Catalogue description Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Ships' Official Logs

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Details of BT 165
Reference: BT 165
Title: Registry of Shipping and Seamen: Ships' Official Logs
Description:

This series contains ships' official logs kept by the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen and its predecessor.

The logs are primarily concerned with matters of discipline, and were normally attached to the Articles of Agreement for the voyage to which they relate. The official logs in this series have been detached from the Articles of Agreement for the voyage concerned by the Registry of Shipping and Seamen.

The ships' logs for the years 1902-1912 contain entries of births, marriages or deaths; all surviving logs for the period 1914-1919 have been preserved and form the latter part of the series.

Note: Catalogue entries for this series have been enhanced as part of a project supported by volunteers from the London Family History Library, completed in March 2017.
Date: 1857-1972
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

General Register and Record Office of Seamen, 1835-1872

Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen, 1872-1992

Physical description: 2046 bundles and volumes
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated
Selection and destruction information: The ships' logs for the years 1902-1912 were selected because they contain entries of births, marriages or deaths.
Administrative / biographical background:

The 1850 Act specified that official log books (OLBs) were to be in a form to be prescribed by the Board of Trade (s 85).

Foreign trade OLBs were to be delivered to Port Shipping Masters or Customs on return (s 89), and home trade OLBs half-yearly (s. 90), as with crew agreements. They were however returnable to shipowners on request (s 92).

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