Crew lists and agreements for British registered ships show the master's name on the first page or the heading of the document, often with their address.

This is a list of the masters of a vessel as shown on the crew lists which CLIP has transcribed from the records held at local archives (so please be aware that this is only a limited list).

More details of the records of masters and other officers are here: Masters, mates, engineers and cooks

How to search for the masters of a ship

Other pages link to this one using an official number, or you can search again by official number using the button top right to access the search form.

On the search form, enter the ship's official number in the range from 1 to 199550. This should be a pure number without wild-cards such as '*', '%', '?'.

Then click Search

Reading the results

The results are sorted in date order, showing the master's Surname, Forename and Address. They show the vessel and her port, with the dates of the voyages recorded on the crew list. The archive holding the document is shown with their reference for the document, if available.

Using the results

The link on the right hand side of the table Transcript shows a transcript of the crew list. Bear in mind that we have only transcribed the main details from the document. The original will always contain more information, for example it will probably show the voyages made during the period covered by the document.

Data sources

This data is taken from the crew lists and agreements which are held at:

• Anglesey Archives - port of Beaumaris, 100% complete.
• Devon Archives and Local Studies - Devon ports and vessels with a Devonshire connection, 100% complete, including data from photocopies which they hold.
• Glamorgan Archives - port of Cardiff covering the years 1863, 1871, 1881, 1901 and 1911. This project is ongoing at the archives.
• Lancashire Archives - Lancashire ports, 30% complete, data transferred from transcripts made by Lancashire Family History and Heraldry Society volunteers.
• National Library of Wales - port of Aberystwyth, 100% complete, data transferred from transcripts made by NLW volunteers.
• Portsmouth History Centre - ports of Portsmouth and Cowes, 100% complete.
• Southampton Archives - documents for Union-Castle vessels, 100% complete.

The documents cover the period 1863 to 1913.