In brief - records pre-1861

The quickest way to find details of a seafarer pre-1861 is to use Findmypast's index drawn from the registers of seafarers. Findmypast (£)

The voyage details shown on the registers provide a key to the crew lists from which they were drawn, but are not easy to decipher. We provide guidance on using these entries Reading seafarer registers

The registers of seafarers 1845 - 1854 use a code called the port rotation number to show which ship the seafarer sailed on. The CLIP index to these codes is here: Port rotation number index

Once you know the name of the ship, you can search for the crew list for the ship using the CLIP search page. This provides links to the TNA Discovery catalogue and to the FamilySearch films of the documents. Crew lists at TNA pre-1861

The links on this page give full details of the available sources and the search pages all have a notes section to explain how to use them.

  Introduction

This page explains how to find records of merchant seafarers on British registered vessels for the period before 1861.

  Registers of seafarers 1835 to 1856

Central records of seafarers on British registered ships began in 1835 under the Merchant Seamen Act, 1835 (5 & 6 Will 4 c 19) Act mainly motivated by the need to man the Navy in times of war.

The records were compiled by the Register Office of Merchant Seamen. Over the years, this office went through several changes of name and function. The present manifestation is the Registry of Shipping and Seamen (RSS) and we generally use that abbreviation to cover all the earlier entities.

From 1835 to 1856, the RSS compiled various registers of seamen, drawing information from the crew lists which were returned at the end of a voyage or every six months. The main registers show the man's name, age, birthplace, the capacity in which he was engaged, and sometimes a description such as height and complexion.

Many of the registers include details of the voyages from which the records were drawn. These entries are not always easy to read. Even if you can read them, deciphering them is not easy because they use codes. We show how to decipher them here Reading voyage details

The registers covering the years from 1845 to 1854, use a code based on the ship's port rotation number and the port number of her port of registry. We explain below how this particular code worked and how this site can provide the key, enabling you to track down the crew documents for the voyage, see below: Port Rotation Numbers

The registers are all at The National Archives (TNA) and can be accessed there. Most have also been digitised by Findmypast and are available on their site: Findmypast (£)

These are the various series of documents at TNA:

Register of Seamen, Series I, BT 120, 1835-1836. TNA Discovery, BT 120

Register of Seamen, Series II, BT 112, 1835-1844. TNA Discovery, BT 112

There are two sections, one for the home trade (coastal and fishing) and another for the foreign trade. The home trade entries in BT 112 are indexed by the Alphabetic Index to Seamen (BT 119) TNA Discovery, BT 119

The records of seafarer's voyages include a code to identify the ship (which is different from the port rotation numbers used later). In any case, the ship is often named so that can be used in tracing the crew lists. The crew documents are held in BT 98 at TNA and can be viewed either at TNA or by finding the images on FamilySearch.

Register of Seamen’s Tickets, BT 113, 1845–1854. TNA Discovery, BT 113

The entries in BT 113 are indexed by the Alphabetical Index of Registers of Seamen’s Tickets (BT 114). TNA Discovery, BT 114

The entries in the registers in BT 113 show the number of the seaman's ticket, which also appears on the crew list, so helping to make a match between the two entries.

These registers use the port rotation number codes in the records of voyages, as explained below. The crew documents are held in BT 98 at TNA and can be viewed either at TNA or by finding the images on FamilySearch.

Register of Seamen, Series III, BT 116, 1853-1857. TNA Discovery, BT 116

Alphabetical Register of Masters, BT 115, 1845-1854. TNA Discovery, BT 115

Registers of Certificates of Service, Masters and Mates, Foreign Trade, BT 124, 1850-1922. TNA Discovery, BT 124

Images of BT 124 records are available for download from TNA (see the link above). CLIP has indexed the records and they can be searched on this site: BT 124

Family History Indexes have crew name indexes for many of the records for 1851, particularly Irish, Scottish and Welsh ports. These are available online via The Genealogist (£) . The CLIP search tool Crew list for British ports in BT 98, 1845-1856 (below) highlights any of the records that Family History Indexes have available.

  Crew lists prior to 1861

How the documents are arranged in BT 98 depends on the period.

Prior to 1835

These documents are in references BT 98/1 to BT 98/139

This first section of BT 98 contains early records (dating back to 1747 for some northern ports) and also miscellaneous records, in some cases extending to 1850. It has not been catalogued and might not be easy to search.

From 1835 to 1844

These documents are in references BT 98/140 to BT 98/563.

The crew lists for this period are filed by the ship's port of registry and then by the initial letter of the ship's name, often with all the records for 1835 to 1844 together. To find the appropriate reference number, consult TNA's catalogue and/or the FamilySearch film index.

The documents are annotated with the ship's port number and a port rotation number, which is not the same as the numbers used after 1845. There is no key to these pre-1845 port rotation numbers. They appear, at least in part, to be a serial number for that port in a sequence which continued from one year to the next.

The annotations were used to make up the registers of seafarers in BT 120 and BT 112. The records in these series for each man fortunately also include the name of the ship, so the only use for these annotations is to help confirm that the right document has been found.

From 1845 to 1856

From 1857 to 1860

Crew name index

  Port Rotation Numbers, 1845 to 1854

In the period 1845 to 1854, port rotation numbers were part of a code, together with port numbers, which was used to identify the ship that the seafarer was employed on. This provided the connection between the indexes of seafarers and the crew documents.

The list of port numbers has always been known, but the key to the port rotation number part of the code had been lost. In the last two years, CLIP has cracked the code in collaboration with an Australian based researcher, Peter Hamersley. This has enabled us to make an index to the port rotation numbers, linking them to the names of the ships. The index covers more than 50% of all the port rotation numbers and well over 90% for the years 1845-1851.

This is our picture of the process of dealing with the crew documents when they arrived in London:

1. At the Registry of Shipping and Seamen, the registration returns from the shipping registers for each port were used to compile a list of ships for that port and each new registration was allocated a number - the port rotation number. That number remained with the ship unless it was re-registered or no longer afloat. The port rotation numbers went in sequence with the register entries for each year. Unfortunately, this list of the port rotation numbers has never been found and probably no longer exists.
2. When crew documents were returned from the ports to the officials in London, the clerks looked up the ship on the list for that port and scrawled a numerical code on the document, showing the port and the ship's port rotation number - for example, 86.104 - 86 was the code for the ship and 104 for the port (Whitby in this case).
3. The crew documents were then passed to the clerks who compiled the registers of seafarers. They worked through the pile of crew documents, identifying each crew member in turn and adding the information to the seafarer's record, using the code written on the crew document. A long slow job!

The problem for modern researchers is to go the other way - from the port rotation number to the crew list. Without knowing what ship the port rotation number 86 stands for, researchers would have to go through the ten boxes or films of crew documents for Whitby for 1851, looking through each of the dozens of documents for John Breckon.

The index that CLIP and Peter Hamersley have compiled solves this problem. The index is online and entering the port rotation number and port number will produce the name of the ship and details of the records for that ship in BT 98 and on FamilySearch films. This is shown below in Figures 4 and 5.

More details of port rotation numbers

Further details

For more detail and for other periods, records of ships, Royal Naval Reserve etc, the best reference book is: Records of Merchant Shipping and Seamen, Smith, Watts and Watts, PRO, (ISBN: 1 873 162 49 9).