discharge books

[j.sabourn]

Robert Ive been reading some of your personal history about your relationship with your father. And it certainly follows on the lines of other seafarers lives in or outside of war times. When I got married my wife and myself agreed I would not bring any trouble home and I abided by those conditions apart from bringing the odd waif and stray home as a port of refuge. She suffered such foibles, I think our marriage kept to the tracks because of this and it was rare for me to get one too many. Your father was the same as a lot of seamen of that generation. Drink can be blamed on a lot of things but at the end of the day it is the drinkers choice, one makes their own choices. Your father had a hard life so did thousands of others. Your father and mother made their own choices and they would not have involved you. You by my reckoning are 70 years of age, are you looking for answers or just trying to honour your Father ? by delving into the past you might just come up with things that are not all desirable to know. Reading your post you have put up , your father took his own life, I have seen this happen but nothing one can do about it. Honour your father and your mother by keeping relics of the past , but you cant change the past, and you cant live your fathers life for him. Easy for me to say no doubt but most of us had have to bear or at least know of similar situations. Most of us know what a seamans life consisted of 60 and 70 years ago , we kid ourselves sometimes it was great and at others tell the truth.
If it does give you a sense of relieve by doing what you are attempting then carry on , but remember all seamen werent angels and were just as human as everyone else. Cheers JS.....

[cappy]

Like louis the fly has stated he has many family discharge books .....that show very little of a seamans life ......i have a draw full of medals they signify very little apart from someone was there......many of us have stories to tell some good some not so good .......if you find some solace in doing what you are doing well enjoy it .....i look back and wish many things .....but some are better left ......just my view ....i hope you find what you look for ....best wishes and regards cappy

[Robert George Young]

JS, My mission is many fold as Benny Hill used to say.

We never disliked our dad.
We seen him periodically and the feeling pretty much on his part was of failure of being a dad
We never understood that when in our teens, twenties, we just thought he was a drunk and a bugger but OK
Mum brought us up great
I'm 70 in May.

I want to understand to the best I can what his 64 years were like.

Lastly an author I know has agreed to write a book about his life.
We have now decided its better as a novel
This was two years ago.
She has now decided recently to write 3 novels based largely around dad's life.

One to 1942
One 1942-1945
Once 1945 - 1986

My brother died of heart attack last August. Aged 60
Knocked the stuffing out of me
I lost my best friend and person most close to this project.
He got close to dad in the 70's just before he joined the army.

I have never really given dad's life a lot of thought prior to 2016 when we decided to apply for the Arctic Star.
Since then his whole life has been something I've dedicated myself to trying my best to understand

Thank you
Bob

[Louis the fly]

My dad was also bitter about the war years, not the war itself or the German's. He was bitter because of the way British shipowners treated the crews who manned their ships. Stopping their pay when ships were torpedoed and sunk, often leaving their families destitute.

[Ivan Cloherty]

#13 Robert haven't looked at your profile, have you any sea experience, has your ghost writer any sea experience, if not there are a lot of pitfalls depending on who you are aiming your novel at. But good luck anyway.

[Robert George Young]

Ivan, neither myself or ghost writer has any sea experience
She has written 50+ books about various wars and I’ve enjoyed all her books.

In truth I’m not aiming books at a target audience.
My aim is to honour my father.
My mum would have loved it.
I think my dad would.
He would have corrected many things I’m sure
But he would have loved the fact that two of his three sons tried to understand his life.

I hope friends will read it. I suppose the ghost writer that has become my friend will hope people who have enjoyed her previous books enjoy these three.

Thank you for your constructive comments.
I’ve gained a lot of knowledge from the website 👍
Bob

[Ivan Cloherty]

We're here to help, call us if you need us, we have seen such a plethora of misinformation about ships these last few days from supposedly intelligent people, once in print, it's difficult to retract, but on occasions has given us a laugh combined with despair.

[Robert George Young]

I would like to thank everybody who has read and replied to this thread
I have a tear coming from my eye reading the last post.

I dearly respect merchant seaman
What they went through in wartime was horrendous

Dad was a tough guy in his prime
I could see a lot of the men I’ve known over my life
Being tough enough to be a merchant seaman in the day.

Don’t make em like they did in the old days !

- - - Updated - - -

Could should read couldn’t

[Keith at Tregenna]

Hope all goes well, all the best in this and any future ventures.

Keith.

[J Gowers]

I worked for a drilling company in Angola as Chief Engineer on a drillship and we were bringing a lot of guys into the country to work on a five yearly ABS inspection. For a foreigner to work in Angola you have to go through the rigmarole of getting work visas but seamen joining ships did not require this type of visa. So we advised the service companies to obtain discharge books for their employees, they were going to work on a ship anyway. From what I remember it was not too difficult for the services companies to get British discharge books for British service hands and guys from other countries obtained their own national discharge books. The guys when applying had to have a letter from their company saying they were going to work on a ship.

I agree with the other posting that I do not see the point of just writing info in a new book without the stamps and signatures better just to scan everything then you will have it for posterity.

To answer another question the new discharge books (well from 5 years ago) look almost the same as a wartime discharge book but have no report of character columns

I like the web sites you have made up and you have got me thinking I could do the same for my wife's grandfather.