Simon Wills - Tracing Your Seafaring Ancestors: A Guide to Maritime Photographs for Family Historians

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

First published in Great Britain in 2016

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley
South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright Simon Wills, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 47383 433 0
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47388 050 4
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47388 049 8
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47388 048 1

The right of Simon Wills to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.

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Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

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* * *

On the front cover:

Royal Navy first class petty officer in tropical uniform, c.1890 (top left).

Royal Navy Commander Stanley Miller on HMS Thunderer, 1912 (top right).

Fisherman at Southwold, 1880s (bottom left).

Merchant navy surgeon with the African Steamship Company, c.1900 (bottom right).

CONTENTS

To my brother, Richard

PREFACE

This book examines how British seafarers were captured on camera during the period 1850 to 1950, and offers information and advice on how to interpret their roles, ranks and experiences.

Achieving this in one book is a difficult task and, understandably, it is not possible to illustrate and describe every single type of uniform or clothing worn by our maritime ancestors. In many instances this book will help you discover what a person in an old photograph did for a living. However, sometimes you will need to undertake further research yourself to understand a photograph more completely. In these situations I hope that I have included sufficient images and information to have at least pointed you in the right direction.

I have suggested a few archive resources that may help you begin to investigate an ancestors career too, but these are only examples to help start you off. Please consult more specialist sources for each seafaring profession for more comprehensive advice.

Terminology

The men who worked on a ship in the Royal Navy or merchant service have been referred to variously throughout history as seamen, sailors or mariners. The Navy has also used the term rating to refer to its non-officers. Yet, for consistency I have generally used the word seaman throughout this book to describe professional men who worked on a ship. Similarly, I have used the term merchant navy to refer to the crews of commercial cargo and passenger ships, even when discussing eras when this was not an established term.

There is some difference of opinion on the correct terms to use to describe certain aspects of clothing and insignia of rank. I apologise if I have not used terms that individual readers have a preference for, but for clarity and consistency I have adopted the following:

Cuff stripes to refer to the sleeve markings or distinction lace used to denote the rank of officers.

Shoulder straps to describe the flaps of material running across the tops of shoulders which may carry information about rank.

Branch badges for the various embroidered insignia worn on the right upper sleeve by naval ratings to indicate their specialist line of work. These are sometimes called non-substantive or trade badges.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to the following experts who kindly gave me their time, access to resources and ideas:

Heather Johnson, librarian and archivist, Royal Naval Museum Library, Portsmouth.

Ian Maine, Deputy Head of Collections & Subject Specialist Royal Marines, Royal Marines Museum, Portsmouth.

Vicky Green, cruise-ship specialist, Maritime Collection, Southampton Central Library.

Chris White, secretary, Royal Fleet Auxiliary Historical Society.

Elise Chainey, collections officer, RNLI Heritage.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS