Anybody investigating the activities of the Royal Navy during World War II will be used to visiting the National Archives at Kew. However, July’s item of the month shows that a treasure trove of information can be found here at the Caird Library, particularly in the series of Admiralty Movement Books.
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
The Warship Histories is an alphabetical index of Royal Naval vessels, originally compiled by Commander Pitcairn-Jones but with later additions and corrections. Whilst the published list of naval vessels, by J.J. Colledge, gives similar information in some respects – technical details, launch and fate – Pitcairn-Jones’ index goes further. The index records captains’ dates of commission and, in many cases, actions in which the vessel has participated.
Due to the size of the undertaking some weaknesses are inevitable in the Warship Histories. However, for the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries they represent the most accurate combined index thus far produced. Information for this period was taken from the “list books” at the National Archives, Kew which record all vessels in commission, who was in command, and where the vessel was stationed. The sample was drawn by consulting the lists for July of every year (although it should be remembered that vessels may have gone out of, or come into, commission during the intervening months). For the 19th and 20th centuries, the Navy Lists were the main source used. Outside periods of hostilities, however, the sample was only taken every five years and once again commissions may fall within the intervening period and hence not be recorded.
The length of entries to be found in the Warship Histories is dependent on the type of vessel, for instance line-of-battle ships would normally be laid up in times of peace whereas frigates would often see a more continuous service during these times. This was particularly the case in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. For the 20th century, material between the two world wars is not consistent, for example the First World War “C” class cruisers have had their inter-war service covered in great detail whereas this is not the case with many vessels which served in both world wars.
Unfortunately the Warship Histories has not yet been digitised or made available online. Additionally, the poor quality of print obtained from the microfiche means that we tend not to take remote orders to print from this resource as we would do for many other texts. Therefore the only practical method of consulting the source is to come to the Caird Library where prints from the fiche are available. On a positive note we are now open six days a week with a late evening on Thursday. No advance notice is required to consult the Warship Histories as it is available in the reading room.
Warship histories / [Chris Ware, J.J. Colledge, Charles Gray Pitcairn Jones]
Physical description: 84 microfiches (ca. 264 frames each)
Publication info: London: National Maritime Museum, 1986.
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
Last month we explored how to conduct family history research when one’s relative is currently in the Merchant Navy. Today let us investigate the very same query but this time about an individual still serving in the Royal Navy.
Caird Library staff have written several research guides on various maritime related topics. The guide entitled ‘Research guide B3: The Royal Navy: Sources for enquiries’ may help you learn how to seek information on a person who is serving in the Royal Navy. The research guide can be found on our website at http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/library/research-guides/the-royal-navy/research-guide-b3-the-royal-navy-sources-for-enquiries.
We have extensive collections of books, photographs, paintings, prints, drawings and manuscripts dealing with most aspects of the Royal Navy, thus it is always worth searching the Library Catalogue or the Archive Catalogue. However, it is important to stress that the service records of the Royal Navy for approximately the last 90 years are still deposited with the Ministry of Defence. These records should be transferred to The National Archives from the Ministry of Defence when they are 75 years old. So if your relative was in the Royal Navy, you might visit the Veterans UK website for information about how to request a summary of their service record from the Ministry of Defence. Bear in mind that these records are not available to members of the general public so you have to be the subject of the record or next of kin. It is also worth pointing out that before 1972 all Royal Navy personnel were given their records when they left the service. The surviving records until that date only contain basic service details and lists of postings.
The Royal Navy publishes an annual list of active and reserve officers, and a biennial list of retired officers. Editions of the Navy List date from 1814 to the present day. Although the amount of information shown in these lists changes with time, they record officers (retired and active) and ships, where ships were stationed, pay scales, uniform regulations, etc. Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) officers, including the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), were also included in the Navy List from 1862, so this is a ‘must check’ if one’s relative is a Royal Naval Officer of the 20th century. As The National Archives holds most Admiralty records – including official logs of warships, muster rolls, pay books and all personnel and service records of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, up to at least 1920 – you might be able to find information there too.
The National Archives
Ruskin Avenue
Kew
Richmond
Surrey TW9 4DU
Tel: +44 (0)20 8876 3444
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
The Ministry of Defence, Directorate of Personnel Support (Navy) office controls all service records for the years approximately 1920 to at least 1955 which have not yet been passed to The National Archives (excluding Royal Marines). Please note as it was mentioned earlier that information can only be given to next of kin.
