The Library houses a collection of Lloyd’s Registers comprised of the Lloyd’s Register of Yachts, and the Lloyd’s Register of American Yachts containing comprehensive lists of American and Canadian owned yachts dating from 1909 to 1979.

The Registers serve as a national registry of vessels documenting specifications such as the hull type, dimensions, designer, builder, year built, machinery, owner, and home port. The section most often referenced is the alphabetical listing of yachts which can be used to trace the history of any recorded vessel. Yachts are kept on the annual register until they are sunk, wrecked, hulked, scrapped, or withdrawn by the owner.

As for Lloyd’s origin story, it dates to pre-1760 when these types of records were kept by merchants at Lloyd’s Coffee House in London. Since those days, the lists grew into an organized publication and the interest in having access to this information crossed over the Atlantic as an American Committee was established and maintained.