Greetings all One of my forebears, Henry James HARPER, was a lifer in the Royal Navy. His discharge certificate states that his rate was PO1C, (Petty Officer 1st Class?) with 3 Good Conduct badges, Character: V.Good, Trade: Sea. He was "Shore Pensioned" 30 Sept 1874 at the age of 63 in Simon's Town, Cape of Good Hope. His Pension No was 5.507. But, the document names only the last ship on which he served before being pensioned: HMS Flora between 1 Jan 1873 and 30 Sept 1874. Is it possible to access his full service history and, if so, how? Best wishes Frank South Africa -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 76 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len The Professional version does not have this message

Hi Frank, Where did you find the discharge certificate? One of my forebears, Henry James HARPER, was a lifer in the Royal Navy. His discharge certificate states that his rate was PO1C, (Petty Officer 1st Class?) with 3 Good Conduct badges, Character: V.Good, Trade: Sea. I'm hunting for information on what happened to a man who was invalided out of the Navy in 1894 according to his service record. Many service records are on Documents Online from the National Archive and should give you all the ships he served on (with dates), plus a brief physical description of him when he signed on. That's where I found mine. You have to pay for a download, but it's not expensive and if your scan is poor quality (as mine was), you can contact them. They are very helpful and did a re-scan for me.

It isn't really clear what document you have : can you give a National Archives reference so that we know what you are looking at : it should start with ADM ??/??? This is a difficult period to be researching service records of naval rating as the Admiralty changed their record keeping in 1873, see the National Archives leaflet on researching naval ratings : http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/royal-navy-rating.htm And taking into account the apparent age of your relative his service career could well have included another year when lots of changes were taking place ie 1853 with pensionable engagements being introduced for those who were happy to sign on the dotted line for periods up to 10 years etc. although a lot of the older men were suspicious of the Admiralty's intentions and many men left it a few years before they signed on for pension ie they merely signed on for a ship's commission, and were then discharged to shore and had to find another ship if they wanted to remain in the Service. So details of his service prior to 1873 are included in the Continuous Service Engagement Books, found in series ADM 139.and if he served prior to 1853 then, unless you can find a pension record in the ADM 29 series, you will only be able to follow his career from the Pay and Muster Books of the ships on which he served, but this is all detailed in the leaflet far more clearly than I can put it. Paul On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:20:19 +0200, "Frank Early" <franklyn@tiscali.co.za> wrote: >Greetings all > >One of my forebears, Henry James HARPER, was a lifer in the Royal Navy. His >discharge certificate states that his rate was PO1C, (Petty Officer 1st >Class?) with 3 Good Conduct badges, Character: V.Good, Trade: Sea. He was >"Shore Pensioned" 30 Sept 1874 at the age of 63 in Simon's Town, Cape of >Good Hope. His Pension No was 5.507. But, the document names only the last >ship on which he served before being pensioned: HMS Flora between 1 Jan 1873 >and 30 Sept 1874. > >Is it possible to access his full service history and, if so, how? > >Best wishes > >Frank >South Africa 50° 33' N, 2° 26' W http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/Naval.html