Ministry of Defence
Directorate of Personnel Support (Navy)
Navy Search
TNT Archive Services
Tetron Point
William Nadin Way
Swadlincote
Derbyshire
DE11 0BB
Tel: (+44) 01283 227913
Fax: (+44) 01283 227942
Email: navysearchpgrc@tnt.co.uk
The Ministry of Defence, NPP (Acs) AFPAA office controls service records for the period after approximately 1955. Please note that as always information can only be supplied to next of kin and unfortunately they can only be reached by mail.
Ministry of Defence
AFPAA (C) NPP (ACS) 1E
Room 1047
Centurion Building
Grange Road
Hampshire PO13 9XA
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
Are you doing family history research related to the Merchant Navy? Are you stuck with finding the Official Number of a British-registered vessel? Perhaps you have a list of Official Numbers but do not know the ship names?
Knowing a ship’s Official Number is crucial when you do family history research, because the large repositories holding crew agreements and logbooks, including the National Maritime Museum, the Maritime History Archive in Newfoundland and the National Archives at Kew, use Official Numbers as a reference point, rather than names. From 1855, merchant vessels were given an unique number when they first registered with the Board of Trade, and this number stayed with the vessel throughout her life, even if she was re-registered or re-named.
There is a very useful free online database called the Crew List Index Project (CLIP) which was set up to improve access to the records of British merchant seafarers of the late 19th century and has gathered the largest database providing details of the locations of surviving crew lists. This site currently contains over 450,000 records of vessels’ names and Official Numbers with a complete coverage of British-registered vessels with numbers from 1 to 200,000 and covering the period 1855 to the 1950s.
Searching by names: (This is an index of vessels by name; it shows matching names and their Official Numbers, sorted first by name, then by number.)
http://www.crewlist.org.uk/data/vesselsalpha.php
Searching by Official Numbers: (This is an index of vessels by Official Number. You must bear in your mind that ships were often re-named so there may be several different names for one vessel.)
http://www.crewlist.org.uk/data/vesselsnum.php
Once you know the relevant name and Official Number, the next step is to track down the crew lists for that ship. The National Maritime Museum’s research guide C1: The Merchant Navy: Tracing people: Crew lists, agreements and official logs may help you how to do so. For more information, please follow the link: http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/library/research-guides/the-merchant-navy/tracing-people-crewlists-agreements-logs
Gregory
Assistant Librarian
Most of our enquiries start off with a sentence well known to us: “my great-grand father was a seaman”. A recent query received by the Library made me think how we can assist those who are researching current activities in the Merchant Navy.
As always crew agreements for British-registered merchant ships should be the best to start with. These are of particular interest to genealogists and people tracing family history, and to anyone researching specific ships or seafaring generally. Of the more recent records, a 10% specimen group of all crew agreements from 1951 onwards is in The National Archives; the remaining 90% for years ending in ’5′, until 1995, have been deposited with the National Maritime Museum. All remaining papers up to 1976 have been transferred to the Maritime History Archive in Canada, but sadly from 1977 to 1994 all crew agreements not deposited in the National Archives or in the National Maritime Museum (i.e. 90% of all years not ending in ’5) have been destroyed. Log Books and Crew Agreements from 2001 to 2006 are held at the Registry of Shipping and Seamen in their entirety. A certificate of sea service for individual seaman who sailed on ships from this period may be obtained from these records. Also important to note is that no official logbooks and crew agreements have been retained covering the years 1996 to 2000. Any enquiries about the deposit of recent crew lists should be addressed to the Registry of Shipping and Seamen.
The majority of records relating to merchant seamen for the years 1941–1972 are also with The National Archives, and for the years 2000–2009 are with the Registry of Shipping and Seamen. Records for individual seamen were not kept between the years 1973–1999 as after 1973 the Registrar General was not required by legislation to keep these records.
The second avenue of research should be Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, an annual list of merchant ships providing an excellent aid to research. The Caird Library has copies up to, and including, the most recent edition. The 2011-2012 issue is in four volumes, consisting of almost 7000 pages. The Library also holds volumes up to the last issue of the Mercantile Navy List (or Official List of Registered Ships as it was called by 1985), the Board of Trade official list of all British-registered vessels.
