Inspired by discoveries made on a recent holiday to France, May’s item of the month is a look at a rare book from the Library’s collection. The Voyage of La Perouse round the world in the years by Jean-François de Galaup, Count of Lapérouse, is a finely illustrated account of an eighteenth-century exploration.
Eleanor (Head of Archive and Library)
Last month we explored how to conduct family history research when one’s relative is currently in the Merchant Navy. Today let us investigate the very same query but this time about an individual still serving in the Royal Navy.
Caird Library staff have written several research guides on various maritime related topics. The guide entitled ‘Research guide B3: The Royal Navy: Sources for enquiries’ may help you learn how to seek information on a person who is serving in the Royal Navy. The research guide can be found on our website at http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/library/research-guides/the-royal-navy/research-guide-b3-the-royal-navy-sources-for-enquiries.
We have extensive collections of books, photographs, paintings, prints, drawings and manuscripts dealing with most aspects of the Royal Navy, thus it is always worth searching the Library Catalogue or the Archive Catalogue. However, it is important to stress that the service records of the Royal Navy for approximately the last 90 years are still deposited with the Ministry of Defence. These records should be transferred to The National Archives from the Ministry of Defence when they are 75 years old. So if your relative was in the Royal Navy, you might visit the Veterans UK website for information about how to request a summary of their service record from the Ministry of Defence. Bear in mind that these records are not available to members of the general public so you have to be the subject of the record or next of kin. It is also worth pointing out that before 1972 all Royal Navy personnel were given their records when they left the service. The surviving records until that date only contain basic service details and lists of postings.
The Royal Navy publishes an annual list of active and reserve officers, and a biennial list of retired officers. Editions of the Navy List date from 1814 to the present day. Although the amount of information shown in these lists changes with time, they record officers (retired and active) and ships, where ships were stationed, pay scales, uniform regulations, etc. Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) officers, including the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), were also included in the Navy List from 1862, so this is a ‘must check’ if one’s relative is a Royal Naval Officer of the 20th century. As The National Archives holds most Admiralty records – including official logs of warships, muster rolls, pay books and all personnel and service records of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, up to at least 1920 – you might be able to find information there too.
The National Archives
Ruskin Avenue
Kew
Richmond
Surrey TW9 4DU
Tel: +44 (0)20 8876 3444
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
The Ministry of Defence, Directorate of Personnel Support (Navy) office controls all service records for the years approximately 1920 to at least 1955 which have not yet been passed to The National Archives (excluding Royal Marines). Please note as it was mentioned earlier that information can only be given to next of kin.
Ministry of Defence
Directorate of Personnel Support (Navy)
Navy Search
TNT Archive Services
Tetron Point
William Nadin Way
Swadlincote
Derbyshire
DE11 0BB
Tel: (+44) 01283 227913
Fax: (+44) 01283 227942
Email: navysearchpgrc@tnt.co.uk
The Ministry of Defence, NPP (Acs) AFPAA office controls service records for the period after approximately 1955. Please note that as always information can only be supplied to next of kin and unfortunately they can only be reached by mail.
Ministry of Defence
AFPAA (C) NPP (ACS) 1E
Room 1047
Centurion Building
Grange Road
Hampshire PO13 9XA
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
Regular readers of the blog may recognise the name Susannah Middleton. Her collection of letters, written from Gibraltar in the early nineteenth century, is a real favourite with staff and readers of the Caird Library. In December, a selection of the manuscripts she wrote to her sister in London featured as our item of the month.
It was thus with some interest that, in 2011, I learnt that a descendent of Susannah’s was planning to visit the library. Alison Board spent a day in the old Caird Library reading Susannah’s letters. Alison explained that in addition to being an ancestor of the Middletons, she was also a fine art student at the Arts University College, Bournemouth. On the look-out for inspiration, Alison had hit upon the idea of turning Susannah’s words into a work of art. The result of the research can be seen in the image on the right as Susannah’s writing continues to influence the artwork Alison is creating.
I’ve always known that manuscripts had the potential to inspire far more than academic studies (although don’t get me wrong, they’re very important too!), so it was great to see an example of a different approach to using archives. Thanks to Alison for keeping in touch and sending the image to us. If you would like to find out more about her work, Alison maintains a blog which can be read at: www.susannahandthecaptain.blogspot.co.uk.
Richard (Assistant Archivist)
Image: © Alison Board
Are you doing family history research related to the Merchant Navy? Are you stuck with finding the Official Number of a British-registered vessel? Perhaps you have a list of Official Numbers but do not know the ship names?
