Tracing Your Naval Ancestors by Simon Fowler

Author:Simon Fowler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REFERENCE / Genealogy and Heraldry
ISBN: 9781844686520
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2011-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

The Continuous Service Record of Petty Officer Ernest Highams. He was killed in the first weeks of the war in an action with the German light cruiser Königsberg off East Africa in HMS Pegasus. (TNA ADM 136/240)

Service records for officers and the non-commissioned warrant officers who served during the war are at Kew in pieces ADM 196/97-114, with a partial index in ADM 313/110. Here you should find details of an officer’s family and his date of birth, promotions and ships served on, together with brief notes about a man’s performance. Another useful series are the summaries of confidential reports also in ADM 196, which contain candid comments on officers’ abilities written by senior officers. These records are on DocumentsOnline.

Also worth checking out is ADM 340 which contains files and record-of-service cards, describing the service of officers in the Royal Navy, the Royal Naval Reserve, the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), arranged in alphabetical order. Cards and files were introduced early in the twentieth century for all officers then serving. These documents form a single continuous record spanning the length of the officer’s service. A few records in this series include service through the two world wars and into the 1950s. An index to officers who appear in here can be found in TNA’s online catalogue, although at the time of writing it is not complete.

Claims for pensions for wounds are in PMG 23/206-207 and PMG 42/13-14.

Records of ratings are in ADM 188 and online through Documents Online. These rather disappointing records will tell you which ships a man served with, medals won and perhaps what happened to him, promotions and remarks about conduct. Records for ratings who served with a section of armoured cars in Russia between 1915 and 1917 are in ADM 116/529.

There are several series of records that include material about pensions awarded to naval personnel who served in the war. A small number of widows’ pension applications are in PIN 82. PMG 56/1-9 has details of allowances made to widows, dependants and children of specially entered mercantile crews, and crews of mercantile ships commissioned as HM ships or auxiliary craft, who were killed during naval warlike operations. And details of pensions awarded to officers and men of the mercantile marine killed or injured in Admiralty employment are in PIN 15/1733-1736, while claims to pension from members of the Royal Naval Reserve are in PIN 15/209-211.

The Fleet Air Arm Museum (see Appendix 2) has engagement books for men who joined between 1905 and 1921. These books include details of date and place of joining, physical description, details of any previous military service and parent’s consent if the entrant was a boy.

Casualties

Although we might think that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is only responsible for the immaculate and moving war graves of the First World War in Northern France and Flanders, in fact it is responsible for war graves of Commonwealth personnel from each of the services from 1914 to the present.

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