ADMIRALTY INDEXES and DIGESTS

An understanding of the roles of the various naval administrative bodies is necessary to aid your research.

The Board of Admiralty was the body in command for most of the eighteenth century onwards. It consisted of a council of up to seven members known as Sea Lords and headed by the First Lord of the Admiralty; it was frequently referred to and recognised as 'the Admiralty'. The board was really the political representatives of the navy and virtually all of its members were politicians.

The real day-to-day control was dealt with by the Navy Board, established in 1546 and primarily responsible for the administrative affairs of the Royal Navy and advising the Board of Admiralty. Until the mid-seventeenth century, it controlled all aspects of naval administration but its role was gradually reduced, ultimately focusing on the building and repair of ships, the running the dockyards and administering supplies excluding armaments.  The Navy Board ceased to exist from c1832 when its duties were absorbed by the Admiralty.

From 1689 to 1782, especially in wartime, broad naval strategy and policy was determined in conjunction with the two Secretaries of State who also, from time to time, dealt with naval operations.

Because of the way in which these records are organised, you will need to understand and use the indexes to find relevant information. Throughout its history the Admiralty used various codes and abbreviations as well as changing its filing system on more than one occasion. In simplistic terms, the indexes relates to ships and people and are a basic alphabetical key to correspondence, linking to the correspondence itself or to a digest entry, and the digests relates to subject. Digests are summaries of information in documents that can also be used as indexes to documents.

The digests and indexes enable you to access the following series of records:

• Admiralty correspondence received from 1660 to 1976 in series ADM1.
• Letters sent by the Admiralty in series ADM2, known as Admiralty out-letters.
• Admiralty minute books in series ADM3 covering 1657 to 1881.
• Case files – series of letters etc. collected together into a single file – in series ADM7.
• Supplementary Admiralty records in series ADM13.
• Official History of the First World Qar in series ADM137.
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Sometimes the digest is the only reference to the existence of a document or letter because the Admiralty may well have disposed of the correspondence; this situation is more noticeable from the mid-1800s onwards. Separate records also exist for the Navy Board in series ADM106.

The correspondence received by the Admiralty was divided into separate classes namely:

Public Offices - letters from each rank of flag and commissioned officers, Promiscuous letters and Admiralty Board minutes. (Promiscuous letters in the Admiralty were letters from various correspondents that were not classified by rank or position. They were often anonymous or unofficial letters that expressed opinions or complaints about naval matters.)

As the clerks in the navy record office read them, they decided whether the record should be indexed by the name of the person or the name of the ship. There were around 104 subject codes and the list can be located in the reading room at The National Archives. It was at this point that the system of cross referencing operated. The correspondence from officers and in the promiscuous sections was sorted annually into alphabetical order and the rest were kept in chronological order. Each year was covered in the alphabetical index to persons and ships, and a digest which combined a summary and a subject index of the papers to which each was allocated a number. This number is essential in order to step from the index and digests to the original record.

However, a further stage is often needed in translating the references to find the correct document. In some cases there is more than one type of index in use. For example, during the First World War two clerks worked on the indexing and digests and each had their own volumes so both volumes need to be consulted to locate all relevant information.

Most of the principal operational records for the Royal Navy can be accessed via Discovery or by referring to the Official History of the Great War in ADM137.

However, the papers in ADM1 include reports of naval actions, casualty lists, courts of enquiry documentation and the recommendations for honours and awards, particularly those received from individual ships.

To complement these records, there are also ships' logbooks in class ADM53 and submarine logbooks in class ADM173 as well as Royal Navy station records for Plymouth, Portsmouth and Chatham. Additional information exists for the Board of Admiralty concerning such documents as board minutes, weekly and monthly orders etc which cannot be accessed using the index and digest system but which provide additional supplementary information enabling family historians to flesh out the bones of anyone’s naval service.

These records are filed using more or less the same categories as those for the Great War and this is really where the indexes and digests come into their own.

Slightly more complex are the out-letters in ADM2 and other series. Many of the early letters up to c1680 can also be accessed from the Pepys' Library at Magdelen College, Cambridge. Between 1689 and 1859, separate series exist for correspondence from naval officers serving at sea and those officers ashore. For a short period between 1859 and 1869, the administration of the Admiralty changed slightly and these documents are in series ADM13 loosely indexed in ADM12.

Between 1869 and 1976, the system becomes slightly more complex as you will need to refer to both ADM1 (In letters) and ADM2 (out-letters) in order to locate a full sequence of events. In 1847 the Admiralty began to collate papers referring to the same subject and called the papers “case papers”. These records are identifiable using the indexes and digests but all related papers should be together for the particular subject. The actual records are in series ADM116.

To facilitate the keeping of case papers, a record office was established by the Admiralty in 1809. By around 1850 the Admiralty perfected its system whereby the larger, more important, files were bound together into a single volume. Each case was then given an Admiralty case number by which it was then referred to in the indexes and digests and in other Admiralty sources. It is useful to understand the classifications within ADM116 in order to correctly identify the documents and this will become apparent as you translate the index codes and apply them to Discovery searches.

Although accessing the records may sound a little complicated, it is well worth persisting at locating the information. Practice makes perfect, and in this case could easily lead to a gold mine of information.