Ships shown as registered at Gloucester in the Mercantile Navy List for 1857

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 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:

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

Be aware! CLIP data is transcribed 'as seen' - we have not tried to interpret or correct it (but see note about BT 111 in the Data sources section). Where we have doubts about an item, or have edited it, we mark it with a  ? .

Page 1 of 5.    Records 1 to 50 of 241. Select page: Next | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Last
Ship Sort by name Official number Sort by official number MNL Crew lists Link
ABEONA11612 View entry for ABEONA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ACTIVE11706 View entry for ACTIVE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ADVENA8077 View entry for ADVENA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALABAMA16097 View entry for ALABAMA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALBION11116 View entry for ALBION in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALLIANCE13323 View entry for ALLIANCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALMA11684 View entry for ALMA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
AMOY11667 View entry for AMOY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANN3860 View entry for ANN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANN11671 View entry for ANN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANN MCLISTER16001 View entry for ANN MCLISTER in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANNANDALE13083 View entry for ANNANDALE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ARGO11628 View entry for ARGO in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ARK26796 View entry for ARK in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ATLAS11732 View entry for ATLAS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ATLAS23544 View entry for ATLAS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
AURORA16339 View entry for AURORA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
AVON11741 View entry for AVON in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BACCHUS11670 View entry for BACCHUS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BETSEY11345 View entry for BETSEY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BETSEY11720 View entry for BETSEY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BETSEY11729 View entry for BETSEY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BLAINA11743 View entry for BLAINA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRANSBY10837 View entry for BRANSBY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRIDE7938 View entry for BRIDE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRISTOL11650 View entry for BRISTOL in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRISTOL PACKET4068 View entry for BRISTOL PACKET in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRITISH QUEEN11668 View entry for BRITISH QUEEN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS3822 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS3898 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS3983 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS6492 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS6499 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS10808 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BROTHERS12242 View entry for BROTHERS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CAROLINE4011 View entry for CAROLINE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CAROLINE11634 View entry for CAROLINE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CAROLINE26762 View entry for CAROLINE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CATHERINE745 View entry for CATHERINE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CERES16340 View entry for CERES in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CHARLOTTE11111 View entry for CHARLOTTE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CLARA12345 View entry for CLARA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CLIFTON3964 View entry for CLIFTON in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COLLINA25446 View entry for COLLINA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COMMERCE1526 View entry for COMMERCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COMMERCE11626 View entry for COMMERCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COMMERCE22299 View entry for COMMERCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CORNIST11624 View entry for CORNIST in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COUNTESS OF DURHAM11615 View entry for COUNTESS OF DURHAM in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CYRUS3936 View entry for CYRUS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
Page 1 of 5.    Records 1 to 50 of 241. Select page: Next | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Last
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