Catalogue description Marine Department Records

This record is held by British Library: Asian and African Studies

Details of IOR/L/MAR
Reference: IOR/L/MAR
Title: Marine Department Records
Date: No date
Held by: British Library: Asian and African Studies, not available at The National Archives
Language: English
Custodial history:

The marine records of the East India Company suffered serious damage and loss in the evacuation of East India House in 1858-1861, and in their move to the India Office record repository in the former Board of Control building in Cannon Row. Much of their original scope and arrangement cannot now be recovered. The surviving records, of which the voucher collection of captains' journals from East India Company voyages formed the largest part, were brought together in the India Office Record Department and roughly listed in the late nineteenth century in three main series: L/MAR/A Ships' Journals 1605-1705; L/MAR/B Ships' Journals 1702-1856; L/MAR/C Marine Miscellaneous Records 1600-1879.

Administrative / biographical background:

The standing Committee of Shipping of the post-1709 United East India Company supervised all the Company's shipping concerns, particularly arrangements for taking up and freighting ships offered by consortia of private owners for voyages to the East Indies within the limits of the Company's royal charter. Individual directors had served as committees for shipping matters in the last years of the seventeenth-century companies. After the closure of the Company's commercial operations (and the direct chartering of vessels for trade), enacted by the Charter Act of 1833, the Company's marine activities were of a different scale and character. From 1837 the Marine Branch of the Secretary's Department (and, after 1857, the Marine Department of the India Office) handled questions concerning the introduction of steam navigation, the Indian Navy, the Bengal Pilot Service, troop transport, and other correspondence with India on marine matters. In 1867 the Marine Department was abolished and its main work transferred to the Military Department.

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