This page explains how to find records of a merchant seafarer on crew lists of British registered vessels for the period 1861 to 1913.
NB! This means finding the whereabouts of the original documents, so you can order copies.
Few of the documents have been filmed or digitised. At present, only a tiny percentage of the crew list documents
for 1861 to 1913 can be viewed online or downloaded.
NB! These notes apply only to the period 1861 to 1913. Outside of this period, finding the documents is (generally) simpler. There are brief notes and
some finding aids at the end of this page, here.
What do you need to know to find a crew list?
To trace a crew list which records a seafarer, you will need to know, or find out:
- the name of the ship that they sailed on;
- her official number;
- the year(s) that the seafarer served on that vessel;
- where the crew lists for that ship and dates are archived.
It may also be helpful to know the ship's port of registry.
DON'T PANIC (YET)! This page explains how to find any information that you don't have, and what terms like 'official number' mean.
Do you know the ship's name?
If the answer is no, then PANIC (A LITTLE).
You will need to try searching the indexes which list seafarer's names.
Then come back to this point.
If you do know the ship's name, the next task is to find her official number. This is important, because most of the large repositories
which hold crew lists use official numbers, rather than names, as a reference.
Shipping Registers, Official Numbers and Appropriation Books
Details of all British merchant ships are entered into Shipping Registers at a local Port of Registry. From 1855, British ships were given an
unique Official Number when they were first
registered. The number stayed with the ship throughout her life, even
if she was re-registered or the ship’s name was changed.
The official numbers were allocated by the Registrar General of Shipping. Each port of registry
in the United Kingdom and British colonies was allocated runs of numbers as necessary. At these ports, the
numbers were recorded in the shipping registers and also in an Appropriation Book for that port.
Copies of registers were sent to the Registrar General of Shipping who maintained the central Appropriation Books,
which are the single complete definitive list of British registered vessels and their official numbers.
These central Appropriation Books are held at the current Registry of Shipping and Seamen (RSS) at Cardiff.
CLIP has made images of the six volumes and data from them forms the basis of the CLIP name/official number index.
For more detail on the records of British ships, please see our information page
How to find a ship's official number
The simplest way is to use the CLIP finding aids.
Enter the ship's name, or a part of it, into
the CLIP search page and it will provide you with a list of the ships whose name matches, with their official number.
The advanced search allows you to input a range of dates and port of registry.
For each ship, the results page will provide you with links to our data on holdings of crew lists, and to the Maritime History Archive (MHA) list.
The search pages use the CLIP vessel database which has data from the Appropriation Books and other records gathered during the CLIP project
and currently contains over 670,000 records of ships' names and official numbers. It is the only database with complete coverage of British registered ships of the
period, with all official numbers from 1 to 200,000 and covering 1855 to the 1950s.
Know the ship's name and official number?
Once you know the basic information about the seafarer's ship, the next step is to track down the
crew lists for that ship. We provide more detail below, but the most direct way is to use our finding aid:
Alternatively, you could use MHA's Crew List Index - see below.
Where are crew lists held?
The lists are held at many different places:
As the diagram shows, TNA took a 10% random sample, then NMM took the remainder of 1861 and 1862 and years ending in '5'. Local archives were offered the records for
their ports and what remained was shipped to MHA in Canada. As a result:
The records for one ship could be at any or all of these places.
Crew lists at local archives
10% of the lists are in over forty local archives or record offices (ROs) in the UK
and at the National Archives of the Republic of Ireland. Holdings at ROs vary from sparse
samples to almost complete runs for individual ships.
Which ports are covered?
All the archives for coastal counties of England and Wales, except Norfolk, have at
least a sample of the lists for their ports. The Irish Republic and Northern Ireland have most of their lists.
Unfortunately, (or fortunately, because they would have been destroyed otherwise) the crew lists for London, all
Scottish ports and the remaining lists for other ports are at the Maritime History Archive - see below.
Only a small number of crew lists for 'colonial' ports are to be found in the collections at TNA and NMM. Crew lists for
Newfoundland ports are at the Maritime History Archive.
You can use CLIP data to look for holdings of crew lists, by archive or by port.
The data for archives and ports also shows holdings of shipping registers.
You can also use MHA's Crew List Index (see below), though not all local archive holdings are included.
Crew lists at the National Maritime Museum
The lists and agreements for 1861, 1862 and for the years ending in “5”
are at the National Maritime Museum (NMM) in
Greenwich. 1985 and 1995 are out-stored. You will need to register with their online ordering system and use the
crew list order form.
You can order in advance of a visit and up to three documents at a time. Alternatively, you can order copies or digital images via the same form.
Though they are slowly working on it, forty years after they took the documents, the self-styled "most extensive library of maritime history in the world" still does not have a
catalogue of their crew list holdings.
