Royal Navy

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Records

For a list of abbreviations used in service records, refer External links below.
  • A new free-to-search database resource project Royal Navy First World War Lives at Sea, based principally on service records held by The National Archives, is being undertaken, with the aim of completing the project by November 2018.
  • 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.
  • findmypast, a pay website, includes two associated databases located in Armed forces & conflict/Service Records
"British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records, 1704-1919" and "British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records Browse, 1704-1919". These include records from the National Archives series ADM 29 / 1-32, 34-131 – Admiralty: Royal Navy, Royal Marines, coastguard and related services: Officers’ and Ratings’ Service Records (Series II) 1802-1919.
  • findmypast includes two databases located in Armed forces & conflict/First World War
    • "Royal Naval Division Casualties 1914-1919". These are death records researched by Jack Marshall. Update: not available at 2018/11, not known if this is a permanent situation. Also available on Ancestry, see further on.
    • "Royal Naval Division Service Records 1914-1920"
The RND transferred from the authority of the Admiralty to the War Office on 29 April 1916.
  • "WW1 Naval Casualties". Source unknown. Transcripts, no images.
  • "WW1 Ships Lost At Sea, 1914-1919" sourced from the National Archives WW1 Ship Casualties Card Index series ADM 242/6.
  • 1911 Census is available on findmypast and Ancestry, both pay websites, and perhaps on other similar sites. For a helpful finding aid, based on the Ancestry databases, which includes census information for Royal Navy personnel overseas and in England and Wales, see Stations of British Army troops in India - 1911 England and Wales Census.
  • Ancestry (pay website) includes a database "UK, British Army and Navy Birth, Marriage and Death Records, 1730-1960"[1] (located in BMD records). This database consists mainly of Naval records, sourced from the National Archives, Kew.
  • Ancestry (pay website) includes a database "Great Britain, Royal Naval Division Casualties of The Great War, 1914-1924"[2], (Ancestry location Birth, Marriage & Death). These are death records researched by Jack Marshall.
  • Ancestry released 3 October 2018, the first stage of records in the database "UK, WWI Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923",[3] (located in Military), which are index records, with the images available on the Ancestry owned pay website fold3,[4] (which requires an Ancestry All Access subscription, or a separate fold3 subscription). The first released records relate to Naval and Mercantile Marine explained in the WFA article "Release of Naval and Mercantile Marine Pension Records by Ancestry" October 2018.
  • Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service Records held at the Fleet Air Arm Museum. The FAA Museum, part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, is located at the Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton, Somerset (also known as HMS Heron). The FAA Museum generally does not hold records of service for those who enlisted after about 1925, which are still held in the custody of the Ministry of Defence.
Update December 2018. The Archive & Research Centre is closed, as its staff are working elsewhere. This means records cannot currently be requested. This could be the situation until perhaps the end of 2020.

Merchant Navy

  • findmypast includes the following databases located in Education & work/Merchant navy & maritime
    • Britain, Merchant Seamen, 1918-1941. National Archives records BT 348, BT 349, BT 350 and BT 364. Images. Some records include photographs
    • England & Wales Merchant Navy Crew Lists 1861-1913. Transcripts and some images. Includes Lascars
    • Ireland Merchant Navy Crew Lists 1863-1921. Images of the original records from the National Archives of Ireland. Crew members were not only from Ireland but also from around the world.
  • Research guide C1: The Merchant Navy : Tracing people – crew lists, agreements and official logs At the bottom of the page other guides to the Merchant Navy are listed including
Research guide C9: The Merchant Navy Find out about merchant ships involved in the First World War. Includes researching crew members, with links to additional guides. Royal Museums Greenwich.
  • The book Lloyd's War Losses : the First World War : casualties to shipping through enemy causes, 1914-1918 is available at the British Library UIN: BLL01011394103. This is a 1990 facsimile reprint of the original held at Guildhall Library, City of London, now the London Metropolitan Archives.

Navy List

  • For links to a selection from 1782 -1945 searchable online see the Fibiwiki page Military Periodicals online- Navy Lists
  • Online Navy Lists are also available on the website of the National Library of Scotland, NLS, with transcriptions available, together with a Search facility, as Navy Lists: 1913 to 1944
  • 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. The same dataset is also available on the Ancestry owned pay website fold3.
  • The National Archives catalogue entry 18th Century Royal Navy Lists 1782, 1790-1799 QLIB 3. National Archives Library. The full title of the Lists is Steel's Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy. The Lists were published monthly during war and quarterly during peace, and include details of ships of the Honourable East-India Company. All years are available as a pay download.
  • For editions not available online, The Navy List is available at the British Library, UIN: BLL01012418229, from 1815, and also in the Library of the National Archives, from November 1814.

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.

Also see

External links

In addition, HMS Highfligher was the Royal Naval Base at Trincomalee in Ceylon, commissioned on 1 July 1943.[5]

Historical books online

Also see Military periodicals online for details of Navy Lists, also see above, and publications such as Army and Navy Gazette, Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine and Naval & Military Gazette.

General

Volume III 1898. Covers the period 1714-1792. Index entry East India
Volume IV 1899. Includes "Major Operations of the Royal Navy 1793-1802" page 196
Volume V 1900. Includes "Major Operations of the Royal Navy 1803-1815" page 44
Volume VI 1901. Includes "Military History of the Royal Navy 1816-1856" page 222
Volume VII 1903. Includes "Military History of the Royal Navy 1857-1900" page 91
Kings Regulations & Admiralty Instructions - Part II 1913 Transcribed version, not all sections available. pbenyon.plus.com
Naval Social History - Circa 1793 - 1920+ (pbenyon.plus.com) also contains extracts of additional Admiralty Instructions.
Browse the Contents page for each issue, or there is an Index of articles 1913-1976. Pdf downloads. Many of the articles appear without authors, which appear in "Author List for the Naval Review 1913-1930" by James Goldrick.[6]
During most of WWI the Journal was not published, but information was collected and published after the War. “In World War II there was no censorship, and the regular “Notes on the War at Sea” and "Diary of the War at Sea" are important records of naval events during World War II.“ The website Naval-History.Net, refer above, contains an index of articles relating to WW1.
  • "A Naval Brigade In Burma in 1858" (scroll down) by W. B. R. The Naval Review May 1938 Vol XXVI no 2, pages 283-288. The destination was the frontier post and Fort at Meaday, on the Irrawaddy. Available as an archived webpage.
  • "The Tigris Above Baghdad" by Lieut-Comr. A S Elwell-Sutton RN. Scroll to item 15 page 153 The Naval Review February 1923 Vol. XI No. I, produced by The Naval Society. Details of the Caddisfly, one of the 'Fly' class gunboats. Available as an archived webpage.
  • "The First Commission of HMS Firefly" by Staff Surgeon FG Hitch RN JRNMS Volume 4, 1918 Archive.org. One of the 'Fly' class gunboats. Also details of other craft on the river Tigris.
  • Fifty Years in the Royal Navy by Admiral Sir Percy Scott 1919. Includes Naval gunnery, the Boxer Rising, the China Station and WW1.
  • 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, includes Cameroons and the Far East; Volume II, includes Gallipoli; Volume III includes Gallipoli and Mesopotamia; Volume IV , includes Mesopotamia; Volume V. Naval-History.net has transcribed editions which additionally contain maps from a separate case for Volumes II and III.
History of the Great War based on Official Documents: The Merchant Navy by Archibald Hurd 1921-1929. Volume I, Volume II Archive.org. Volume III is available as a transcribed edition on Naval-History.net
  • First World War books by E. Keble Chatterton, late Lieutenant-Commander RNVR include
Dardanelles Dilemma: The Story of the Naval Operations by E. Keble Chatterton 1935 Hathi Trust Digital Library. Also available Archive.org version, Public Library of India Collection.
Seas of Adventures: the Story of the Naval Operations in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Aegean [1914-1918] 1936 Hathi Trust Digital Library.
"Severn's" Saga by E. Keble Chatterton 1938 Hathi Trust Digital Library. HMS Severn in East Africa.
Includes Volume 2 East Africa to July 1915; Cameroons, 1914; Volume 4: Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf; Volume 5 including China Squadron, 1914 (including Emden Hunt), and East Indies Squadron, 1914 [7]
BR 1886 (C.B. 4273 (52) H.M. Ships Damaged or Sunk by Enemy Action 3 Sep 1939 - 2 Sep 1945 Based on reports held in the Admiralty at the time of its publication in 1952. A publication in the Navy Department: Reference Books (BR Series). Website of the Royal Australian Navy.

