http://www.sole.org.uk/hasewe.htm Sian, The link above takes you to an interesting little snippet about Inconstant in the 1880s and mention of Royal Marines going ashore in Egypt is made. There are a few places where you may find further information: The Royal Marines Museum, Portsmouth, holds extensive records of Royal Marines and Royal Naval Bands and their leaders. The National Museum of the Royal Navy - I think this is its new name - are also loaded with facts. It may be worth a plug at the RN Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, Somerset. This sounds a bit odd but they have lots of stuff about RM/RN Bands ante WW1. A few degrees off your Bill Oliver target but you may be able to pad out information to help the search. Patrick. -----Original Message----- From: Sian Mackey Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 10:08 PM To: mariners@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [MAR] Help with understanding Naval Medal and Award Rolls entry for William Oliver Thank you to Peter and Patrick for your suggestions. I'd never heard of the Royal Sailors' Home, but it makes perfect sense. Do you think they might have kept records of residents? I have tried googling it, but so far without any success (other than confirming that it exists, of course!). Patrick, your suggestion regarding "band transfers" is very interesting. The band master on HMS Inconstant was Andrea Teseo and I thought that such an unusual name would be easy to track down and might give me a lead. However, it turns out he died in 1883. I haven't yet managed to establish whether or not he had gone to the army before that, but I suspect not given that his (Teseo's) medal roll records are annotated "D.D." with an '83 date, suggesting to me that he died in service. I have often wondered what William Oliver played. (There is a lot of music, much of it brass, in the family.) Does anybody know what a naval band would have consisted of at that time? I don't suppose there's any way of finding out what instrument he actually played, but does anybody have any suggestions of where I might try looking? Regards, Sian. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MARINERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message