I have done all that (some months ago) but the only record they have is a seaman's ID document issued on 16 December 1918, that ran through to October 1921 and lists 6 Union Castle vessels.Quote:
Originally Posted by robpage
I paid for and have a copy of it. It is numbered 383619.
It is that of the person I am wanting details of.....the photograph confirms that.... although the name is given as Basil Clement Leeke LEARY-CHANDLER, but what puzzles me is the lack of anything at all after 1921.
His birth certificate is Clement Leslie CHANDLER.
All those extra names are a mystery....but I have established from various lines of enquiry that LEARY and CLEMENT are names that feature in his background decades before he was born.
He seems to have disappeared altogether from late 1921 and the only tentative clue is the name of the First officer on the Winchester Castle when it ran aground on February 16 1936.
I know he served on the Winchester Castle as a deck officer...my mother met him on that ship and their first child, my oldest brother, is named Chester as a result.
They married in February 1935, in East London, South Africa.
Chester was born in East London in December 1935 and so far as I was aware my father left the sea before the marriage and settled in East London where they had 6 children including me!
But now CHANDLER crops up as 1st Officer of the Winchester Castle as a witness at the Board of Inquiry in May 1936 into the grounding earlier that year, on February 16th 1936.
I just think the coincidence is too great and wonder what the truth is.....did my father continue at sea after marrying my mother?
If so why is there no seaman's ID document for him, even under any of the combinations of names he seems to have used?
No living relative has any answers to this.....but I firmly believe records must exist somewhere.
