Advanced Genealogy
The Navy
Officers
The Navy List serves a similar function to the Army List: you can discover on which ships your ancestor served and any promotions he received. From 1840, you can consult service records. Again, these will tell you the ships he served on, any promotions he had and perhaps give some personal details. Other interesting documents include passing certificates, which were issues from 1789 onwards to prove the qualifications of officers, and were accompanied by baptism certificates.
Sailors
Before 1853 you will have to consult a few sources. If you know the ship, the first port of call for finding a sailor should be its muster rolls. Some of these rolls date back as far as the mid-seventeenth century and list everyone on board, carrying information about each sailor’s age, pay and when he enlisted. For men who retired between 1802 and 1894 there are certificates of service, listing ships served on and dates of service. A final resource, and an interesting one, is the logbooks of individual ships, which may mention sailors, though, more intriguingly, they will give details voyages.
Service records were kept between 1853 and 1923 and include date of entry and discharge, ships served on, promotions, disciplinary offences and other personal details. Finally, as with the army, the PRO has medal rolls for those who distinguished themselves during their naval careers.
Be careful not to confuse the Royal Navy with the merchant naval – separate sets of records from the 1850s onwards survive for masters, mates and seamen who worked on commercial vessels, and who served on Royal Navy vessels on occasion or saw action during a war.