About Navy List Research

On leaving the Royal Navy in 1988, Lieutenant-Commander Mike Coombes spent the ensuing 15 years as the Chief Executive (then titled Secretary and Treasurer) of the Association of Royal Navy Officers.

It was in this capacity that the number of enquiries for details of officers’ careers highlighted the need for a more efficient research facility than the printed Navy Lists themselves.

The last 125 years’ Navy Lists were held in ARNO’s office, but in order to trace an officer’s career it was necessary to look in every List over the period of his or her service, and in order to establish forenames, specialization, decorations and post-nominals, in each List to find the officer’s seniority in the alphabetical listing, and then to look in the seniority lists in another part of the book in seniority date order, to find the further information on the officer concerned. Many of the older Navy Lists listed officers with their forenames first and the surnames were not therefore in line, so the task was both tedious and time consuming, and it was still not possible to establish all officers serving in the same ship in the same year without going through the entire book page by page.

It was therefore on his retirement in 2003 that Mike set about creating a database of Navy List information, at that time with a view to making it available as a CD. He acquired his own copies of Navy Lists through e-bay and booksellers, and with very supportive and much appreciated contributions from ARNO and the RNBSO, he now has over 100 Navy Lists and Retired Lists dating back over 100 years.

However, it soon became apparent that Crown Copyright costs for CD production would involve many thousand pounds expenditure, and that this would render the cost of a CD prohibitively expensive, when it had been his intention to provide a self financing but affordable facility to be of benefit to the Royal Navy officer community.

The project was nearly abandoned, but before doing so Mike asked the Crown Copyright agents if copyright fees would be due if he researched questions on Navy List information using the database he had created as a tool for doing so, and he received the response that "it would not be a breach of copyright to set up your own website and answer peoples requests by the use of your database - in fact I marvel at your lateral thinking and ingenuity!"

It therefore became possible for database research to be conducted at an affordable cost, which he hopes will allow him to recover the initial production costs amounting to over £1,000. The facility was launched in late August 2008 when 26 years’ serving officer Navy Lists were included, and now includes 32 years. It is Mike’s intention to continue to update the database to include each current year, and further historic years without increase in the annual cost of £6, providing the facility is sufficiently well supported.
In addition to access to the database, subscribers may also request manual research by e-mail into the Navy List volumes not yet on line. The possibility of making all the Navy Lists over 50 years old held available for perusal on line is being investigated: those under 50 years old and not yet included in the database would attract a prohibitive copyright fee.

Mike considers that he was fortunate to make contact with Adam Sheik of Celerity Design, who has wide experience in complicated database design and application - notably a leading website interpreting in Chinese characters. Adam’s pride in the speed of research (the bottom right hand corner of any research page indicates the microseconds each search has taken), his painstaking attention to detail and attention to the particular requirements and details of the unique role which it is hoped the website will fill, has been a very great asset.

The website was launched in August 2008, and at the end of its first year is in regular use by many individuals and organisations.

Acknowledgements

The following sources of information are acknowledged with thanks:

The Navy Lists ISBN 978 0 11 774070 O

The Navy Lists of Retired Officers together with Emergency List ISBN 0 11 773005 X

The Broadsheet published by the Royal Navy on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (Annual ship and Naval Air Squadron information)

The Squadrons of the Fleet Air Arm by Ray Sturtevant and Theo Ballance ISBN 0-85130-223-8

Ships of the Royal Navy by J J Colledge and Ben Warlow ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8

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