Knowing a ship’s Official Number is crucial when you do family history research, because the large repositories holding crew agreements and logbooks, including the National Maritime Museum, the Maritime History Archive in Newfoundland and the National Archives at Kew, use Official Numbers as a reference point, rather than names. From 1855, merchant vessels were given an unique number when they first registered with the Board of Trade, and this number stayed with the vessel throughout her life, even if she was re-registered or re-named.
There is a very useful free online database called the Crew List Index Project (CLIP) which was set up to improve access to the records of British merchant seafarers of the late 19th century and has gathered the largest database providing details of the locations of surviving crew lists. This site currently contains over 450,000 records of vessels’ names and Official Numbers with a complete coverage of British-registered vessels with numbers from 1 to 200,000 and covering the period 1855 to the 1950s.
Searching by names: (This is an index of vessels by name; it shows matching names and their Official Numbers, sorted first by name, then by number.)
http://www.crewlist.org.uk/data/vesselsalpha.php
Searching by Official Numbers: (This is an index of vessels by Official Number. You must bear in your mind that ships were often re-named so there may be several different names for one vessel.)
http://www.crewlist.org.uk/data/vesselsnum.php
Once you know the relevant name and Official Number, the next step is to track down the crew lists for that ship. The National Maritime Museum’s research guide C1: The Merchant Navy: Tracing people: Crew lists, agreements and official logs may help you how to do so. For more information, please follow the link: http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/library/research-guides/the-merchant-navy/tracing-people-crewlists-agreements-logs
Gregory
Assistant Librarian
Most of our enquiries start off with a sentence well known to us: “my great-grand father was a seaman”. A recent query received by the Library made me think how we can assist those who are researching current activities in the Merchant Navy.
As always crew agreements for British-registered merchant ships should be the best to start with. These are of particular interest to genealogists and people tracing family history, and to anyone researching specific ships or seafaring generally. Of the more recent records, a 10% specimen group of all crew agreements from 1951 onwards is in The National Archives; the remaining 90% for years ending in ’5′, until 1995, have been deposited with the National Maritime Museum. All remaining papers up to 1976 have been transferred to the Maritime History Archive in Canada, but sadly from 1977 to 1994 all crew agreements not deposited in the National Archives or in the National Maritime Museum (i.e. 90% of all years not ending in ’5) have been destroyed. Log Books and Crew Agreements from 2001 to 2006 are held at the Registry of Shipping and Seamen in their entirety. A certificate of sea service for individual seaman who sailed on ships from this period may be obtained from these records. Also important to note is that no official logbooks and crew agreements have been retained covering the years 1996 to 2000. Any enquiries about the deposit of recent crew lists should be addressed to the Registry of Shipping and Seamen.
The majority of records relating to merchant seamen for the years 1941–1972 are also with The National Archives, and for the years 2000–2009 are with the Registry of Shipping and Seamen. Records for individual seamen were not kept between the years 1973–1999 as after 1973 the Registrar General was not required by legislation to keep these records.
The second avenue of research should be Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, an annual list of merchant ships providing an excellent aid to research. The Caird Library has copies up to, and including, the most recent edition. The 2011-2012 issue is in four volumes, consisting of almost 7000 pages. The Library also holds volumes up to the last issue of the Mercantile Navy List (or Official List of Registered Ships as it was called by 1985), the Board of Trade official list of all British-registered vessels.
Some recent shipping company records are held by the National Maritime Museum. The National Register of Archives, maintained by The National Archives, can often be useful in locating records of shipping companies. Published histories exist for many companies and the National Maritime Museum has bibliographies for the most famous shipping lines. Book lists for a number of other companies can be compiled from the online Library catalogue. An example from our recent acquisitions is a book on the tragically wrecked Costa Concordia:
Costa concordia : architettura sospesa nel blue = architecture suspended in the blue by Tiziana Lorenzelli (Milano : Electa ; [Genova] : Costa, 2006) 629.123.3COSTA CONCORDIA – PBH4693
Useful addresses:
Maritime History Archive
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St John’s
Newfoundland
A1C 5S7
Canada
www.mun.ca/mha
The National Archives
Ruskin Avenue
Kew
Richmond
Surrey TW9 4DU
Tel: +44 (0)20 8876 3444
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Registry of Shipping and Seamen
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
Anchor Court
Ocean Way
Cardiff CF24 5JW
Tel: +44 (0)29 20448800
Email: seafarers_registry@mcga.gov.uk
www.dft.gov.uk/mca
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
March’s item of the month is a travel guide giving a charming and enthralling insight into journeying in the Orient. Published in March 1936 and written in a friendly and informal style, the guide gives listings for the traveller of shops, services and facilities in each of 20 Oriental cities.
