Description: The Register, published for the years 1764-66, 1768-71 and then annually since 1775, records the details of merchant vessels of the world. Since the 1870’s Lloyd’s Register has tried to include all merchant vessels over 100 gross tonnes, which are self-propelled and sea-going, regardless of classification. Before this time only those vessels classed by Lloyd’s Register were listed.
The early volumes, up to 1899, were scanned in by Googlebooks and by The Internet Archive. These digitised Registers can be searched by any of the fields such as ship name, master, ship owner or place of build (some of the fields may be abbreviated such as ‘Capt’. for Captain or ‘Amer.’ for America). Please note that only the sailing vessel volumes for 1893-4 and 1896-9 have been scanned in, the steamer volumes and separate appendix for these years are not yet available online.
The Registers for 1930-1945 were digitised as part of the Plimsoll ship data project by the Southampton City Libraries and Archives Services in conjunction with Lloyd’s Register’s Information Centre. The fields can be searched by ship name(s), year of build and gross tonnage.
The Register Book for 1764-66 is now available to view in PDF format. Vessels can be found in alphabetical order of ship name. This is the first time that pages from this original edition of the Register of Ships, 1764 have been made available online. The only surviving volume is on permanent loan to the British Library.