The following links lead to lists of individuals known to have served as an officer or enlisted man in the United States Navy during the years 1861-1865. To date, we have collected information on over 25,000 of the estimated 118-137,000 who served.

The information cataloged for a particular individual may include a single fact (as shown in the Index) or any combination of rank, vessels on which he served, date/place of enlistment, date of discharge, residence at time of enlistment, residence after discharge, wife/widow, year/place of death, place of burial, physical description, pre-war occupation, place of birth or age. However, because it would be impractical to publish all of this data, we have included his Surname and Given Name, vessels on which he is known to have served and at least one piece of data to help differentiate between individuals having the same name.

We have chosen a "browse" format for publishing the Index to the names in our database because the limitations of search engines, combined with the variations resulting from phonetic spellings, illegible handwriting and transcription errors, makes it very difficult to "Search for all spelling variations" which most database functions require. To help you understand the data shown in the lists, we have provided links in the header of each column which provide explanations of the abbreviations and symbols used. For a list of publications from which our database has been compiled, see Data Sources.

Surnames Beginning With:

While our database includes individuals of all races and nationalities, the National Park Service has published a searchable database of African-American Sailors.

The American Civil War inspired a huge number of photographs of people, places and things related to the conflict. The most popular type of photo was the "Carte de Visite" (CdV) or Calling Card. These images were printed on heavy card stock rather than photographic paper and were sold in boxes rather than individual prints. Because they were intended to be given or sent home to family and friends, many of the surviving cards have been endorsed by the individuals pictured with notes or other information such as signature, printed name, rank, vessel and/or date. Though the vast majority of surviving images are of officers—probably because they could better afford them than the average enlisted man—but are not historically significant. However, they are invaluable in "putting a face on the war."

The vast majority of the images shown in this section have been copied from eBay auctions and I have no idea who currently owns the originals. Except as otherwise indicated, none of these images are offered for sale, nor are they of suitable size or resolution for quality printing. The copyrights, if any, belong to the holders and if you are the holder of such copyright and do not wish the image to be published here, please contact me via the email address shown below and I will promptly remove the image.

Conversely, if you have an image you would like to share, please email it to me together with any info you have about the subject, or additional info about a currently published image and I will happily add it to this section.