Might the Unknown Man found dead on an Australian beach actually be an (almost equally unknown) merchant seaman called H. C. Reynolds? It’s an intriguing claim, one based – from the emails I’ve exchanged with the Australian lady from whom it originated – partly on family mythology, and partly on anatomical comparison between photos of the Unknown Man and an ID card dated 1918. It’s entirely true that uber-Tamam-Shud-meister Gerry Feltus remains somewhat skeptical: but then again, he has seen (and indeed carefully documented) many hundreds of similar claims, which so far have all proved not to be the case.
All the same, I think it would be good if we could properly identify this Reynolds person: after all, we apparently have direct evidence of his existence (an ID card). Surely it should be easy to track someone active less than a century ago, particularly with the vastly able help of such able online researchers as Cheryl Bearden & Knox Mix?
Well… recapping the story so far, we’ve found plenty of ships’ crew manifests where Reynolds appears, worked out that his middle name was Charles, and even uncovered his date of birth (8th February 1900). The Log of Logs then pointed us to the still-extant logs for the RMS Niagara and the SS Koonya… but as of earlier this year, that was as far as we had got.
So, all we needed was someone (a) indefatigable and (b) relatively nearby to go and have a look. Step forward Cipher Mysteries regular Diane O’Donovan, who extremely kindly journeyed out to Chester Hill to have a look at the RMS Niagara logbook for us all earlier thos year. (Apologies for not posting about this before, I’ve been somewhat… distracted, let’s say).
Unfortunately, the RMS Niagara turned out to be (in her words) “a dud lead… (with)no mention of Chas Reynolds“. Generally, Diane found the logs to be “fascinating if repellant reading“:
It must have been a nightmare of a ship to work on. Seasickness in crew was defined as ‘absent without leave’ or ‘under the influence of drink’. People constantly leaving with or without their possessions. Latter was defined as ‘desertion’. So plenty of incentive for navvies to adopt another name for the next voyage.
In many ways, all of this (including drawing a blank, sadly) should be no surprise: the Niagara was a huge, busy mega-ship, and it seems likely that Reynolds was merely covering for a sick assistant purser during a single round trip, a temporary, tiny replacement cog within a giant marine machine. Anyway, here’s what Diane found:-
First was a much expurgated ships log. Second of the two was a list of passengers, not of crew.
Niagara Logbook Barcode 322 304 61 81
July 1917 (Log no.A863)
Purser was Chas. Leighton. His signature appears as countersignatory at e.g. entry at 18/8/17
An assistant baker was a T.Reynolds. taken on 5/7/17; Discharged 7/8/17 after one month and three days.
reason – “failed to be on board at departure from Vancouver”Only legalities have been preserved in this log: Initial list of crew with offices listed; dates of hose-drills; dates of absenteeism from duty or from the ship; wages docked; births, suicide, marriages..wages receipts made out for the missing.
——–
Niagara 1918 log
Barcode 1603134 SP83/11 BOX 38
Passenger list only. (To my horror, it includes reference to race as part of each person’s description, which strikes me as quintessentially un-Australian)Ship arrived in Sydney on April 20th., 1918.
Diane also found out that the records for the SS Koonya (a very much smaller ship, upon which Reynolds worked for a whole year, finishing up not long before it sank) are at a quite different archive at Kingswood. This was independently confirmed for me by a NSW archivist who wrote:
The Log of Logs listing is correct. We hold the 1918 SS Koonya log at our Kingswood reading room at [3/4861.2].
So, who’s now going to pick up this glacially-slow-moving baton, and be so kind as to preorder [3/4861.2] and visit the Western Sydney Records Office? John K, are you still planning to be there next month? 😉
Well, yes. Actually off next week, consider me tasked.
John: thanks very much! I hope you have a really great time! 🙂
Well, this is embarassing.
I braved the Mad-Max-ian Western suburbs, found the document archive – well concealed, but a model of its kind – got the log, photographed it…. Then lost the images. No backups, but with only 30 years IT experience I couldn’t be expected to know any better.
But, from memory: HCR was the ship’s purser. He appears on quite a few pages: the initial listing of the ship’s company, and as witness to disciplinary proceedings, all for drunkenness or late returning from shore leave. There’s one disciplinary bit where he receives extra money for covering for an absent crew member (I couldn’t quite make out this entry).
John: all the same, thanks very much indeeed for making the trip, I really hope it turned out to be a mini-adventure for you and not a pain in the neck. 🙂
If you’re basically sure that that’s all the log has (pictures or no pictures, these things happen), then my only real question is simply whether HCR’s first name appeared anywhere, or if he’s simply referred to throughout as “H C Reynolds”. At least the log exists!
It was no trouble, just a few hours in a train. The cafeteria van that serves the document archive is the only place I found that still sells the pineapple doughnuts of which Val has spoken for years; definitely worthwhile.
As I recall, HCR’s forenames were given as “Charles”, “Chas”, “H Charles” and (most commonly) “H Chas”. The “H” was not expanded further.
John: well, if there were pineapple doughnuts involved, your day out was plainly a resounding success! 🙂
As for the HCR variants you saw, they all strongly reinforce the basic picture that Cheryl Bearden teased out from the crew manifests, so what you found is all sensible stuff. I’ll have another look at my Unknown Man notes a little later, but I’m pretty sure that this basically marks the end of the archival line for the hunt for our elusive H Charles Reynolds, short of trawling through every birth record from near Hobart on 8th February 1900. Oh well, thanks again for taking the time to contribute, it’s always (I think) better to know rather than to just eternally wonder. 🙂
It seems to me that everyone involved is dedicating immeasurable hours and resources into identifying whether HC Reynolds is the Somerton man. May I suggest that you look for birth and death records and see if there is one less death record than birth record for a HC Reynolds. Then trace his family and find his closest living relatives (If there are any) and find out what they have to know. It is probably less complex than searching all these other resources.
Nice work though, nonetheless
Rorta: if only it were that simple! 🙁 The problem is that we have H Charles Reynolds’ birth details only from his (all too thin) employer’s files, not from his birth certificate – and we only have records relating to a brief 18-month-odd window into his life as a merchant seaman. If someone were to trawl round the various Hobart registries and archives looking for someone with his name born on that day, perhaps it would all become painfully obvious what happened. But until such a time, I think we’ve basically run out of practical leads.
The only other alternative would be to write to every school in Hobart he might possibly have attended… but my guess is that this is too slim a hope. Or you could wait until 2021 for the 1921 Australian census data to become available, that might have something!?!? 🙂
JESSICA ELLEN HARKNESS = Jestyn