Admiralty and Secretariat. Miscellanea, 1777-1903

Component identifier:

Series ADM 7

Extent:

24 items

Content Summary:

This Series comprises various series and individual records of naval administration, navigation and other maritime matters.

The records selected for filming by the Australian Joint Copying Project include registers of men serving on the southern whale fishery, the narrative of Matthew Flinders on his imprisonment by the French, and selections from the papers of Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes (1720–1794).

The Admiralty had been accustomed to issue circular letters to commanders in chief and others from the seventeenth century, but these letters were treated like all others, and copied in ADM 2. In the early nineteenth century it became customary to print some of these circulars, and from 1826 a numbered series of Admiralty Circulars was issued. These Circulars or Circular Orders were Board Orders, signed by two members of the Board of Admiralty, and were supplemented by Memoranda, signed only by the Secretary of the Admiralty.

In 1877 both Series were replaced by four new series of Fleet, Dockyard, Victualling and Hospital Circulars. In the 1880's the Fleet Circulars became known as Circular Letters. All these circulars were numbered, generally in annual series, but there were also un-numbered issues of various circulars with similar, or identical titles.

The material filmed by the Australian Joint Copying Project was filmed selectively from different sections within ADM 7 and have been arranged in numerical order. Selected extracts only have been filmed from pieces 615, 748, 749, 751, 753, 754, 756, 841, and 844.

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