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Hello Piers

Thank you for the information, I've saved the chapters to read in more detail.  I didn't know my grandfather and nobody seemed to talk about him in the family - not even my Dad, his son! so it has been quite 'exciting' to do the research.  Certainly his service record, that I found at Kew, was to say the least brief and it was unclear how he had become RNR because he seemd to spend all his time applying to get out!  He certainly did his training at 'Vernon' mentioned in your article.  Not long 2 weeks, was it, when you think he had travelled the world on cargo ships and didn't seem to have had any experience of trawling

Thank you again.

Anne

(Originally posted by Anne Adams)

Hello Anne

I was interested to read your post as it touched upon two of my other areas of interest - my own grandfather (though 12 years younger) was an extra master and had a very similar career path and was also in Armed Trawlers, though in his case it was in the North Sea and Med.  Your grandfather was certainly a volunteer for the RNR: they didn't have conscription in 1914 and he wouldn't have been called up when it did come in as they needed merchant officers on the merchant ships.

You may be interested in these: http://www.naval-history.net/WW1Book-MN1b.htm#VI and

http://www.naval-history.net/WW1Book-MN1b.htm#VIII  .  These are chapters from a book - there may be other things of interest to you there if you dig around a bit and follow the links.

Cheers, Piers

(Originally posted by Mr Piers Smith-Cresswell)