Catalogue description Records of the Marine, Harbour and Fisheries Departments

A Marine Department was first created at the Board of Trade in 1850. Before that date various nautical questions, such as pilotage and the incidence of light dues had been referred to the board from time to time. Acts of parliament in 1846 and 1848 had given the board certain executive duties concerning the inspection and survey of passenger steamers. When the Navigation Laws were repealed, a great deal of attention was given to the personnel of the merchant service, resulting in the passage of the Mercantile Marine Act 1850 and the creation of the Marine Department. Subsequent acts greatly extended government supervision over merchant shipping and much of the ensuing work fell on the department.

When the functions of the Harbour Department of the Admiralty passed to the Board of Trade at the beginning of 1863, they were at first exercised by the Marine Department. A Harbour Department within the Marine Department came into existence early in 1864 and in the following year absorbed the Lighthouse Department, which had also been set up in 1864. Its functions at this time covered harbours and allied matters taken over from the Admiralty, registry of ships' tonnage, questions of international law affecting ships, miscellaneous shipping questions not covered by other departments, lighthouses and pilotage.

In 1867, when the Harbour Department became a separate department, it also took over fisheries from the Commercial Department and foreshores, transferred to the board from the Office of Woods and Forests in 1866. In 1874 it took over duties relating to wreck, salvage, quarantine, registry of ships, liabilities of shipowners, general average and freight from the Marine Department.

Sea fisheries were the responsibility of the Commercial Department until 1867, when they were transferred to the Harbour Department. In 1875 the Board of Trade took over responsibility for shellfish industries and in 1886 that for salmon and freshwater fisheries from the Home Office and in the latter year a Fisheries Department was established to perform these functions. In 1887 it took over from the Marine Department questions relating to fisheries vessels and their crews. In 1896 it took over wreck, harbour loans and quarantine duties from the Harbour Department, with which it was united in 1898 to form the Fisheries and Harbour Department.

During the First World War the Harbour Department administered the Port Labour Committees and purchased frozen meat and fish for the allied armies. The department's functions in relation to port labour were assumed by the Ministry of Labour, established in 1916 and, in 1918, its gas and electricity functions passed to the Industrial Power and Transport Department and the department was renamed the Public Utilities and Harbours Department. This was dissolved in 1919, its docks, port and harbour functions passing to the new Ministry of Transport and its remaining duties to the Marine Department.

When the wartime Ministry of Shipping was disbanded in 1921, its shipping liquidation functions and its work of providing for the government's direct peacetime shipping needs, which before the war had been performed by the Admiralty's Transport Department, were given to the Marine Department, now known as the Mercantile Marine Department. From 1923 to 1939 and again from 1965 onwards, it took control of the Coastguard.

All the board's functions relating to shipping were transferred to a new Ministry of Shipping in October 1939; they passed in May 1941 to the Ministry of War Transport and on 1 April 1946 to the Ministry of Transport, from which responsibility for merchant shipping returned to the Board of Trade in February 1965 and its successor the Department of Trade and Industry. They were then handled by a Marine Division and a Shipping Policy Division. Responsibility for merchant shipping, shipbuilding and repair then passed to the Shipbuilding, Electrical Engineering and Process Plant Division (later the Electrical, Chemical (Plant) and Shipbuilding Industries Division) of the Ministry of Technology in 1966 and in July 1983 responsibility for Merchant Shipping passed to the Department of Transport. The Board of Trade took over responsibility for sea transport on 1 January 1969.