Catalogue description Admiralty: Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Coastguard and related services: Officers' and Ratings' Service Records (Series II)

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Details of ADM 29
Reference: ADM 29
Title: Admiralty: Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Coastguard and related services: Officers' and Ratings' Service Records (Series II)
Description:

This series of records mainly comprises service records compiled by the Navy Pay Office from ships' musters and pay books in respect of ratings, warrant officers, and occasionally commissioned officers, from full and half pay registers, in support of applications made by servicemen for pensions, gratuities, medals. Also included are applications for the admittance of orphaned children into Greenwich Hospital School, the removal of the term 'run' (signifying desertion) entered inaccurately alongside an individual's entry in a ship's muster and applications for certificates of freedom (discharge documents) from foreigners or apprentices press ganged into the Royal Navy. Service records for Royal Marines, Coastguards, Dockyard workers, Sea Fencibles and Convict Guards - many of whom had previously served in the Royal Navy - making such applications can also be found in this series of records.

Date: 1802-1919
Arrangement:

The dates given in the list are the dates of issue of the certificates; the services given are naturally prior to those dates, but do not necessarily cover all the service to date. In some cases of persons still in service, for whom further certificates were later issued, later annotations have been made in these entry books. Pieces 1-96 are indexed by pieces 97-104, in which the ledger or volume numbers are the same as the piece numbers but this index has been superseded by the index included on the online catalogue itself.

Related material:

Naval Courts Martial records can be found in ADM 1

Registers of allotments and allotment declarations ADM 27

Ship's logs can be found in ADM 53

The original certificates will be found among the Greenwich Hospital School Admission Papers, ADM 73

For other naval ratings' service records see: ADM 139

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 131 volume(s)
Access conditions: Available in digital format unless otherwise stated
Publication note:

An article on using these records called 'Indexing the Admiralty' by Bruno Pappalardo can be found in 'Ancestors', Issue 15, August-September 2003.

Unpublished finding aids:

A Military Memorandum (MN 437) provides an overview of records relating to the Greenwich Hospital School.

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