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth, together with colleagues from the Imperial War Museum and Hampshire Libraries, at the forthcoming Meet Your Navy event, being held from Friday 30 July to Sunday 1 August.

We’ll all be offering information and advice on tracing naval and maritime ancestry. We’ll also help visitors interpret documents that the NMM holds relating to merchant seamen, like crew lists and masters certificates, and will be publicising other parts of the NMM collections like ship plans and historic photographs. If you’re planning to come to the Navy event, please drop in to the Naval Historical Branch to say hello.

A more formal workshop on researching naval ancestors is being held at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth on Saturday 25 September – for this event booking is essential, so please hurry to ensure you have a place.

Eleanor (Head of Archive & Library)

July’s item of the month is a souvenir pamphlet produced in 1933 for the ‘Greenwich Night Pageant’, arranged by the historian and journalist Arthur Bryant as self-styled ‘Pageant Master’. Set against the illuminated background of the (now Old) Royal Naval College, it recreated great moments of Greenwich‘s naval and maritime history, albeit with some poetic license.

Richard (Assistant Librarian)

We’ve updated the information on the progress of the building of the Sammy Ofer Wing, and our plans for the new research and reading room, on the website. The information will be updated every two months, so please continue to check the blog or website in the future.

Eleanor (Head of Archive & Library)