Ships shown as registered at Southampton 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 214. Select page: Next | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Last
Ship Sort by name Official number Sort by official number MNL Crew lists Link
ACORN13236 View entry for ACORN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ACORN13666 View entry for ACORN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ACTIVE7879 View entry for ACTIVE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
AID13973 View entry for AID in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALARM13812 View entry for ALARM in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALFRED25103 View entry for ALFRED in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALLIANCE25115 View entry for ALLIANCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALLY2849 View entry for ALLY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALMA10356 View entry for ALMA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ALMA33060 View entry for ALMA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANN7883 View entry for ANN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANN13847 View entry for ANN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANN13922 View entry for ANN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANNE7900 View entry for ANNE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ANNE13802 View entry for ANNE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ARBUTUS13936 View entry for ARBUTUS in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ARGYLL13809 View entry for ARGYLL in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ARROW25159 View entry for ARROW in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ATALANTA13805 View entry for ATALANTA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
ATALANTA13823 View entry for ATALANTA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BARTLEY2868 View entry for BARTLEY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BEE HIVE7886 View entry for BEE HIVE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BELLE2648 View entry for BELLE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BELMONT13974 View entry for BELMONT in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BESSIE13903 View entry for BESSIE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BLUE JACKET450 View entry for BLUE JACKET in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BREEZE13107 View entry for BREEZE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRILLIANT11386 View entry for BRILLIANT in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRISK21545 View entry for BRISK in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRISTOL233 View entry for BRISTOL in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRITANNIA8773 View entry for BRITANNIA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
BRITON12787 View entry for BRITON in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CALEDONIA13834 View entry for CALEDONIA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CAYMAN7890 View entry for CAYMAN in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CELT25147 View entry for CELT in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CHARLES NAPIER24216 View entry for CHARLES NAPIER in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CHESTER13895 View entry for CHESTER in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CICELY2874 View entry for CICELY in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CLARA6254 View entry for CLARA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CLARA13906 View entry for CLARA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CLARENCE13942 View entry for CLARENCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CLAYMORE7891 View entry for CLAYMORE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COLUMBINE3858 View entry for COLUMBINE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COMET13892 View entry for COMET in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COMET16621 View entry for COMET in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COMMERCE13972 View entry for COMMERCE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CONSTANTIA13817 View entry for CONSTANTIA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
COURIER13814 View entry for COURIER in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
CYNTHIA13979 View entry for CYNTHIA in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
DANE12994 View entry for DANE in MNL 1857, page  MHACLIPMore...
Page 1 of 5.    Records 1 to 50 of 214. Select page: Next | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Last
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