Thanks everyone for suggestions. If he was already in Calcutta then he must have joined either the royal or merchant navy quite young? Is it right you could join as a cadet at 13 if you could prove sufficient education had been achieved? Would either service therefore require him to be enlisted and recorded somewhere. Looking deeper his family were well off business folks and could have afforded any financial transactions needed, but they were not what you would call upper class so privilege wouldn't have got him in, money and education might have? I find Ancestry type sites frustrating at times in that no record was found of his death at sea by putting his name in but by researching tangential themes up pops a death at sea section for Ancestry? Thanks again everyone. Wayne