New(ish) on Ancestry - apologies if it has already been mentioned. 'This collection of crew lists held by the Liverpool Record Office includes records for 912 ships whose home port was registered as Liverpool, England. The lists contain information on ship voyages, crew members, and apprentices. Many of the records are grouped together as agreement booklets or ships’ logs. Crew lists vary in detail but can include the name or signature of the crew member, age or birth year, birthplace, nationality, residence, service on other ships, rate, date and details of engagement and discharge, reports of character and ability, and other assorted notes.' I found some of my Newricks here. On the 1876 list for the Belle, for example, there's Chas Newrick, aged 44, born Lowestoft; former ship: the Royal Sailor (London); joined the Belle (29 Nov?) 1876; to serve as A.B.; to be on board at 8 a.m.; wages 3.10 per calendar month; discharged 1(?) December 1876 London; cause of discharge: deserted. Another later list I looked at (1912) gave home addresses of the crew members. http:// search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2364
A good starting point is the Crew List Index Project (Clip) http://www.crewlist.org.uk/ When I first started researching ancestors who were mariners I visited the Liverpool Record Office and they introduced me to the project. They had a CD produced by the project which I used to find out about my ancestors. Now they are on line that's where I go first when I start a new research project. T