National Archives

Please can anyone tell me how to search the National Archives for Royal
Marine service records 1914-1918. I seem to be going round in circles.

Forrest Anderson...

The availability of Service Records for the British Armed Forces
varies considerably with the Service, rank, and the time period.

For example...

- Still held by the Ministry of Defence, with no public index

- Available for download from the National Archives website, fully
indexed

- Available on microfilm at LDS Family History Centres and at the
National Archives, indexed by the first and last names on each film

- Available in the original form at the National Archives, indexed
on-line by name, place of birth, dates of service, age

- Available in the original form at the National Archives, no index.

etc.

Service records which are available for downloading from the Internet
are very much the exception to the rule - most Service Records have to
be searched for at the National Archives, and this may take several
hours of rooting through cardboard boxes, leafing through ledgers, or
scanning through microfilms.

In the case of WW1 Service Records for Other Ranks of the Royal
Marines, these are only available for examination at the National
Archives at Kew. See the National Archives leaflet at
and
for more information. Most of the piece numbers quoted in these
leaflets, eg ADM 157/3462, are to tell you which items you need to
order when you get to Kew, and each piece number may consist of
several hundred documents which you will have to work your way through
when you get there. You cannot view these documents on-line, nor are
indexes available on-line.

If you get to Kew and are not able to find your way round the system
employed by the Royal Marines, then your first step might be to ask
the advice of one of the Readers' Advisors there, who are very good at
helping the public.

You could also visit their bookshop and get the following guide:

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors by Simon Fowler