One of the family stories handed down was that my great-grandfather Daniel Patrick Coleman left home at 15 to join the British Navy because he didn't get along with his stepmother. When Daniel first appears in the 1900 US Census, he is working as a sailor in San Francisco. I know he ultimately became a ships captain for a merchant shipping company. Putting those pieces of information together, I thought I'd look to see if I could find any record of Daniel’s service in the British Navy.
There are some British military records on Ancestry.com, but none of them provided enough information to determine if any of the Daniel Colemans that turned up in the searches was my great-grandfather. So I set off to look for British records. The National Archives of the United Kingdom has some military records available online so I decided to search there. Many of the records are for officers which I doubted Daniel was seeing as he enlisted at 15 and was Irish. There was a set of records for regular seaman's service, so I searched there.
Six different records came up for a Daniel Coleman and as I looked them over I found one born in Kinsale, Cork on March 28, 1860. Most of the records I have for my great-grandfather have him born on March 17, 1860, so I figured that was close enough to take a look. The UK National Archives deliberately distort the online images, so when I looked at the online image it was next to useless to identify whether or not I had found the right person. My only option then was to order a downloadable copy of the image. Fortunately, it only cost £3.30 -- about $5.00 US and was a fairly small document.
When I was able to download the record, I found it was loaded with useful information. A lot of the text is difficult to read, but the first entry is for service on a ship called the Revenge in September, 1875. That would match up with his joining the navy at 15. There are also several notations at the top with his height. The dates for each are a bit difficult to decipher, but they go from 5-feet even to 5-feet, 4-inches to 5-feet, 6-inches (maybe 8-inches?) Again, that would make sense if he joined as a still growing teenager. It's hard to judge how tall Daniel is in the pictures I have of him circa 1920, but he and Lizzie don't appear to be that much different in height so I'm guessing he wasn't particularly tall.
The record I downloaded was only one page long, but it lists all the ships Daniel served on from 1875 until 1898. The end date is a little puzzling as in the 1900 census, Daniel said he arrived in the US in 1892 and was a naturalized citizen. The dates are close enough in time that I’m not too concerned about the discrepancy.
There are columns for "Rating, &c.", "G.C. Badges worn", "Period of Service", "Character", "If Discharged, Whither and for what cause", and "Remarks." There are a lot of abbreviations and scribbles that make the notations in each column difficult to read. I’m guessing the "Rating, &c." column is his rank as one of the few scribbles I can figure out reads "Lg Seamn." The only other one that I can read clearly are the letters "A.B." -- possibly "assistant bosun"?
The "Character" column has the most interesting information. From the first entry onward there are many notations of "Good" or "Very Good." It's not until I got towards the bottom of the page that the entries changed to "Fair." Starting in about 1891 while serving on the ship Excellent things start to change. There's a note in the "Discharged" column that I can't figure out, but in the "Remarks" column next to it there is a notation "Sent to Portsmouth to be dealt with summarily." Unfortunately, the rest of the notations in the "Remarks" column are written very small and are really hard to read. Daniel went back to service on several different ships between 1892-1898, but there are several more notations of "Fair" in the "Character" column along with two notations of "Cells 7 ds", "Cells 5 ds", which I would imagine was some kind of disciplinary action. The last readable item is in the "Remarks" column and indicates Daniel was "granted a free discharge" from the British Navy on December 17, 1897.
I wonder what those last few years in the Navy were like. Daniel would have been in his early thirties with 15 years of service. I know my grandmother was brought up with a strong dislike for the British, so I wonder if some of the tensions between Ireland and England were affecting what was happening on board ship.
There are a lot of different ships listed, so I'll have to see if I can find some history of those ships during the years Daniel was in the Navy. Where were they sent? What was going on in those regions? One of my Coleman cousins passed along a story that Daniel was in one of the Boer Wars and nearly died of malaria. There's nothing on the record that indicates either of those bits of information. Based on a quick look at Wikipedia, if that is accurate, it's likely Daniel fought in the first war in 1880-81 rather than in the second which took place in 1899-1902.
Once I had some basic information from the UK National Archives, I was able to go back to the records at Ancestry and see if I could match up any further records. One record turned up for Daniel in the "UK, Naval Medal and Award Rolls." It appears he won a service medal called the "Burmah Medal" while on the ship Ranger during the Third Burmese War in 1885-1887. I was able to confirm the record based on the service number attached to the record which also appeared on the record I had found in the UK National Archives. Maybe the story about nearly dying from malaria was related to the Burmese War rather than the Boer War? It doesn't look like Daniel ever received the medal as there was a notation that it was "returned to mint Feb 22." Looking at his service record, it looks like he left the Ranger in October, 1887 and joined the crew of the Cambridge for several months before heading to the Excellent in February, 1888.
It’s interesting that after Daniel's service in the British Navy that eventually both his son Daniel J. Coleman and grandson Edward K. Murray would both serve in the US Navy. Uncle Dan served during World War II and Uncle Eddie was a chaplain in the Navy for 30 years.
There are a lot of great nuggets I've uncovered in this one piece of paper, I just wish I could make out the writing a bit more. I imagine it might be slightly easier to read the original, but since that's in England, I don’t think I'll be taking a look at it any time soon! Still, I'll try to work out what I can and see what information I can find based on what I do know.
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