The basics

Excellent records of British merchant shipping and crews have survived. They provide a rich resource which can be used to paint a vivid picture of life at sea in the Victorian times. If you have some experience of researching into family, maritime or local history, these records provide a good next challenge.

The CLIP site is designed to help you to do that. This page sets out what the site can and can't do, explains some key facts and provides a few pointers on how to start.

This is not simple! Please take your time, read our information and be patient and persistent.

Are you in the right place?

• Have you got the right country? CLIP is about seafarers on British registered ships, which include the ships of the former British colonies such as Australia and Canada.
• Have you got the right navy? CLIP deals only with merchant ships, not the Royal Navy.
• Have you got the right time period? CLIP covers seafarers from 1835 to 1945 (concentrating on the period from 1861 to 1913) and ships from the 1830s to the 1950s.

What does the CLIP site provide?

• Information about the original documents and how to find them.
• Data about some individual seafarers and all British registered ships.
• Images of key reference documents.
• Links to external sites which provide more information and data.
• Background reference material.

Key facts

 People

• Crew lists and agreements are the records of the crew of British registered merchant ships, one for every voyage or half-year.
• Seafarers (men and women) didn't 'join the Merchant Navy'. They signed on for each voyage and signed off when it ended. This was recorded in the crew agreement.
• Crew agreements include personal details, such as age and birthplace. They also show the seafarer's previous ship so you can trace their career backwards.
• Most crew lists have survived but are scattered and few have been digitised.
• Finding records of seafarers mostly involves finding which archives hold the original documents and buying copies.

 Ships

• All British ships over 15 tons were registered at a local port of registry, though they may not have sailed from that port.
• After 1855, every ship was given a unique official number which did not change, even if the ship's name was changed.
• Official numbers are the best way to identify a particular ship. They are a vital link to the ship's crew lists.
• The CLIP ships index shows all official numbers from 1855 to the 1950s.

 Documents

• Details of British ships and their official numbers were recorded in the central Appropriation Books and the annual Mercantile Navy List. Images of these are available on the CLIP site.
• Original documents (crew lists and shipping registers) are held at:
  • The National Archives (TNA)
  • The National Maritime Museum (NMM)
  • The Maritime History Archive (MHA) in Canada
  • Seventy other national and local archives
  CLIP provides a finding aid for all these archives' holdings to help you locate the crew lists and registers for a particular ship.

Getting started

If you are new to this subject, the information pages will give you further information. It's worth studying these pages carefully; it's a complicated subject.

There are also links below to some of the main data and image pages - each page has a set of notes to explain more about the data set or images.

 People

 Ships

 Documents

 General