How to access the historical Lloyd's Register of Ships

If your ancestors travelled by ship there's a good chance information on it is online through digitized copies of Lloyd’s Register of Ships.

The period from 1930 to 1945 is the easiest to search through the Plimsoll ship data project by the Southampton City Libraries and Archives Services. A single search covers the date range.

Registers for about 85 annual registers from 1764 to 1899 are searchable individually.  For links to these and further information check www.lr.org/en/research-and-innovation/historical-information/lloyds-register-of-ships-online/.

That's just one of the resources mentioned by Christine Woodcock in the latest BIFHSGO monthly email newsletter.

Lloyd's Register Foundation is now in the pilot project stage of an initiative to digitise ship annals which include ship surveys, machinery surveys, correspondences, ship and boiler plans and more. There are an estimated 65,500 ships in the collection. Read more at www.lr.org/en/research-and-innovation/historical-information/digitisation_project/