Ships Covers

Ships covers were bound files covering the design, construction and subsequent history of ships, classes of ships, and other subjects collated and maintained by the Department of the Director of Naval Construction (DNC) and its successors.

Historic Ships Covers are held in the National Maritime Museum, Brass Foundry at Woolwich in London.

The Table below is a partial index of Ships Covers, along with their DNC Numbers, by which they are currently managed at the Brass Foundry. It should be noted that when the covers were temporarily held at the Public Records Office (PRO) they were allocated a different set of numbers in the ADM 138 series, by which they may sometimes be referred, and this can be a source of confusion.

When individual covers extended to multiple volumes, they were given letter suffixes (e.g. Cover 430A was the second volume of the Kent class cruiser cover)