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My Grandfather served in the Merchant Navy from 1926- 1939 and again 1963/64.
Was lucky to find his Seamans Pouch with this information in.

In it was a list of ships he served on, but they only give the dates and the ships numbers and no names.
Have tried the archives at Kew but with no luck.
Am curious to where they went etc.

The question is do any of you know anywhere i can acess the ships names to the numbers?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

I was going to suggest Lloyds list. I thought it was available at Kew, but perhaps not! Also I see that there are various websites with listings. I just put ships numbers into Google and quite a few sites came up.

Ann

Many thanks, was hoping to avoid googling ! and that someone might have had this challenge before.

Well!!
I was looking for my grandads merchant navy records .he died in 1911.washed overboard from his vessel. I have his death cert from the marine registers.There wasnt any records on the National Archives Website and by googling The vessels name I found that there aren't that many merchant Navy records still around. Apparently the "GOV" in its infinite wisdom was going to bin all merchant navy records but there was such an uproar at that that they had to find alternative storage.
Many of the merchant navy records now are held in Nova Scotia . (google for merchant navy records, i havent the website now cos was on my old PC that went kaput) They are search able .at a cost of course. and you have to have the vessels name.

If you are lucky some are still at Kew but only if there was some "event" during the voyage.
I was lucky and found the ships log which recorded grandads loss overboard.
I had to go to Kew to find it tho as its not online.

Shirley

Hi Shirley

Thats my problem can't get anywhere without the ships name!!!
None of his ship numbers were at Kew.
Have just posted a help message on the Merchant Navy site, fingers crossed.

Have googled a few sites but they all want a charge but i have 26 ship numbers!!!

Thanks again for your reply

Deborah, Try the website below you can search by ship number. Hope it is of some help.

Heather

http://www.mun.ca/mha

Deborah

Can you list a few of the numbers? I'll see if I can find anything.

Thanks Heather will go and have a try.

Ann,

146662 27/03/1926
146684 19/05/1926
146132 04/08/1926

Thanks for looking

If you go to online crew list at this website put the official number in and a crew list will come up it doesn't seem to give the ships name you may need to email them and ask them for the names. As it should be on the crew list. Heather

Heather

Have tried the site and there are no crew lists or any info held in Britain for any of the ship's numbers i have!!!

Thanks for the link.

Ann

Am retiring now for the night will call in tomorrow evening
Thanks again

Couldn't find anything online for the numbers you gave. But, don't know whether you tried BT336 at Kew, which they say can be used to find ships names as it's arranged in official number sequence. Only goes up to 1948, though, so would just be OK for his first period of service. I can recommend someone to research, if you can't get there yourself.

Ann

Thanks again for your time tonight.

Have just had a message from a chap on the naval site i posted a help message on.

Gave me a link to a site which gives the ship's name and details of the ship from typing in the number.

www.miramarship.index.org.nz/

So am up and running now.

Thanks.