The large majority of papers in this category are nineteenth-century service documents of officers and seamen; they have been collected individually by the Museum and do not form a series (for series of service certificates see entry no,15). Included here are examples of Certificates of Service, Certificates of Competency, Mariner's Register Tickets and Certificates of Discharge, nineteenth and twentieth centuries; four service documents relating to the East India Company, mainly nineteenth-century; examples of indentures of apprenticeship from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to mariners, watermen and shipwrights. Among other legal documents are the will of Sir Martin Frobisher (1535-1594) (published in V Steffanson, ed. The three voyages of Martin Frobisher (London, 1938); and a lease signed in 1619 by Sir Richard Hawkins (1562-1622).

Administrative / biographical background
Merchant Shipping: Administration - personal documents