Family story

[merrison]

Hello everyone, this is my first post and I am wondering about a story I've heard from my father about his father. The story goes he was in the RN on a troop ship in the Med when it was hit and sunk during the night. All the survivors marched through the streets of scicilly in thier underwear. Thats all I know, As my father is getting quite old I would like to get him something like a news report of this or something about what ship it could have been. Any help would be very appreciated!

[Stebie9173]

If you post his name our Navy experts may be able to point you in the right direction.

Steve.

[merrison]

If you post his name our Navy experts may be able to point you in the right direction.

Steve.

[merrison]

His name was Sidney Merrison, any help would be great.

[John_Hartley]

Welcome to the Forum

I've had a quick look at the National Archives website and it looks as though Sidney was a soldier in the artillery, not a sailor. This is a link to a summary of his medal entitlement records (called a medal index card):-

Clickety click

Had he been a sailor, it would have been dead easy to identify the ship as it would be listed on his records. However, without some further information, it's probably not going to be possible to work out if the story is as it's been told. I think you are going to have to do some research to see if it is possible to work out when this might have happened. And really there are only going to be two ways of doing that. First is to see if his service papers survive at the National Archives (only about 30% do) and that there is sufficient paperwork surviving to give a clue as to when he might have been on a ship. The second is to search the local newspapers around where he lived for any reference to the incident - there may well be a "local soldier has miraculous escape" story.

John