Royal Navy

Records

• National Archives Guides:Browse our research guidance , letter R Select Royal Navy and Royal Navy Personnel. Includes
  • Looking for records of a rating in the Royal Navy 1853-1923

• A great number of service records for seamen who joined the Royal Navy between 1853 and 1923 are now online and can be searched and downloaded at the relevant documents onlinesection of the The National Archives website. There is no charge for the initial search but a small fee applies to obtain sight of the full record.

• Other Navy Records held at the National Archives include Officers’ service records (1756-1917) and wills of Royal Naval Seamen (1786-1822). – many of these records can also be searched and downloaded.

Navy List

• For links to a selection from 1782 -1945 searchable online see Military Periodicals online- Navy Lists
• The pay website Ancestry has a broken range of editions of the Navy List from 1888 to 1970. These are searchable by name and linked to relevant page images.

Medal Rolls

Free downloads of the Naval Medal Rolls are available from the National Archives website, or the same information is available on the pay website Ancestry. See the page Medal Rolls for details.

External links

• Military Ancestors: Royal Navy from the National Archives' British Battles
• Naval: Late 18th, 19th and early 20th Century Naval and Naval Social History Index from pbenyon.plus.com

Historical books online

• Royal Naval Biography 1828 by John Marshall googlebooks
• A New List of all the Ships and Vessels of Her Majesties Royal Navy ... pub 1711. googlebooks
• History of the Great War based on official documents: Naval Operations.Volumes I-III by Sir Julian Stafford Corbett, Volumes IV-V by Henry Newbolt. Published 1920-1931. Archive.org and Hathi Trust (Vol. V)

Volume I, Volume II, includes Gallipoli. Volume III Includes Mesopotamia. Volume IV , includes Mesopotamia. Volume V

• [World War I] Naval Staff Monographs. Royal Australian Navy website (Select Media Room/Publications/World War I Naval Staff Monographs). Includes Volume 2 East Africa to July 1915; Cameroons, 1914. Volume 4: Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. The unnumbered volume includes East Indies Squadron, 1914