Up to 1894, British fishing vessels of more than 15 tons net and with a deck were registered in the same way as other vessels. They appear in the shipping registers for the ports of registry and in the copies from them which were transmitted to the Board of Trade, which are now held at The National Archives (TNA) in BT 108, BT 109 and BT 110.
The Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 required that all British vessels used for commercial fishing, regardless of size, should have official papers and be recorded in separate fishing boat registers kept at the local port of registry. Fishing vessels larger than 15 tons continued to be registered in the main shipping registers, as well as in the fishing register.
Fishing vessels were allocated a letter and number, which were to be painted prominently on the hull of the boat. The letter or letters denoted the port of registry, a list of
which is shown below. For a summary of the legislation which governed British shipping, see
Legislation
The fishing number was allocated sequentially from the local register. When a fishing boat was transferred to another port or was scrapped, the fishing number was re-used, so, over time, the
same fishing number may refer to several different vessels from the same port. To be clear, the fishing number was not the same as the
Official numbers
which larger vessels also had and which was not transferred to other ships.
Figure 1 shows a typical fishing register - in this case the entry for the fishing boat True Lover, of Peel. Her fishing letter and number were PL71. As can be seen, she was large enough to
be entered into the main shipping register for Peel as 1/1914 and had official number 67865.
The fishing boat registers were in several different formats, but most showed more than one vessel to a folio. Vessels were classified as First, Second or Third Class, depending on their size.
As can be seen, the register recorded basic details of the boat, her ownership and changes of owner, and her skipper. Annual checks on her certificate were entered.
Few, if any, of the registers held at local archives have been systematically digitised or indexed, so the only way to access them is in person at the archives. They are included
with the other shipping registers in the CLIP lists of archives' holdings:
Archive holdings
However, various other sources provide data on boats and fishing numbers, as described below.
The ports of registry made annual returns of fishing vessel registrations to the Board of Trade, showing a list of the vessels by register number, with cross-references to the shipping
register, and showing the vessel's official number. These returns are now in the series BT 145 at TNA. The returns form a single source of reference for the names and fishing
numbers of fishing boats, but unfortunately have not been digitised and are only available at TNA.
Fishing Boat Heritage
Library and archive holdings