Our history

Lloyd’s Register (LR) began as The Society for the Registry of Shipping in 1760. In that year, 11 men met in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house to talk about publishing a list of ships, a register to define their quality and safeguard life and property carried on them. 

Much of LR’s history, including its origins, has been preserved in the organisation’s Archives which contain over 1.1million digitised and catalogued assets including ship plans and surveys. This includes the very early volumes of Lloyd’s Register of Ships. Dating from 1764, by the 1870s, these early records hold details of merchant vessels over 100 gross tonnes, which were self-propelled and sea-going, regardless of classification. These volumes became the ‘universal standard’ of shipping information. 

Information in the Archives is available to the public and has been used by researchers from a variety of disciplines including maritime, business, engineering, genealogy and linguistics to inform research projects and programmes on maritime heritage. The Heritage Centre which houses the Archives also commissions its own research to enable us and wider society to learn from the past. 

For example, in 2022, the Heritage Centre commissioned independent academic research into LR’s involvement with the transatlantic trade of enslaved African people. You can read more about this research and the work we are doing in response to these findings here.  

Much has changed in the world since in 1760. In the years since then, Lloyd’s Register has applied its expertise across the maritime and energy sectors, helping to make the world a safer place. 

In 2004, the organisation set up The Lloyd's Register Educational Trust (LRET) to fund advances in transportation, science, engineering and technology education, training, and research worldwide for the benefit of all. The LRET was wholly funded by Lloyd's Register.

Then in 2012, the LRET evolved into Lloyd’s Register Foundation when Lloyd's Register converted its status from an industrial and provident society to a company limited by shares, called Lloyd's Register Group Limited. The shares in Lloyd's Register Group Limited are owned by Lloyd's Register Foundation, a registered charity. 

Importantly, the objectives and mission of the Foundation remain the same as those of Lloyd's Register, which is to protect people from harm, ensuring the infrastructure that we depend on for day-to-day living is safe for society both now and in the future, and ensuring the world has the right skills and education required to keep people safe.