Archive and Research Records Department

Welcome to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum Archive.

Our extensive collection of archives and records together with a comprehensive library provide the researcher with a wide range of material covering all aspects of submarine history and development.

The library and documentary and photographic archives are separate from the main museum complex. Researchers are welcome but only by prior appointment with the Archivist. Contact George Malcolmson by e mail archives@rnsubmus.co.uk or by telephone 023 9251 0354 extension 226. Alternatively you can fax 023 92 511349 or send us a contact form. Please note that our photographic department is contactable at photos@rnsubmus.co.uk For general research and genealogy enquiries please complete a contact form.

Diaries and memoirs from the crews and letters home to their families provide an invaluable insight into the life of a submariner.

• Documents belonging to the first submarine captain Lieutenant Arnold Forster and the first coxswain William Waller - both from the Edwardian Navy of 1901

• Diaries from POW's in Turkey and Holland during WW1

• A letter home from a young naval cadet at HMS BRITANNIA, 20th August 1901 ~
  "I do not believe that anytime in my life will exist such things as ships regarded as slow, old fashioned things because they can only go at a speed of sixty knots! Nor, in hope, will the submarine come to anything of importance during my existence. All these things, and flying machines, I utterly abhor."
  He was later killed when in command of HM Submarine E4 in 1916

• The salvaged diary of a young Japanese officer Lieutenant Sakuma who was lost when his submarine sank in 1910. It ends with his last words ~
  " I thought I had blown out gasoline but I am intoxicated with it. It is now 12.40 pm ….."

• USN officer Lieutenant William Childs was lost on a British submarine during WW1 whilst serving as Observer - a copy of his handwritten diary covering 1917 and 1918

• Original drawings and notes for the first steam driven submarine RESURGAM, built by the Reverend William Garrett in 1879.

• Diaries, journals, letters and scrapbooks from WW1 and WW2.
  A young naval rating writing home to his mother in 1940 writes ~
  "Yesterday we were attacked by about 50 dive-bombers …he pilots must be mad to dive into a barrage like they put up round here …several planes were shot down. However air raids are getting to be a daily occurrence here, or rather, twice daily. Well, I'll leave off now Mum. I'm waiting for the next submarine to be announced lost and I don't think I shall have to wait long. Your loving son Billy."
  A few months later he lost his life when his submarine was sunk. He was 21.

• Original newspapers, pamphlets and magazines including The Ditty Box and The Maidstone Muckrag!

• A complete collection of "Good Morning" published by the Daily Mirror from 1942 to 1945 with the co-operation of the Admiralty for the crews of British submarines on operational patrols in all theatres of war

• Navy Lists from 1893 to the present, Jane's Fighting Ships from 1905 to the present, The Red Lists and Pink Lists from 1947 to 1976, The Naval Review from 1913 onwards

• Naval signals and submarine patrol reports. Submarines' commissioning books and visitors books from 1929 to the present

• Naval Monographs, Weekly Intelligence Reports, Commonwealth War Graves Registers

• All Royal Navy submarines' service details are computerised

• Library and archive holdings on Access database