Genealogy Chat

Trinities House kept records of all those who applied for a pension after spending a life either as Thames Watermen or in the Royal or Merchant Navy. The records are in the Guildhall LIbrary in London and are fascinating because the applications for pensions had to contain so much detail. In my case (naturally) there was little detail (of course) but that is unusual. Often there were marriage and birth records, work records and certificates to prove the claim -all amazing stuff. I was looking for a rellie who died in 1794 and found out at least seven facts that I had not known previously and mine was a very thin record compared to some. Worth a try!

That sounds great....Thank you for posting this.

Do you need to make an appointment or can you just turn up with I.D.?


Gwyn

No appointment necessary and I have not been asked for ID either. You just go to the library manuscript section to the left of the entrance to the library and ask for the index book for Trinities House. You can even email them and ask them to look in the index for you if you have a name and a date and find it difficult to get into London. Go to the Guildhall LIbrary website and read up about Trinities House to make sure the dates you want are in the collection and find an email address there. Once you find and entry you think may be useful you reference the microfilm and Bob's your uncle. They even have a copying machine -20p per copy

Super thread - I have a number of RN and merchant navy people in my family so will have to make the trip to the capital

Great.

Thank you for the added information.


Gwyn

Another place that I have found extremely helpful is the National Archives. Once again you can look up the website to see if the type of records you want are there and they have an expert on hand called Bruno (surname very Italian -something like Cappanesco) who wrote a book about looking up Naval ancestors in the NA. This book is essential reading if you want to understand the structure of the Navy dating back to the 1600's. The book is on sale in the NA shop. In the NA you do have to register as a reader with ID etc and then they let you loose on literally millions of records. I found ship's logs and pay books of my 1758 Naval ancestor and actually saw his handwriting. I also know that he did not have any venereal diseases which is lovely!

That book sounds intterestng Jennifer.

It's extremely well researched and so nice to have the author on hand at the NA!

n.

Thanks for this

Duncan

This will come in very handy on my trip next year, thanks a lot.

Thanks for this information Jennifer.

Sky

Found the name of the book and the author!

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors by Bruno Pappalardo (TNA 2003) in order to explore naval records fully.

Thanks Jennifer.
British origins webste seems to have some of these records available....has anyone tried this route?
Joan