Seamen and shipping

The Mercantile Marine Act 1850 transferred all functions relating to merchant seamen from the Admiralty to the Board of Trade.

This included the General Register and Record Office of Seamen, which registered merchant seamen by means of a ticket system.

The same act established local shipping offices, later called mercantile marine offices, where all crews of foreign-going vessels were to be engaged and discharged under formal articles of agreement.

This measure was intended to combat exploitation and brought in the issue of certificates of competency to masters and mates.

The Merchant Shipping Act 1854 gave "general superintendence of all matters relating to merchant ships" to the Board of Trade and required all British ships to be registered.

It also gave the General Register Office the duties of keeping "a register of all persons who serve in ships subject to the provisions of this act" and preserving the ships' official logs.

In 1857 the registration of seamen was abandoned as being too expensive and no longer necessary.

From 1857 until 1913 the crew lists, to which no index of names was kept, became the only central record of serving merchant seamen.

The registrar general of shipping and seamen was formally established by the Merchant Shipping Act 1872.

The registrar general took over responsibility for returns relating to the registration of ships from the Board of Customs' chief registrar of shipping.

Customs officers in each port of registry continued to register ships, issue certificates of registration and record subsequent transactions, sending duplicate entries to the registrar general.

In 1910, the advisory committee on merchant shipping proposed to the Board of Trade that a central index register of merchant seamen should again be created.

This was started in October 1913 and maintained until 1941. Registration was made compulsory by the Registration of Merchant Seamen Order of September 1918, under the Defence of the Realm Act.

In 1941, all those who had served at sea during the previous five years were required to register with the registrar general and a new central register of seamen was started.

This was maintained until 1972, after which registration effectively ceased.

After 1941, the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen became part of the Marine Crews Division of the Ministry of Transport.

It moved back to the Board of Trade in 1965 and was absorbed into the Department of Trade and Industry in 1970.

It moved to the Department of Trade in 1975 and then in 1984 returned to the Department of Transport.

The customs houses in Norfolk closed during a process of centralisation in the 1980s and records were transferred to a central East Anglian office at Ipswich. This office itself closed in 1994.

In 1992, the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen was renamed the Registry of Shipping and Seamen and became part of the Marine Safety Agency.

The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions took charge of both of these bodies in 1997.