Catalogue description Admiralty: Royal Marines: Attestation Forms

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Details of ADM 157
Reference: ADM 157
Title: Admiralty: Royal Marines: Attestation Forms
Description:

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.

Note: Catalogue entries for this series have been enhanced as part of a project supported by volunteers, completed in 2019. Some discharge papers and records unavailable for conservation reasons were not included in the project.
Date: 1790-1925
Arrangement:

The forms are arranged alphabetically under year of attestation or discharge within each Division (Chatham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and miscellaneous, i.e. those not allocated a service number).

Please note that individual pieces within this series are catalogued to item level, and that for these the item numbers equate to the original folio numbers in the document; therefore not all item numbers have been used for some pieces.

To find the Attestation of a Marine, the researcher will consult the lists for the Division in which he served; if that information is not known, then the researcher should consult the PRO guide book Royal Marines, for guidance.

Related material:

Indexes are in ADM 313

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Creator:

Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Chatham Division, 1755-1947

Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Plymouth Division, 1755-1947

Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Portsmouth Division, 1755-1947

Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Woolwich Division, 1805-1869

Physical description: 3625 boxes, files and volumes
Unpublished finding aids:

There was a nominal card index to pieces ADM 157/1-664. This has been superseded by the Catalogue

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