Admiralty: Royal Marines: Attestation Forms

Attestations are the loose forms that a Marine completed on enlistment, attesting that he would serve wherever required. The forms gathered a considerable amount of personal information about the Marine, such as date and place of birth, age, trade and physical characteristics of each man on recruitment, details of his enlistment and attestation, sometimes even references to next-of-kin. The forms were annotated briefly with the details of his service career, such as the names of HM ships or stations on which he served and the dates of the service. Not all have survived, however, and the researcher's attention is directed to the accompanying index of contents which shows the surviving attestations.