British Army, Navy and Air Force Lists

Saturday's presentation to the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa had Roy Thomas speaking about his career Royal Navy surgeon relative Michael Joseph Laffan.  He made reference to the British Navy Lists showing images taken from copies he'd consulted in the library at the Canadian War Museum.  There are also copies at Library and Archives Canada.

Ancestry has an indexed collection, UK, Navy Lists, 1888-1970, with Roy's relative listed in 79 issues from 1904 to 1927.

These days there are free and easy ways to find that information online for some time periods without an Ancestry subscription. The National Library of Scotland has digitized 122 volumes, from 1914 to 1945. You can also consult a collection of The Army List from 1841 to 1946 and the Air Force List from 1919-1945. All are available on the Internet Archive texts National Library of Scotland page at https://archive.org/details/nationallibraryofscotland.

There are a few earlier Navy list issues, including March 1835, December 1848 and June 1856, digitized on the Internet Archive texts from the University of Michigan library.