Sources for the history of ships and shipping lines

Discover the history of individual ships and shipping lines using our excellent collection of maritime registers. These include:

Lloyd's Register of Shipping. 1764 to date.
Lloyd's Registers typically detail the builder, owner and master of the ships, with added information on date of building, dimensions and power source.

Mercantile Navy Lists. 1857 - 1976
This source contains similar information to Lloyd's Register, but only covers British ships. Importantly, it includes ships of fewer than 100 tons, which are usually excluded from Lloyd's.

Board of Trade Enquiries into Wrecks. 1876 - 1972
These volumes contain reports of enquiries into British ship wrecks in a given year.

Other registers include Talbot Booth's Merchant Ships, and its successor Jane's Merchant Ships and Lloyd's Register of Yachts.

There are many books on individual ships and even more on merchant shipping lines, particularly those companies with a local connection. You can watch videos about famous liners and shipping lines and view thousands of illustrations of ships and Southampton Docks.

Books and other information on the Titanic

Southampton library has an excellent collection of material on the 'Titanic' visit this page to find out more.

Sources for the history of warships and merchant shipping

You can find out about the history of all kinds of shipping at Southampton libraires. The following pages give you information on what reference material we hold.