Crew lists at The National Archives
A random 10% sample of the documents is held at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew,
in BT 99 with others in BT 100, BT 144 and BT 165.
BT 99 is indexed by official number, originally in loose-leaf
files at TNA. There is no index by ship’s name.
In collaboration with TNA, CLIP has transferred this paper index to
electronic format. If you know the ship's official number, the index is now available at TNA.
The data is also part of the larger CLIP crew list index, so it's much easier to use this link, which will also show holdings elsewhere for that ship.
BT 100 holds the documents for famous ships, such as the Great Eastern, Terra Nova and the Lusitania.
BT 144 holds a 10% sample of the records for fishing vessels under 80 tons, starting at 1884.
BT 165 holds samples of the official log books, extracted from the main runs of documents for the period 1902 to 1919.
Crew lists at the Maritime History Archive
The remaining 70%+ of lists are at the Maritime History Archive (MHA)
in St John’s, Newfoundland, who took in these documents when they were threatened with destruction in the 1970s.
You can search their index on-line on the MHA web site (again by official number only) and order copies
of crew lists.
Their index also shows holdings of crew lists at most local archives in Britain.
The MHA data is also included in the CLIP crew list index, so it may be easier to use that as it will also show holdings elsewhere for that ship.
The MHA NL Crews Database contains over 30,000 entries taken from
the crew lists of Newfoundland and Labrador registered vessels for 1915 to 1942. You can search the index on-line and view the images.
MHA are also gradually digitising their holdings of crew lists for 1881.
They are well over half way through with 344,000 entries. As with the NL Crews Database, you can search the index on-line and view the images.
This is a significant and welcome development. The image quality
is excellent and the system provides a first glimpse of what could be available in the future.
Crew lists after 1913
The documents for the period 1913 to 1939 are all at MHA, TNA and NMM, distributed in the same way as described above except that there are no
crew list documents at local archives for this period, save for a few strays.
Crew lists prior to 1861
All the crew lists for British registered ships prior to 1861 are held at TNA in the series BT98. How they are arranged depends on the period:
Crew lists in BT 98 at TNA from 1857 to 1860
All the crew lists for ships from British ports for the period 1857 to 1860 are at TNA in BT98.
The crew lists are boxed by year, then by official number. One official number may be in more than one box. Each box has a
reference number and the catalogue shows the range of official numbers in each box so, for example, the crew lists for 1858 for the vessel
Albion, with official number 1000 is likely to be in BT 98/5107, which holds official numbers 991 to 1050.
Bear in mind that there may not be documents for every official number in the range, so there is no guarantee that documents
for a particular ship are actually in that box - they may never have existed, or they may have been lost, destroyed, or
simply mis-filed (it happens, often) in the years since 1858.
To find the appropriate reference number, you can consult TNA's catalogue, or (simpler) use the CLIP crew list tool in this section.
To obtain a copy of a document, you will have to visit TNA, or employ a researcher to do so, or order a copy via TNA's catalogue page.
The LDS Church has filmed these records and you can order a film via their web site, so that you can view it at a Family History Centre at a
LDS church near you. NB! We've not tried this.
You can order from LDS online, and the catalogue page for the 1857-1860 crew lists is
here. Scroll down their catalogue page to see the list of the films.
Crew lists in BT 98, 1857-1860
Crew lists in BT 98 at TNA before 1857
All the crew lists for ships from British ports prior to 1857 are at TNA in BT98, together with some boxes of records from colonial ports.
The crew lists are boxed by year, then by port of registry, and then in alphabetic order. There may be several boxes for
one year and port, covering a range of ships names. Each box has a reference so, for example, Aberystwyth ships with names starting D-H for 1851 are in BT 98/2382.
To find the appropriate reference number, you can consult TNA's catalogue, or (simpler) use the CLIP crew list tool in this section.
Apart from the Family History Indexes transcripts for 1851 (below), no further indexing is available for BT 98, so to find a crew list you will have
to visit TNA, or engage a researcher to do so, and work through the boxes. If you do not know the name of the ship, you
will have to be guided by the port rotation numbers on the crew lists, which may be in ascending order.
It may be possible to get an image by ordering via the TNA catalogue page, but you
would probably need to know the name of the ships, so that only one box has to be searched. We have no experience of this.
Family History Indexes 
have crew name indexes for
many of the records for 1851, particularly Irish, Scottish and Welsh ports. These are available on
CD-ROM (£) or online via
The Genealogist (£). The search tool above highlights the records they have available.
The LDS Church has filmed these records and you can order a film via their web site, so that you can view it at a Family History Centre at a
LDS church near you. You can order online, and the catalogue page for the pre-1857 crew lists is
here. Scroll down their catalogue page to see the list of the films.
Crew lists for British ports in BT 98, 1845-1856
More details and other records
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).
Finding crew lists 
Previous page 
Ships by name
Crew lists by official number
Maritime History Archive Crew List Index