Family Relatives adds Royal Naval records

The following is an abridged version of a press release I've just received from FamilyRelatives.com:

The records of commissioned officers of the Royal Navy dating back 163 years have been published online for the first time by Familyrelatives.com

Familyrelatives.com is pleased to release the most comprehensive online collection of Royal Navy Lists from 1847 to 1945. More than 2 million names are included in the Lists which date from the mid - 19th Century (or the Eleventh Period in Navy History) when Britain was involved in a number of conflicts.

The Navy Lists contain the details of all Royal Navy and Royal Marine commissioned officers on the Active List of those serving at the time of publication. It was said that every Captain in the Navy had a copy of the list as he was always anxious to know the exact status and seniority of other officers he met.

The information covers every aspect of both Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers whether Active, Retired or on the Reserve Lists, from the date they entered the Service. The List of appointments range from navy and marine cadets to Admirals of the Fleet. Masters and Commanders are featured alongside Physicians, Paymasters and even wounded officers. There is even a section on officers dress regulations, awards and decorations.

An important part of the records is the Lists of Ships in the Navy with their Commanders and Officers names as well as Commissioned Packet Ships and Revenue Vessels, together with captured prize ships and their bounties.

For example the 1934 List of Ships and Vessels includes Submarines of the Royal Navy, also the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy arranged in their various classes, their Officers and present Stations. The lists also include RAF Units for Naval Cooperation which was extensive at the time.

The following detailed information is also disclosed; the type of ship and where deployed, the Displacement Tonnage, the indicated horse power or shaft horse power and the main armament. This excludes field guns and machine guns used by the navy as an auxiliary land force as in the siege of Ladysmith. The Name and first names of Officers is shown with an initial denoting his qualification for duties i.e. G for Gunnery duties, T for Torpedo duties, N for Navigating duties, S for Signalling Duties, W/T for Wireless Telegraphy duties, or I paid as an Interpreter. The dates shown are the dates of first appointment to a ship and where two dates are shown for a Marine Officer, the date in brackets indicates when his current sea time commenced.

The site is also making changes to its social netowrking capabilities:

As many of you are aware Familyrelatives.com was one of the first to introduce social networking specifically designed for both amateur and professional genealogists.

As part of our ongoing commitment to you and in order to enhance and develop the website we will be making a number of changes in the coming months.

We will be making it easier to invite family and friends, add photos, add important dates to your calendar which you may choose to share, we are also developing the home page to make it more informative and allow you to keep in touch with family as well as all the usual features which you have come to love and use.

As the profile side has grown beyond our expectation we need to add capacity to allow additional profiles. As we make these changes we will let you know so that you can make a note of these. We are very excited by these upcoming changes and hope that you will find them useful as an additional tool to tracking down those illusive ancestors.

(With thanks to FamilyRelatives.com)

Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Professional genealogical problem solving and research
http://twitter.com/ChrisMPaton
Researching Scottish Family History (New book)