Hi list, During a person’s service in the Merchant or Royal Navy does their ticket number change from each boat or remain the same? If SKS could advise me I would be greatly appreciative. Michele, Sydney Australia

And for the record for RN personnel : a) Prior to 1853 ; whilst tickets were used extensively for various activities, for leave. for transfer from one vessel to another or to hospital etc., i.e. to use the Hindi word, a ticket was a chit or chiti that a man was given, which authorised him to do something or be somewhere which would account for his absence from his normal place of duty : very few survive. In fact, there was a time, in the late 19th Century, when the person holding a book of tickets, for say leave, would sell them, quite illegally of course, but the authorities seemed to turn a blind eye to it for many years, until it was discovered at Portsmouth, that there were numerous doubtful practices taking place, in many instances by the Ship's Police, ie the very people who should have been looking into these affairs e.g. a man might arrive at Portsmouth, to join a ship which was still at sea, and rather than just doing jobs to occupy him the Master at Arms or Ship's Corporal might suggest, with a nod and wink, that he could fix some leave until the ship was due in port, but this would come at a price, say a few shillings. Similarly, a group of artificers were found supposedly working in the small boat yard at Gosport, but there was little or no work for them, and they were reputedly skiving off home once they'd reported for duty. News of these problems eventually reached the Commander-in-Chief and steps were soon taken to prevent this sort of thing happening again. b) From 1853 onwards each rating was given an "official number," ......until about 1971/2, when computerised pay was introduced and both officers and ratings were given "service numbers", but until that date officers didn't have a number. At the same time it is probably worth noting that tickets as such were slowly phased out, being replaced by forms which each had a description, and eventually a letter as a prefix, usually the letter S., followed by a number, and in some instances, where say a similar form was used for various purposes, such as the history sheet, which was slightly different for each branch, * a suffix, eg. my history sheet was S.1246F, for the Supply and Secretariat Branch, which was introduced in 1923, and revised in Apr 1954. * detailed the work and responsibilities carried out by a man on each ship and how well. Whilst tickets were phased out it is perhaps worth noting that even when I joined the service, over 100 years later, the term ticket was often used to describe the form one was given when being transferred or drafted from one ship to another. Paul On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 15:28:57 +1000, lynsmum via <mariners@rootsweb.com> wrote: >Hi list, > >During a person’s service in the Merchant or Royal Navy does their ticket number change from each boat or remain the same? > >If SKS could advise me I would be greatly appreciative. > >Michele, Sydney Australia > >------------------------------- >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 50° 33' N, 2° 26' W http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/Naval.html