Fisheries Museum
University of Hull, author of
“The Royal Museums Greenwich website is a must. Firstly, the Caird Library pages contain a catalogue of its rich book and manuscript collections, and also a set of research guides ( rmg.co.uk/ researchers/library/ research- guides) covering ships’ registers, crew lists and certification of captains, mates and engineers. These are as useful as any available online, though they do underplay the fact that the regulations for fishing vessels were slightly different to merchant ships, or were introduced at different times.
“At some point, most researchers will need to consult original documents, and the ‘Aeon’ catalogue system is a comprehensive and fairly user-friendly means of identifying and ordering those held by the museum.
“However, more records are being placed online, a trend the museum has joined by digitising all of its crew lists for 1915 in partnership with The National Archives ( 1915crewlists.rmg. co.uk). Searchable for free by name, rank, birthplace and ship, it will return a scanned picture of the original crew list or a link to TNA’s Discovery catalogue. The results show digitised details of each man – or woman in some cases – serving on board, showing their age and the last ship they served on (see more on p61).
“Finally, the RMG website contains the Maritime Memorials database ( blogs.rmg.co.uk/memorials), which details church, cemetery and public memorials to seafarers. This is not comprehensive yet, but is growing fast and in time will represent a superb resource. There’s also a page to recommend memorials that have not yet made it onto the database.”