The Museum subscribes to a range of resources to help you with your research. They are all available free of charge from the Library, but you won't be able to access them from home or outside of the museum buildings.

Please note that before using these resources you must agree to abide by our terms and conditions of use.

Dictionaries, encyclopedias and indexes | Family history | Journal archives | Rare books | Newspapers

Dictionaries, encyclopedias and indexes

Bibliography of British and Irish History

Originally developed by the Royal Historical Society, the Bibliography of British and Irish History is an index to books, articles in books, and articles in journals. It is a key tool for anyone researching British and Irish history from the Romans to the present. It indexes several maritime journals, including the Mariner's Mirror.

Lloyd’s Register of Ships

(Login required – please ask Library staff)

A highly-regarded reference source providing information on all sea-going, self-propelled merchant ships of 100 GT and above, whatever their classification, for the current year.

Lloyd’s Directory of Shipowners

(Login required – please ask Library staff)

Designed to accompany the print edition available in the Caird Library, this basic database provides the latest address and contact details of the companies appearing in the printed edition, for the current year.

Oxford Art Online

Oxford Art Online is an encyclopedia-style resource covering every aspect of the visual arts from prehistory to the present day. It is particularly good for biographies of artists and subject overviews on styles, movements and places. Over 5000 images from art museums and collections are included.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

56,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to 2003. You can search, browse, or explore themed essays.

The online tour covers search tips and key features of the resource.

Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History

Search or browse over 900 entries on topics including naval history, shipbuilding, navigation and scientific instrumentation, maritime art and literature.

Oxford English Dictionary Online

The OED is the authoritative dictionary of the English language. It contains information on the past and present meaning of words from across the English-speaking world. It traces the history of words through quotations, from the earliest usage to the present day.

Try the online OED tour for a look at how the web version works.

Shipindex.org

Shipindex.org is an online resource that gives references to information about particular vessels in books, magazines and other websites. A large proportion of the site is free to access, but a growing number of entries are defined as premium content. The Museum has a subscription to this premium content, which you can access from the Library.

Who's Who, and Who Was Who

Who's Who is an annually published directory of noteworthy and influential individuals in all walks of life, in the UK and worldwide. It has been published since 1849, and previous editions are also included in this online version as Who Was Who.

Where relevant, entries also contain links to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Family history

Ancestry Library

Ancestry Library is a key resource for researching family history. Much of the content originates from the United States, however it does contain the 1841, 1851, 1961, 1871, 1881, and 1901 censuses for England, Wales and Scotland, as well as birth, death and marriage indexes, trade, town and telephone directories, and passenger lists.

Search tip: the content is organised in around 4000 separate collections, so it's worth taking a look at the Ancestry title list to see which ones are likely to have the people you're looking for.

Ancestry now includes:

Great Britain, Masters and Mates Certificates, 1850-1927

This wonderful new database contains master and mate certificates issued to merchant seamen by the British Board of Trade, courtesy of Royal Museums Greenwich.

The certificates and other documents included in this database were issued to merchant seamen who qualified as masters or mates aboard merchant ships. Records include certificates of competency, certificates of service, examination applications, and some other documents.

Find My Past

This is another key family history e-resource. It is very user-friendly and has a wealth of valuable material on it.
RMG staff please note: due to licensing agreement restrictions Find My Past may not be accessed when you are working from home.

Records of Merchant Navy Seamen for the period 1835-1941 can be searched at http://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/merchant-navy-seamen

There is a gap in the merchant seamen records from 1857 to 1918 however. 
The exact information held in these records varies, but the records usually include name, age, place of birth, physical description, ship names and dates of voyages.

Other notable resources on Find My Past:

- Census Collection of England, Wales and Channel Islands (1841 to 1911)

- Birth, Marriage and Death Index (primarily 1837 to 2006)

-Outgoing Passenger Lists for all ships leaving the UK from 1890-1960.
• Records of ticket-holding passengers embarking or transiting through the UK on long-distance voyages between 1890 and 1960 can be searched.
• Passenger lists of the SS Titanic are included. Information about understanding the lists, by Stephen Rigden, is available.
• Records of individuals or groups of people leaving for destinations including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA featuring ports such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York.
• Passengers include not only immigrants and emigrants, but also businessmen, diplomats and tourists.
• Images of the passenger lists are available to view, download and print.

The National Archives’ Discovery

The National Archives' (TNA’s) Discovery enables the searching and full-text downloading of TNA's large collection of digitised public records. It is a vital family history resource, and is especially helpful for seaman’s service records and wills. There is an extensive collection of naval records available.

The collection also includes the selected wills of well-known historical figures such as Lord Horatio Nelson and Sir Francis Drake. A variety of First World War records, including war diaries (containing operations reports, intelligence summaries and other material), medal index cards (giving information on military personnel and their medal entitlements) and service records are also available.

Maritime journals

Journal of Maritime Research

We have full-text free access to this publication at this link.

More information is available on the Royal Museums Greenwich website, from where the paragraph below is taken:

"The Journal for Maritime Research (JMR) is the first electronic journal in the field of maritime studies. From contemporary issues to the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of maritime history, the JMR publishes innovative, multi-disciplinary research on maritime subjects. It is published by the Centre for Research at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich."

The Naval Chronicle

The Caird Library now has permanent free electronic access to The Naval Chronicle (published in 40 volumes from 1799 to 1818).

The Naval Chronicle is a key historical maritime source,  containing accounts of battles and lists of ships, plus details of naval marriages, promotions, deaths, courts-martial and biographies, plus some engravings and charts.

Journal archives

JSTOR Archive

JSTOR is a digital archive containing important scholarly journals and a large collection of 19th century British Pamphlets. The journal content covers all disciplines, while the pamphlet collection is strong on issues of political debate – for instance the anti-slavery movement.

The JSTOR website has some good online tutorials on searching the archive and locating a specific article.

Lloyd's List Archive

(Login required – please ask Library staff)
A searchable database of articles from Lloyd's List, going back to 1991.

Rare and historic books

Early English Books Online

Early English Books Online contains digital (PDF) versions of books, broadsheets and tracts printed in English between 1475 and 1700. It includes 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in the Pollard & Redgrave and Wing Short-Title Catalogues, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640–1661) collection. Around 14,000 titles have also been transcribed and are available in printable text format.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a wonderful resource, covering every noteworthy English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the 18th century, along with thousands of significant works from the Americas. E-content pages are available, plus fully-digital images of each page from the original historical works, which may be viewed online from cover-to-cover.

ECCO contains 33 million pages, over 180,000 titles, making up 200,000 volumes. It is a full-text searchable database and is based on the English Short-Title Catalogue.

JSTOR Archive

JSTOR is a digital archive containing important scholarly journals and a large collection of 19th century British Pamphlets. The journal content covers all disciplines, while the pamphlet collection is strong on issues of political debate – for instance the anti-slavery movement.

Newspapers

17th and 18th Century Burney Collection

The newspapers and pamphlets collected by Reverend Charles Burney (1757–1817) are the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news publishing. Most material is from London, but there are also English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from America, Europe and India. Titles include the Daily Courant (1702–1735) and the London Gazette (1666–1792).

You can find out more about the Burney collection from the British Library website.

19th Century British Library Newspapers

This resource contains the digitised content of 49 influential national and regional newspapers from the 19th century. Titles include the Daily News (1846–1900), the Morning Chronicle (1801–1865), the Graphic (1870–1900) and the Liverpool Mercury (1811–1900).

The British Library also hosts its own version of the database, which is free to search but pay-per-view for articles. The website has some good topical articles, and also offers the entire runs of the Graphic and the Penny Illustrated News on open access.

Guardian and Observer Digital Archive

The Guardian/Observer Digital Archive contains more than 200 years of reporting from the Manchester Guardian (1821–1959), Guardian (1959–2003), and Observer (1791–2003) newspapers. There are a variety of search options, and you can view articles in PDF.

Times Digital Archive

The Times Digital Archive contains more than 7 million articles from The Times newspaper from 1785 to 1985. There are a variety of search options, and you can view articles and pages in either text or facsimile image.

The Illustrated London News Historical Archive

With its debut in 1842 the Illustrated London News became the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper, sparking a revolution in journalism and news reporting. The publication presented a vivid picture of British and world events – including news of war, disasters, royalty, social affairs, the arts and science. Containing over 260,000 full colour pages, fully searchable and browseable, the ILN Historical Archive 1842–2003 provides users with unprecedented access to the entire run of this unique historical record.