This collection records the movements of ships ordinarily engaged in foreign going trade. You may be searching for a vessel for which these cards were never used. She was torpedoed and shelled by the German U-boat U30 without warning, becoming the first merchant vessel casualty of the Second World War. On 1 September 1939 this passenger liner set sail from Glasgow with over 1400 passengers and crew aboard.

Unfortunately, many cards contain a lot of abbreviations and there is no known key for them.īelow is the last movement card for the SS Athenia. The cards also show if the ship was torpedoed, mined, damaged or sunk. They do not contain details of any passengers or crew.

The cards record the movements of both British-registered and Allied vessels engaged in the war effort.

However, it was still important to record the movements of merchant vessels and so the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen established this series of cards, now held by The National Archives in series BT 389. In 1939 the Admiralty instructed the Board of Trade, for reasons of security, to prevent masters of merchant vessels from using ships’ logs or crew lists and agreements to record destinations or ports of call. These records are digitised cards recording the movements of British and Allied merchant ships during the Second World War.

Free download Royal Merchant