Births, marriages and deaths at sea or abroad
births colonies deaths marriages merchant navy shipping
The National Archives
This is a short guide to finding records of births, marriages and deaths of British citizens at sea (on British registered ships) or in other countries. Your first port of call should be the General Register Office who, from the...
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The National Archives
This is a short guide to finding records of births, marriages and deaths of British citizens at sea (on British registered ships) or in other countries. Your first port of call should be the General Register Office who, from the mid-19th century onwards, officially maintained the records.

See also our guide to finding records of births, marriages and deaths in the armed forces.

What do I need to know before I start?

The records referred to in this guide are not the local registration of births, marriages or deaths that may have been required in foreign countries but the records of those events made with the British representatives in those countries. These were then sent to Britain so that they could be recorded at the General Register Office. Most of the records referred to in this guide should also appear among overseas registrations held at the General Register Office and you should search their indexes first (see online records below). Records may also be found in foreign countries recorded under their own registration systems.

Details of births, marriages and deaths of Scottish people in other countries are held in the National Records of Scotland.

Birth, marriage and death registers of former British colonies were usually retained by the colony. We do, however, hold a few of these registers (see the Appendix of this guide).

No British registered ship has ever been approved for marriages, although from 1854 any which took place had to be reported in the ship’s log. Any marriage which took place on board a British vessel was not legally valid. There was no obligation to keep records of births, marriages or deaths at sea before the General Register Office was established in 1837.

Online records

Records available only at The National Archives in Kew

Records in other archives and organisations

Other resources

Appendix: Records of overseas births, baptisms, marriages and deaths

The records listed in the table below should in most cases duplicate entries in the General Register Office’s overseas indexes and the GRO indexes should be the first point of call when searching for evidence of an overseas birth, marriage or death. It is also worth consulting The British overseas: A guide to records of their births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials available in the United Kingdom (Guildhall Library Publications, 1995) which may have information on other sources, notably Bishop of London’s registers of Anglican churches in European countries.

Some of the records in the following table are Foreign Office embassy and consular registers. The information from them was, in theory, sent back to the General Register Office annually, so the same registrations should be traceable at the General Register Office itself. Registers held among Foreign Office records are not available as online records. Click on the references below to see the catalogue description for the file or files. When you have established a reference for a register from a specific year and place you can see the register itself only by visiting The National Archives or requesting a copy.

The series FO 83 contains files on a variety of matters including consular correspondence regarding marriages in foreign countries. Where specific references are given in the table below, the reference relates to correspondence forwarding details of marriages in embassies to be registered in the Bishop of London’s registry. Both partners and the date of the marriage are named in the correspondence. The same information should also appear in the Bishop of London’s registers at the Guildhall Library/ The London Archives and may also appear in Foreign Office registers and the GRO overseas index.

Registers listed below as among records of the General Register Office (those with a reference beginning RG) are available as online records (see above) and can be searched and downloaded from The Genealogist (charges apply). The same registers are available on Ancestry (charges apply).