What Navy Records Are Useful For Family History?
Although the Navy has existed in Britain for centuries, detailed records only survive from the 1920s. These include seamen’s pouches and are available to search online at the National Archives website (UK). There are some earlier, fragmented records and these are spread between the National Archives, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, local archives and at the Maritime History Archive in Newfoundland in Canada. Royal Navy records are also very useful. Many merchant seamen went on to enlist and serve in the Royal Navy after they had been at sea for a while. Service records for ratings and offices are at the National Archives and have been indexed from the mid 19th century onwards. For records dating before this, you need to know what ship your ancestor served on to be able to access their records as name indexes don’t exist. Records of people who served after 1923 are now with the Ministry of Defence.
