It might be that your contact, the Ex Registrar, is thinking about Deaths at sea not being registered with the usual District Registrar. Whereas the deaths I am talking about were registered with the Registrar or Shipping & Seamen, not the District Registrar, my ancestors death was registered with the Registrar of Shipping & Seamen in Hartlepool & not with the District Registrar there. I imagine that the Registrar of Shipping & Seamen would send copies to the GRO direct, by-passing the District Registrar altogether, i.e not informing the Dist. Reg. that an event at sea had been recorded by the Reg., of Shipping & Seamen. If this is the case then the District Registrar would be ignorant of such a death having been registered. Perhaps your contact doesn't realise this was another side of the Registration system. My understanding is that so long as there was a witness left to register a death at sea it had to be registered once the ship reached land where there was a Registrar of Shipping & Seamen or a British Consul or else once the ship returned to her home port. Though such events were not always recorded by the masters of vessels. If a ship was lost with all hands then of course there were no witnesses left to register the deaths of those lost. I suppose the only way of finding out who was on board a ship that was lost at sea would be to look for a crew list for that vessel for that particular voyage, not an easy thing to find, you need the ship's official registration number to find crew lists as a general rule. As I understand it, all BMDs at sea were/are meant to be registered with the "registrar of shipping & Seamen" and not with the district registrar. This is why there is a separate GRO index for Overseas events. regards Jenny DeAngelis Nivard Wrote:- <<Its a subject that interests me and raises its head every now and then But just when I think I have it taped something else pops up All the Acts I have read speak of deaths at sea, not where a person goes overboard or is otherwise lost Other references to deaths in absentia speak specifically that if there was no body recovered there would not be a death certificate which is what my ex registrar contact states as does the GRO themselves as I asked them some time ago I suspect its a matter of terminology>>