I write from Australia seeking some advice in locating records relavent to my maternal great grandfather. We have records of my great grandfather in relation to his marriage to my great grandmother and the birth of two children, all in London's East End. Alexander Hancock(sometimes Hencock) is identified as a mariner and marked his marriage certificate with a cross. We have crew lists of a man of this name as a steward, and then cook, on ships sailing between London and Australia in the 1870's and 1880's and a record of a death at sea in 1885 on the iron clipper Thessalus. From newspaper records on Trove, the ship was between Newcastle, Australia and San Francisco with a load of coal. His Country of Origin is West Indies or, in greater detail, the Island of St Bartholomew. Can anyone help with suggestions of records which could show next-of-kin of a seaman at this below decks level, especially one who was not British. (St Barts was initially Swedish and then French during this period.) Given the appearance of his daughter, my grandmother, it is possible that he was either indigenous West Indian or descended from African slaves. My great grandmother and her daughter migrated to Australia in 1888, a somewhat unusual act for a woman alone with an eight year old child. We have no record of a husband or father. She married later in Australia as a widow. In hope of advice Joan Creati