French Seamen's Records Digitizing Project - an Update
18 November 2022
At the beginning of last year, we shared here the happy news of a project to digitize all surviving French seamen's registration and conscription records. (Best to re-read that first so that you understand the quite unique French system of conscripting some seamen for the navy and registering others for the merchant and fishing fleets.)
Earlier this month, the Service Historique de la Défense announced in their blog that they have completed digitizing the registers of the reporting offices in the seven naval quarters of southern Bretagne, covering the departments of Ille-et-Vilaine, Finistère and Morbihan. They are:
- Auray
- Belle-Ile
- Concarneau
- Groix
- Lorient
- Redon
- Vannes
These registers date from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and, as with army service records, provide valuable genealogical details, as well as the man's career as a seaman. In some cases, the career can be quite long, up to fifty years. There are approximately 187,000 images; not all have been uploaded to the website and they are not yet searchable on the main search facility of Mémoire des hommes. They are indexed, however, and the indices can be viewed and downloaded as PDFs.
If your ancestor came from southern Bretagne and went to sea, you can begin searching the registers here. If you do not find the register you seek, keep checking the website every few weeks as they continue uploading. For those of you with ancestors from northern Bretagne, Normandy, Seine-Maritime, Charente-Maritime, further south or the Mediterranean region, you must wait quite a while longer.
Do let us know what you find!
©2022 Anne Morddel
French Genealogy