Royal Marines: Officers' Service Records

Military Records Information 47

1. Service Before 1793

No original records of service of officers appointed before 1793 have survived. However, confirmation of a commission or an appointment can sometimes be found from documents or official publications of a later date. Outlines of officers' careers prior to 1793 can often be reconstructed from the information given about Marines officers on full-pay and on half-pay in the Army List from 1740 onwards. The Seniority List of Officers of the (Royal) Marines from 1757 to 1886 may also be used. This is to be found in both ADM 118/230-336 (1757 to 1850, indexed from 1770), and in ADM 192/1-44 (1760 to 1886).

Other publications that contain lists of marine officers are Charles Dalton, English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661-1714 (London: Eyre & Spottiswood, 1892, 6 vols), the Navy List from 1797 onwards and Hart's Army List from 1840 onwards. The New Navy List contains from 1840 a list of marine officers, and from 1846 provides short statements of service going back to the 1790s.

2. Service 1793-1925

Records of officers commissioned after 1793 are in Records of Officers' Services - ADM 196/58-65 , ADM 196/83 , and ADM 196/97-116 . These give full details of service and include, in some cases, the name and profession of the officer's father. Note, however, that the first volume of the series (ADM 196/58 ) does not contain short service records but only those records of officers who served well into the nineteenth century. Furthermore, these records are complete only from about 1837. Volumes in this on-going series are open to public inspection 30 years after the date of the last entry in the volume.

ADM 313/110 is an index to the records of service, in ADM 196/58-65 , ADM 196/83 and ADM 196/97-105 . A copy is also available in the Open Reading Room. ADM 196/106-116 , for entry into the Marines between 1884 and 1923, all have integral indexes.

Records of Royal Marine Artillery officers for the years 1793 to 1855 (and in some cases serving until 1870) are in ADM 196/66 , and an indexed list of Royal Marine warrant officers appointed between 1904 and 1912 (and serving up to 1923) is in ADM 196/67 . For Marine officers and other ranks who were killed in the First World War, see War Dead: First and Second World Wars.

3. Service after 1925

All enquiries concerning officers appointed after 1925 should be addressed to the

DPS(N)2
Building 1/152
Victory View
PP36
HMNB Portsmouth
PO1 3PX

4. Other Sources

Obituaries

Very comprehensive information may also be found in obituary notices published in The Times and in the Royal Marines' magazine, The Globe and Laurel. The National Archives has online access to The Times in its reading rooms.

Admiralty Leave Books and Half Pay Lists

Leave books contain entries for Royal Marine officers for the period from 1804 to 1846, and are to be found in ADM 6/200-206 , and 414. Lists of officers on half pay are held in ADM 6/410-414 .

Commissions and Appointments

Records of commissions and appointments for the years 1703 to 1713 are in ADM 6/405 , and for the years 1755 to 1814, in ADM 6/406 . They are in date order, but do not have an index, and they contain no family history information.

Surveys of 1822 and 1831

The results of a survey of Royal Marine officers' ages, conducted in 1822, is now in ADM 6/73-83 and ADM 6/409 . For each officer it contains the following information: name, rank, date of seniority, actual age on 1 April 1822, whether in receipt of allowances other than pay, and amount of pay. An additional survey was carried out in 1831, now held in ADM 6/84 , ADM 6/85 .

5. Warrant Officers' Service Records

Only three volumes of Marine Warrant Officers' service records specifically so described are known to have survived. They are indexed by ADM 313/110 .

However, many Warrant Officers went on to become commissioned officers, and so their records will be found among the records of officers' services.

6. Royal Marine Surgeons

References to surgeons will be found in the various lists of officers' services. A register covering the years 1755 to 1814 is in ADM 6/406 . Other information may be found in records held by the Royal College to which they belonged and in the alumni lists drawn up by their university. Among the records of the Admiralty Medical Department will be found the Establishment Book of the Royal Marine Infirmary at Woolwich, 1817 to 1820, in ADM 104/3 .

(ri2047) Last updated: 10 March 2008| © Crown Copyright 2001