Some recent shipping company records are held by the National Maritime Museum. The National Register of Archives, maintained by The National Archives, can often be useful in locating records of shipping companies. Published histories exist for many companies and the National Maritime Museum has bibliographies for the most famous shipping lines. Book lists for a number of other companies can be compiled from the online Library catalogue. An example from our recent acquisitions is a book on the tragically wrecked Costa Concordia:
Costa concordia : architettura sospesa nel blue = architecture suspended in the blue by Tiziana Lorenzelli (Milano : Electa ; [Genova] : Costa, 2006) 629.123.3COSTA CONCORDIA – PBH4693
Useful addresses:
Maritime History Archive
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St John’s
Newfoundland
A1C 5S7
Canada
www.mun.ca/mha
The National Archives
Ruskin Avenue
Kew
Richmond
Surrey TW9 4DU
Tel: +44 (0)20 8876 3444
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Registry of Shipping and Seamen
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
Anchor Court
Ocean Way
Cardiff CF24 5JW
Tel: +44 (0)29 20448800
Email: seafarers_registry@mcga.gov.uk
www.dft.gov.uk/mca
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
It is with great sadness that we announce the end of the Nautical Magazine. The publication was incorporated into the monthly journal Sea Breezes at the end of last year. The Caird Library was formally informed by a letter from the Editor advising that the magazine had been sold to Sea Breezes Publication Ltd; and although the name will live on, the magazine may look different.
The Nautical Magazine had been published by Brown Son & Ferguson, Ltd. of Glasgow. Except for one edition in September 1980 – when a devastating fire damaged the company’s building – it has been published every month since March 1832. The image on the right shows the front cover of the first issue.
Describing itself as a “magazine for those interested in ships and the sea”, it covered, over the years, every level of news and developments in both naval and mercantile topics. The monthly journal contained news and commentaries from around the world, curious articles on the trends of current shipping affairs, information about new types of ships, discussions on the professional position of officers and an excellent book review section.
This was truly a journal for professional seafarers; its legacy will be afloat with us forever.
If you are interested in back issues, Aeon, the Caird Library’s new online ordering system, is live and items from the archive and library collections are ready to be requested to view in our reading room. As with any journal, when you place your order, please let us know what year, volume or issue you would like to view. To join the Library and to request items from the onsite stores, please register at Aeon.
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
Taking my new desk in the Library Office on Monday, finally I found a quiet moment to introduce myself to readers of the Caird Library Blog: I’m Gregory Toth the new Assistant Librarian.
My key responsibilities will be providing specialist information services for the Archive and Library collections, answering public enquiries and contributing to the cataloguing of modern library collections. I will also look after the Museum’s pre-1850 printed rare book collections and the Library’s ephemera collections.
I have to admit that I am not that new to the National Maritime Museum having worked here for more than four years. I love working with people here in Greenwich; the Museum has a fantastic world-class collection and I have met researchers from all over the world, as well as family historians and university students.
Working in the Caird Library is so exciting because you never know what you will be asked – apart from of course about the correct time.
I look forward to meeting you!
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
Our August Item of the Month celebrates the 145th anniversary of the transatlantic telegraph cable. Join us on a journey through the National Maritime Museum’s collections to explore a story that has been long forgotten.
Gregory (Library Assistant)
As part of our ongoing work preparing for the move into the Sammy Ofer Wing, I was recently working with the collection of Vice-Admiral Sir William Hannam Henderson (1845-1931). These papers were arranged by Admiral Henderson himself and were presented to the Museum by his daughter, Mrs L.C. Dunne, in two installments in 1951 and 1955. They consist of several official service documents, a logbook, personal notebooks and letters dating from his schooldays to his death. There are also several scrapbooks, photograph albums and news cuttings, dating from 1847 to 1931.
Among his papers I came across an uncatalogued buried treasure, a book titled Cyclometrica Elementa Duo. It was written by Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) the famous French philologist and historian whose works on chronology were among the greatest contributions of Renaissance scholars to revisions in historical and classical studies. Scaliger was a flourishing author whose many works were published in numerous different languages. Even between 2000-2005 an essay about him was published and four of his publications were reprinted posthumously.
The text of the Cyclometrica Elementa Duo (HEN/29/2) is chiefly in Latin; however, definitions, axioms, and propositions are in Greek. It was published in 1594 when Scaliger was a leading Leiden professor. In this very work it was claimed that p was equal to v10. The book has now been made available through the Archive catalogue and can be requested for viewing in the Caird Library.
Gregory (Library Assistant)
If you are in Greenwich, or planning a day out, and you are either interested in naval history or would simply like to know more about the life of Nelson and his women, why not join my Archive Journey session on Thursday 7th October at 14.30.
With the help of rare and precious manuscripts from the Museum’s Library and Manuscripts collections, I am going to lead you on a journey through original and valuable items such as a letter from Nelson to his wife Frances or the original will of Emma Hamilton. You will have that afternoon the extraordinary opportunity to discover and understand Admiral Nelson’s relationships with Frances Nelson, Emma Hamilton and Horatia Nelson.
So, join me on Thursday 7th October at 14.30 in the E-Library.
Gregory (Information Assistant – Library)