Did my relation drown at sea?
Q I was told, many years ago, that my great grandmother’s brother – John Williams Ley, born July 1860 in Cubert, Cornwall – drowned at sea.
John was orphaned by 1867 and I have found a John William Lee age 11¾ indentured in the Merchant Navy in 1871. A notice in the Mercantile Gazette dated 11 September 1883 mentions a John William Lee, age 24, a merchant mariner on board the Ann Sims, which left Hull and was never seen again. I have a death certificate for John William Lee, age 24, merchant marine, death date 6 March 1883, at sea, Great Britain. Is this my relative? Norma Bishop
A The apprenticeship registers from the Merchant Navy on Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk) and TheGenealogist ( thegenealogist.co.uk) show that John William Lee started his apprenticeship at Hull. The register notes three ships from Hull that he served on: the Unity in 1871 (official number 51241), Wonder 1875–1877 (73144) and Lawrina in 1877 (77492). An ‘official number’ (ON) is unique and enables you to identify a vessel precisely. The register also states that John worked in fishing, and the three vessels were of a type known as sailing ketches or smacks, favoured by that industry.
If you look in the 1881 census, you’ll see a John William Lee serving as mate on the fishing vessel Wonder from Hull. He was 22 years old and married.
The Register of Deaths at Sea, BT 159 at The National Archives in Kew,, is available on Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk) and TheGenealogist ( thegenealogist. co.uk). It shows a John William Lee, described as “mate”, who drowned when the Ann Sins was lost on 6 March 1883. Note the spelling of the vessel’s name. This must be the ship referred to in the newspapers: it is once again a sailing ketch from Hull. If you possess a death certificate, then the poor man’s body must have been washed ashore or picked up at sea. For most incidents like this, there are no bodies and therefore no death certificates.
The Ann Sins had the ON 60206, and no ship named Ann Sims existed. You can check the identity of all of these ships using the Crew List Index Project (CLIP) database ( https:// crewlist.org.uk/data/vesselsalpha).
The Ann Sins was lost during the infamous Great Gale in the North Sea on 6 March 1883, when at least 30 shipshi were ddestroyedtoyed – most of them fishing vessels – and somewhere in the region of 360 people died. You can read about this on the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre’s website: scarboroughsmaritimeheritage.org.uk/ ar tic le.php? article =136.
I am certain that everything above refers to the same person. However, we have nothing linking him to Cornwall, where your relation was born. There are two ways to investigate this. First, see if you can find a marriage certificate for John William Lee at Hull; this should tell you his rough date of birth, and father’s name. FreeBMD ( freebmd.org.uk) lists him marrying in the third quarter of 1879 at Hull, so you can order this certificate from the website of the General Register Office (GRO): www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content.
The second way involves finding crew lists for the vessels named for the years in which John served on them, because a crew list usually tells you where someone was born. To do this, you’ll need the ON for each of John’s ships. You can then order crew lists online from Newfoundland’s Maritime History Archive at mha.mun.ca/mha/ holdings/ search combined crews.php.
It is quite an expensive process, so you may wish to start with just his first ship
Unity in 1871 and go from there. Simon Wills