Quite a lot of my relations in the late 19th and early 20th century were sailors in the merchant navy. On my mother's side, many were qualified master mariners; on my father's more often they were lower-ranking crew on larger ships. Is anyone aware of any records that might be helpful in adding details to their bare names and vital dates? Richard

On 2015-02-12 21:57:39 +0000, Richard Smith said: > Quite a lot of my relations in the late 19th and early 20th century > were sailors in the merchant navy. On my mother's side, many were > qualified master mariners; on my father's more often they were > lower-ranking crew on larger ships. Is anyone aware of any records > that might be helpful in adding details to their bare names and vital > dates? > > Richard I have tracked two or three Master Mariners. Ancestry - have the Master Mariners and Mates Certs which include listings of ship numbers they served on, when and where the certificates were attained etc. FMP have Merchant Marine records (sometimes earlier dates than Ancestry) which again give ship numbers CLIP http://www.crewlist.org.uk/ for tracing the ship names from the numbers and also for general finding aid info - its a mine of info for places to look Local (to the ports they sailed from) newspapers gave shipping movements for the Ship names and often include the Masters name. plus I have found reports of shipping disasters that were relevant National Archives have a percentage of crew agreements Maritime History Archive https://www.mun.ca/mha/ crew list agreements for 1881 plus info about finding crew lists for other years (though there is a charge for those) A combination of all of the above gave me a good overall picture of when and where they sailed etc, from there I searched overseas newspapers and often found references to the person I was researching -- Tickettyboo