Sue (Digital Resources Librarian)
It is with great sadness that we announce the end of the Nautical Magazine. The publication was incorporated into the monthly journal Sea Breezes at the end of last year. The Caird Library was formally informed by a letter from the Editor advising that the magazine had been sold to Sea Breezes Publication Ltd; and although the name will live on, the magazine may look different.
The Nautical Magazine had been published by Brown Son & Ferguson, Ltd. of Glasgow. Except for one edition in September 1980 – when a devastating fire damaged the company’s building – it has been published every month since March 1832. The image on the right shows the front cover of the first issue.
Describing itself as a “magazine for those interested in ships and the sea”, it covered, over the years, every level of news and developments in both naval and mercantile topics. The monthly journal contained news and commentaries from around the world, curious articles on the trends of current shipping affairs, information about new types of ships, discussions on the professional position of officers and an excellent book review section.
This was truly a journal for professional seafarers; its legacy will be afloat with us forever.
If you are interested in back issues, Aeon, the Caird Library’s new online ordering system, is live and items from the archive and library collections are ready to be requested to view in our reading room. As with any journal, when you place your order, please let us know what year, volume or issue you would like to view. To join the Library and to request items from the onsite stores, please register at Aeon.
Gregory (Assistant Librarian)
Thanks to all our guests for generating excellent blog posts and for those who are interested here is a link to one more:
http://www.lararuffle.co.uk/london/caird-library-at-royal-museums-greenwich
Other links to blogs about the Caird Library event can be found at the bottom of the previous post. Please feel free to leave a comment and let people know what you think!
The books and manuscripts shown in the blogs can be ordered and viewed in our new library which has just gone to full service. We are now open Monday to Saturday, 10.00-16.45 and open late on Thursdays. Information about our service and opening hours can be found in the library section of the museum website.
Mike (Assistant Archivist)
The Caird Library held its first bloggers preview event last Saturday. We’ve been scouring the blogosphere in the last few weeks for bloggers who we thought would like to see what we have in our Library and our archives. We hoped that this would help us spread the word about our Library and our collections, which are free for anyone to come and enjoy. Our guests were enthusiasts and experts on a huge range of subjects, from local history to genealogy; from naval history to contemporary culture, and more besides.
We’d asked our guests in advance to vote for the objects they’d like to see from a shortlist of some of the treasures in our collections. We had the most popular on display to see, including the Aurora Australis, the ‘first book ever written, printed, illustrated and bound in the Antarctic’ by Ernest Shackleton and his team, 1908; Captain Bligh’s copy of Buchan’s Domestic Medicine of 1779, kept at Pitcairn Island; a manuscript diary kept by Alfred Withers of a voyage from Liverpool to Melbourne in 1857, and plans of Deptford Dockyard from the 1770′s. Images of these manuscripts and books can be seen in our previous items of the month.
We were also able to give some exclusive tours of our new stores allowing our guests to see how our collections are arranged and cared for, and to see how much work we have put into managing our archive and library material in preparation for the new service that we’ve just launched. Our guests were also lucky enough to get a sneak preview of a short film of the archive and library move, which is due to go on our website in the coming weeks.
For any of our guests that have blogged about the event that we may have missed please do let us know by posting a comment below, or you can tweet us @NMMGreenwich and mention #CairdLibrary. Please don’t be offended if you weren’t invited, why not drop us a line and tell us about your blog if you think you should be on the guest list for future events?
Thanks to all who attended for a great afternoon!
Mike
Assistant Archivist
Guest blogs:
Sign of Penguins, http://0tralala.blogspot.com
National Maritime Museum and Library, http://catsmeatshop.blogspot.com
The Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, http://deptforddame.blogspot.com
The Old Order Changeth, http://gentlemenandtarpaulins.com
The National Maritime Museum holds in its chart, map and atlas collections a substantial amount of material related to various conflicts through the ages. Amongst these are the charts and plans associated with the late 18th century War of American Independence. January’s Item of the Month shows three items from our collections related to the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Brian (Curator of Hydrography)