Mercantile Marine Reserve medal rolls

[MaxD]

Some of the entries on the MMR medal rolls have the man's discharge (?) number alongside, others have the name of a vessel.  Is it safe to assume that the former had left the service when the medal rolls were compiled and that the others were still serving and on the vessel named?

 

Max

[Keith_history_buff]

It's something that has intrigued me too, being used to every rating or soldier in the ranks having a specific number. It looks like this question has been asked at least once before on here

 

[MerchantOldSalt]

 

On 06/12/2017 at 09:14, MaxD said:

Some of the entries on the MMR medal rolls have the man's discharge (?) number alongside, others have the name of a vessel.  Is it safe to assume that the former had left the service when the medal rolls were compiled and that the others were still serving and on the vessel named?

 

Max

Max

Having rambled around the 1915 Crew Agreements and MMR Medal Rolls for the last few days I'm fairly sure that the answer to your question is this.

 

A Rating or Officer's name in the Medal Rolls has the name of the ship in Column No.3 if it is the only ship in which they served under the T124 or later T124X Crew Agreement.  If they went on to serve in other Commissioned Ships then the Discharge Book number is shown as there is not room to put all the ships names on which they might have served.

 

It does not follow that once you had signed onto a T124 Agreement and become MMR that you spent the remainder of the war in the MMR, if you did not re-sign on another T124 or your ship ceased to be commissioned then you left the MMR and returned to the normal Merchant Service signing on the usual Foreign Going or Home Trade Articles of Agreement. 

 

To support my reply, I looked at the 18 Merchant Ships taken up as Commissioned Squadron Supply Ships at the beginning of the war, (see attached list) few, if any remained in this roll for long, about 4 months mostly, after which they reverted to Merchant Ships, some becoming MFA Transports others, like the BARRALONG a Q Ship.  The four month period was sufficient time for the crew signed on T124 Articles of agreement to qualify for the war medals and appear in the Naval Medal Rolls (28 days service) 

 

Fortunately some of the T124 Agreements for the Supply Ships survive in the 1915 Crew Lists website, if you look at the CROWN OF CASTILE as an example you can see that most of the crew who signed on to T124 Agreement subsequently signed normal Foreign Going Articles, when the ship ceased to be Commissioned in 1915, so were no longer MMR, so that ship's name appears in the Medal Rolls.  Similarly the Master and some officers appear in the Navy List (attached) as Temporary Lieutenants and Sub Lieutenants RNR, once the ship was no longer commissioned they reverted to their Merchant Service Ranks and disappear from the Navy List.  Other officers who were RNR prior to the war of course remained on the Navy List the Master of the PALMA being one.

 

I can't be certain about this reasoning of course, but I looked at many other crew members from other commissioned ships and how they appeared in the Medal Rolls and within the numbers polled there were no exceptions to my hypothesis!

Tony

[MaxD]

Tony

 

Thank you for taking the trouble to dig into this relatively unimportant question.  Matters nautical are not my usual beat but this makes total sense to me!

 

Max

[Keith_history_buff]

Hear hear, thanks Tony for taking the time to investigate, and to have shared your findings.