Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Agreements and Crew Lists, Series II

BT 400

1915

This series consists of 87 per cent of the surviving Crew Lists and agreements with log-books where they survive for 1915.

The remaining Crew Lists for 1915 are at Kew in record series BT 99 and BT 100.

Records relating to vessels are mostly arranged chronologically and then by official ships number. Some records have been arranged chronologically and then alphabetically by ships name; these mostly relate to fishing boats and ships with provisional registration. The crew is then listed at item level.

The records for a voyage should be found under the year in which the ship returned to a UK port (for foreign trade vessels) or when the half-yearly return was filed (home trade and fishing vessels). When the voyage ends near the end of a year it would be prudent to search the boxes for the next year as well.

Records for the period 1939-1950 are housed at Kew and are mostly to be found in series: BT 380 BT 381

Public Record(s)

English

678 bundles and volumes

These records are held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, with the series reference RSS/CL/ and then the same piece number as in BT 400 (e.g. so BT 400/3356 will be RSS/CL/3356, and so on).

No records held at The National Archives for this series

Topics

Shipping

Merchant seaman

Series is not accruing.

This series contains the Crew Lists and Agreements for 1915 that are held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. In 1970 when the original appraisal of these records took place the Museum agreed to take a percentage of the Crew Lists for 1861, 1862 and a selection for 1891-1913 as well as all the remaining Crew Lists where the year ends in 5 that were not housed at Kew, between 1865 and 1965 but all surviving records for 1945 are held at Kew. A Joint project between The National Archives and the National Maritime Museum to list 100% of the Crew Lists for 1915 led to the creation of the BT 400 series. Because only the Crew Lists for 1915 are listed in this series the first piece number is BT 400/3356 and the series runs to BT 400/4033.

The 1850 Act required all foreign and home trade crew agreements to be shown to the Collector or Comptroller of Customs before clearance outwards, and to be delivered to the Port Shipping Master or to Customs upon clearance inwards (section 50 of the Act). Home trade crew agreements were required to be delivered half-yearly.