---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Graham Read <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 8:03 PM Subject: HMT Bianca To: [email protected] My mother-in-law's father, Alfred J Kersey was a trawler skipper in peacetime, and during WW1 was supposed to have command of 'HMS Bianca'. Personally I think HMT more likely. He was RNR. I have some details of the civilian life of the Bianca as a Hull or Grimsby trawler but nothing about her wartime [WW1] service beyond that she was requisitioned as a minesweeper in 1914. It is clear that this was a wartime association between AJK and Bianca since he was in Milford Haven before and after WW1. He died at sea in 1929 so wasn't involved in the 1941 loss. If SKP has got any ideas on where to chase for details of the WW1 service, or of a picture, I would be most grateful. Graham

Hi Graham I see that Alfred was included on page 458j of the Navy List for July 1915, as a Temporary Skipper, RNR, per page 518p, with a seniority of 6 May 1915. If you want to look I think I downloaded the book from the Way-Back Machine some years ago, having been made available by the National Library of Scotland. ISTR that they hold a lot of Navy Lists for the 19th Century and for both World Wars. Unfortunately, whilst current copies of the Navy Lists continued to list the ships in the RN, along with their officers, during the early months of the war, after a while this was discontinued until the end of the War on the grounds of security, and it would appear that the July 1915 edition did not list ships or their officers, although the Navy List continued to maintain relatively up to date lists of officers. As you've implied it is often difficult to track down trawlers, since they were used in the North Atlantic right round to the Bosphorus, and were involved in the Gallipoli and all that, and whilst some seemed to retain their names others were given numbers. But, on the off-chance whilst searching through the National Archives Catalogue : http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/ found the following which might be for your Biance ? Admiralty, and Ministry of Defence, Navy Department: Ships' Logs. BIANCA. Collection: Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies Date range: 06 March 1916 - 05 August 1916 Reference: ADM 53/35334 I've not looked any further, so you can have the pleasure of checking to see if there are more logs and how many days you need to book to do your research at Kew to see what she got up to during the war ;-) There are also later WWI Navy Lists, so you may be able to work out when he returned to normal fishing, but they are quite large books so hope your broadband is in fine fettle ;-) BTW, the Navy Lists are mostly word searchable, unless the print quality declines. Regards Paul On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 22:11:54 +0000, Graham Read <[email protected]> wrote: >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >From: Graham Read <[email protected]> >Date: Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 8:03 PM >Subject: HMT Bianca >To: [email protected] > > >My mother-in-law's father, Alfred J Kersey was a trawler skipper in >peacetime, and during WW1 was supposed to have command of 'HMS Bianca'. >Personally I think HMT more likely. He was RNR. >I have some details of the civilian life of the Bianca as a Hull or Grimsby >trawler but nothing about her wartime [WW1] service beyond that she was >requisitioned as a minesweeper in 1914. > It is clear that this was a wartime association between AJK and Bianca >since he was in Milford Haven before and after WW1. He died at sea in 1929 >so wasn't involved in the 1941 loss. > >If SKP has got any ideas on where to chase for details of the WW1 service, >or of a picture, I would be most grateful. > >Graham > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] 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