Portsmouth City Council
Home | Learning | Libraries | Reference and Information Services: an introduction | Naval history
Naval history
The Naval Collection is the largest in a public library in Great Britain.There are 15,000 books (some available for loan). The coverage extends to any navy, any time, anywhere and includes a large number of American publications as well as some from other parts of the world.
The Lily Lambert McCarthy collection of naval history, mainly concerned with Nelson and his period, is within the Naval Collection.
In addition to the books, the Naval Collection contains:
- 2000 photographs of ships
- pamphlets and ephemera
- naval and maritime periodicals
There is also indexes to:
- photographs of ships
- Navy News 1954 to date
- Brassey's Naval Annual
- other naval and defence periodicals selectively
The naval Collection is within the Historical Collections area on the second floor of the Central Library.
Please show one of the following to staff when you arrive:
- Portsmouth City Council Library ticket
- County Archive research Network Card (CARN)
- Current Student Card
- Armed Forces ID Card
- Driving Licence
- Other official proof of name and address
Staff will be happy to help with your enquiries.
The Historical Collections can be contacted on:
We accept enquiries in person (see Central Library page under Internal Links), or by:
-
Telephone: 023 9268 8046
-
Fax: 023 9283 9855
Postal research service
While library staff will check resources in the Historical Collections at Portsmouth Central Library free of charge for up to half-an-hour, we also offer a comprehensive research service. For a fee, payable in advance, we can undertake up to three hours research in the many sources held in the Historical Collections, including:
- Births, marriages and deaths indexes
- Wills indexes
- International Genealogical Index
- Directories
- Electoral registers
- Census returns
- Newspapers
- Army/Navy/Air Force lists
- Illustrations
- Maps
- and books about places and subjects in Hampshire, West Sussex and the Isle of Wight
Many requests for searches are from family historians, but the same service is available to those requesting research in local history.
For further details or to download an application form to request this research service, please navigate to the Reference and Information Services page under 'Internal links'.
