British ships were registered at one of hundreds of ports of registry around Britain and what were then British colonies.

This page is an index of ships by their port of registry using data from the contemporary official sources such as the Mercantile Navy List (MNL) and the Appropriation Books.

For each port, it shows first a count of the entries by year. For a year selected from that list, it shows ship names and official numbers, sorted first by name, then by official number, with other details such as date of registration, and rig. For each record, links are provided to images of the source documents and to other data items such as holdings of crew lists.

For a full explanation of the records of British shipping, please see our information page, here: Records of British ships

How to search for ships by port

As described above, first select the port, then the year from the table of counts of ships.

For some ports, where there were other ports nearby, ships may have been registered at one of those ports. Where this is a possibility, the form provides facilities to switch to one of the other ports, or to see data for all the ports together.

Reading the results

The results show the names of ships registered at the port according to the records for that year. For record sets after 1855, the ship's official number is shown. The results show any other details from the source, and the exact reference for the source so that you can see where our information came from. The  icon links to images of the source.

For the pre-1857 data drawn from BT 111 and BT 162, there is a link on the right hand side Data post 1855 which will search the CLIP data for later years by name and port, looking for possible matches in the period 1855 to 1870. Beware! Because there were no official numbers for this period, these are only tentative suggestions, not exact matches. Some common names could result in many possibilities!

For post-1857 data, which has official numbers, there are also links to show holdings of crew lists for that ship, using the Maritime History Archive index and our own CLIP index.

The 'More...' link will show all the information that we have for that official number.

The records are initially sorted by the ship's name. For the pre-1857 records, the records can be sorted by year and number of registration; for the post-1857 data, they can be sorted by official number. To change the sort, click the small icon next to the column heading.

For data from BT 111 and 1850 (BT 162), there is a final column, Port no/PR no, shows port number and port rotation number combinations for that ship, which we have recorded or have interpolated from crew list records for the period 1845 to 1854 in BT 98 at TNA. These numbers were used in the records of seafarers such as BT 113 and BT 124.

For more details of port numbers, see Port numbers . For more details of port rotation numbers, see Port rotation numbers

The entries are colour coded.  nn/nnn  indicates data drawn from BT 98.  nn/nnn  indicates data interpolated from BT 98 data. Blank entries indicate where we have no data and are not able to interpolate data reliably, for example registrations pre-1845. Many early (and some post-1853) registrations may never have been allocated a port rotation number.

The link next to the data  PR goes to the main port rotation numbers page for that registration.

Our thanks to James Canney for suggesting adding the port rotation number data.

Data sources

The sources of the data are:

• The indexes to the shipping register transcripts from BT 111 at TNA. This covers all the ports of registry around the British Isles from 1825 to 1856, though not all ships are shown. Please note, this source is difficult to read and data has been lightly edited to correct discrepancies where we have evidence available from other sources. Images of BT 111 can be downloaded for free from TNA, here: BT 111
• The annual returns from ports of registry in BT 162/19 at TNA showing ships extant in 1850 from all British ports except London, together with similar data from BT 162/20 for the Colonial ports (but transcribed for the Canadian ports only). Images of BT 162 can be downloaded for free from TNA: BT 162/19
• The Appropriation Books now held at the Registry of Shipping and Seamen in Cardiff covering the years from 1855 to the 1950s for all British and Colonial ports. For more details, please see our information page: Appropriation Books
• The Mercantile Navy List (MNL) for the years ending in 0 from 1860 to 1940, together with 1857 and 1915. MNL shows all ships extant that year for all British and Colonial ports. For more details, please see our information page: Mercantile Navy List

Please see our general information page CLIP data for details on sources, methodology, the abbreviations we have used, and our acknowledgements.