Civilians in the First World War

  • A Captive on a German Raider by F G Trayes 1918. Archive.org The author, who was retiring from Siam, was a passenger on a Japanese ship "Hitachi Maru" which was captured by the "Wolf" (see next section) on 26 September 1917, two days after leaving Colombo.

German Navy

Other online volumes :
  • Der Krieg zur See 1914-1918: Der Krieg in der Nordsee Volume 1, Volume 3, Volume 4 (of seven volumes). German language. National Library of Estonia - English webpage option available.
  • Der Krieg zur See 1914-1918: Der Krieg in der Ostsee Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3. Archive.org. German language.

Fiction

  • The Devils Wind by Maj. Gen. G.L. Verney 1956. Archive.org, Public Library of India Collection. An account of the actions of the Naval Brigade of H.M.S. Shannon,which participated in the Relief of Lucknow, during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 told through the eyes of a very young sailor.
  • Yangtze Skipper, by Thomas Woodrooffe 1937. HathiTrust Digital Library. Set in 1919 Shanghai, Toby Warren is First Lieutenant on the "Beetle", a (fictious) Royal Navy river gunboat. The author had served in this period on HMS Scarab a river gunboat.
Note, this appears to be the American title. Appears to be the same book as River of Golden Sand by Thomas Woodrooffe, first published 1936. A review of River of Golden Sand [8]
Naval Odyssey by Thomas Woodrooffe 1938, first published 1936. HathiTrust Digital Library. Toby Warren, on the (fictitious) British cruiser HMS "Cassiopeia", participates in the events in Turkey during the 1920s, and the Royal Navy's involvement in the crises there. A publisher's note about the book and the author, says "After the war he saw service …in the Mediterranean…is thus eminently qualified to write a book about things actually seen and experienced while in the Navy".[9]
Thomas Bovius Ralph Woodrooffe was in the Royal Navy from 1917 and became Lieutenant-Commander in 1929, retired/was dismissed in 1933 and then served in WW2. In Good Company, published 1947 is a memoir about his WW2 service as a Naval Observer. He also wrote a number of other books on naval matters. His navy service is here scroll down to his entry. unithistories.com

References

  1. ↑ UK, British Army and Navy Birth, Marriage and Death Records, 1730-1960 Ancestry (located in BMD records)
  2. ↑ Great Britain, Royal Naval Division Casualties of The Great War, 1914-1924 Ancestry
  3. ↑ "UK, WWI Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923" Ancestry.
  4. ↑ "UK, WWI Pension Ledgers, 1914-1923" fold3.
  5. ↑ HMS Highflyer – History lankalibrary.com.
  6. ↑ "Author List for the Naval Review 1913-1930" by James Goldrick Appendix C, page 341 Mahan is not enough : the proceedings of a conference on the works of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond 1993 Archive.org
  7. ↑ gwyrosydd Naval Staff Monographs online Great War Forum 16 March 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  8. ↑ Books of the Week: Morning Tribune, 28 January 1937, Page 16 nlb.gov.sg
  9. ↑ "Publisher's Note" [about Naval Odyssey] Morning Tribune, 27 April 1936, Page 15. nlb.gov.sg.
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