Seaman's Career
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Organised records of a seaman's career do not commence until 1835 for both
ordinary seamen and masters. Indexes and registers of seamen and seamen's
tickets can provide a wealth of information between 1835 and 1857 at which
date the system was discontinued. After that date there are no registers or
indexes providing service records for ordinary seamen, until the
commencement of the modern records dating from 1913. This means that unless
you have the name of a ship, there is no way of tracing any voyages at all.

If you do have the name of a ship, then it is sometimes possible to recreate
a man's service by using the series of logs and crew lists/agreements held
at the Public Record Office primarily in BT98 and BT99. Note that only
retrospective searches are possible in this way because the 'name of
previous ship' should have been filled in.

If he served between 1913 and 1940 records have recently been transferred to
the Public Record Office. This is the Fourth Register of Seamen and is
essentially a card index. There are several series of cards within this
series, each compiled slightly differently and comprising slightly different
information. You should be able to find discharge number, vessels noted
(normally by o.n. only), a physical description, sometimes a
photograph...Some cards for men serving between 1913 and 1920 have been
destroyed but it is still possible to find certain records.

Later records comprising the fifth register (from 1941) are yet to be
transferred to the Public Record Office.

The records for Masters and Mates are different, and various sources may be
consulted which will result in some cases in a full service history.