This is a list of the entries in shipping registers by official number. Official numbers provide a convenient way of tracking down the register entries for a ship, though unfortunately we only have limited data and images.

From 1855, an unique official number was allocated to British ships when they were first registered. The number was shown prominently on the register entry. Earlier ships which were still extant in 1855 were allocated an official number when they next called at any British port. The ship's port of registry was informed and the registry entry was annotated accordingly.

For details of the registration of British shipping, please see: Registration of shipping

How to search for register entries by official number

On the search form, enter the ship's official number in the range from 1 to 199550. This should be a pure number without wild-cards such as '*', '%', '?'.

Then click Search

Other search pages which record official numbers will provide a direct link to this data where appropriate.

Reading the results

The results show the register entries which we have recorded for that ship.

They show the date and type of register entry (New registration etc), details of the closure of that registry and a full reference for that folio.

Where possible, we also provide links to a transcript or image of the document. For example, the  Transcript button links to a transcript of the folio.

Why the search might fail

We only have data from a small number of archives, so searches for ships registered at other ports will fail. However, it should still be possible to track down basic registration details for those ports using the other CLIP search pages.

Data sources

The data is drawn from:

• The CLIP transcript of the shipping registers for the Isle of Man ports held at Manx National Heritage Library.
• Online images of the registers for the port of Rochester held at Medway Archives Service.
• The CLIP index of the registers for Australian ports, based on the original index made by Robert R Le Maistre, with the addition of links to the images on the National Archives of Australia site.
• The registers for Wigtown held at Dumfries and Galloway Archives.

There is also some data from other ports and we will be adding more as available.

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