Category Archives: Tamam Shud

Just a short note: if you search PapersPast (the online newspaper archive for New Zealand) for “H C Reynolds”, you get a 1926 mention in the Waiapu Church Gazette (no, I’m not making it up) of someone with that name from Wellington taking a Theological exam. The more you search, the more you find about this Reverend H Reynolds who ended up as an Anglican missionary in Melanesia before (and indeed during) the Second World War, and whose name was often written “H V C Reynolds”. But then the trail goes cold… so could this be our elusive man, hidden from view in the Solomon Islands, Aoba, and Lower Hutt? (Not to be confused with ‘JabbaThe’, of course).

…errrr, alas no. PapersPast archives peter out after WWII, reminding us once again that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A web-based follow-up search reveals that this Reynolds was actually Henry [Harry] Vivian Collett Reynolds (b. Sep 1902), whose years of work as a Melanesian missionary brought him recognition. So, although he was someone of the right age, location and (mostly) name, he was also definitely not our missing man. Oh well!

It turns out that there’s a decent biographical entry on HVCR in the huge Blain Biographical Directory of Anglican clergy in the South Pacific (2011 edition) (though note that the PDF formatting is a bit haphazard if you try to copy-and-paste-from it). And just in case someone strolls past here looking for more information on this Venerable Archdeacon H V C Reynolds, I’ve put together all my notes here: H V C Reynolds. There’s bound to be much more on him in the Southern Cross Log, but I stopped when I’d hit my limit for researching Anglican Melanesian missionaries, I’m sure you understand. 😉

Cheryl Bearden & I have managed to eke out lots more tiny details in our hunt for the elusive merchant seaman H C Reynolds, including his precise date of birth! And I’ve also exchanged some intriguing emails with the Anonymous Lady who put forward the ID card in the first place. But all in good time…

First things first: given that the three ships Reynolds worked on during his 18 months at sea were all owned by the Union Steam Ship Company (a sprawling Australasian shipping company known as the “Southern Octopus”, and at one point the largest private employer in New Zealand), I thought we might be able to find something in the USSCo’s archives. Having eventually tracked down the bulk of them to the City Archives of Wellington City Council, a very helpful archivist managed to find a short record relating to H C Reynolds in AF019:1:1 (“Pursers records [1-4] – 1879-1925“), which she noted seemed to be “the log book [listing] pursers holiday leave”. It said:-

Reynolds, H.C.:

Appt [appointed] ass [assistant] purser: Manuka 12/11/17

Jnr [Junior] Hobart Branch

50 pound Birthday 8/[2]/1900

Asig [Assigned] Koonya 15/4/18

Shore mate £75 as from 1/11/17

Resigned

Hence, I think we can now be reasonably sure that the H Charles Reynolds on the ID card was born in Hobart, Tasmania on the 8th February 1900. Curiously, this is also precisely the same date of birth listed on ancestry.com for the Horace Charles Reynolds who was born in Triabunna, Tasmania (a mere 50 miles away): which you have to say is either an extraordinary coincidence, exactly the same person, or crossed archival wires. (I’m not offering an opinion here – I prefer to find evidence rather than inflict yet more speculation upon you.)

Unfortunately, a more detailed follow-up search of AF020:1:1 (“Record of pursers services – 1883- 1919“), AF050:3:1 (“Register of employees (shore staff), no. 1-699 – 1909-1976“) and particularly AF050:4:1 (“Register of employees (shore staff), no. 700- 1399 – 1909-1976“) which “covers the year a shore staff member joined service between the years 1917-1919” failed to find even a single mention of Reynolds. Which is, of course, a great shame. 🙁

I also recently discovered PapersPast, an online archive of New Zealand newspapers: though it doesn’t have quite as flexible a search interface as Australia’s Trove, it’s still pretty good. So, now that we know Reynolds was appointed to the Manuka on the 12th November 1917, I tried trawling through the shipping columns on the editions around that date to see if he was mentioned at all (there was often a “Personal” section that mentioned appointments etc). And indeed, in the Evening Post of 14th November 1917, the shipping column noted, plausibly enough, that:

Mr H. Reynolds has joined a vessel as assistant wireless operator in place of Mr. R. K. Lewis.

However, I was unable (as always, it would seem) to find any other obvious references to him there. Cheryl Bearden was also unable to find any reference to R K Lewis. Once again, it seems that archives are mainly characterized by their solid brick wall construction, with special internal brick walls for researchers to conveniently hit their heads against repeatedly. 🙁

I also recently found an online “Index to Vessels Arrived, 1837 – 1925” in the NSW archives, listing all the Koonya’s arrivals in Sydney, which corresponded very closely to the manifests Cheryl Bearden already found, except for a missing 8th December 1918 arrival. This turned out to be another “Chas Reynolds” signature:-

* 08 Dec 1918, Koonya, arr Sydney NSW (from Melbourne). Chas Reynolds, 18 years, born Hobart, Purser.

This inspired Cheryl to look once again at the same archives whereupon she intriguingly discovered that while H C Reynolds was filling in on the RMS Niagara, a certain “M Reynolds” was working on the Manuka:-

* 02 Apr 1918, Manuka, arr Sydney NSW (from Hobart). M Reynolds, 17 years, born Tasmania, Boy.

Now, H C Reynolds couldn’t sensibly be on two ships at the same time: so could this possibly be HCR’s younger brother, covering for HCR while HCR was away on the big mail ship? If that’s right, then we may possibly now have another Reynolds to go looking for – one hopefully not quite as elusive as HCR has proved to be so far. However, Cheryl Bearden was yet again unable to find any other reference to an “M Reynolds”, so this too would seem to be a dead end (for now). 🙁

Incidentally, one thing that has bothered me was how H C Reynolds managed to get fast-tracked to a full purser’s job at such a young age (18). There seems a good chance that he had some assistance, some insider track or external accreditation to recommend him to the management. So, I dug up a couple of additional connections between Reynolds people and USSCo, one of which might possibly offer this link:-

(1) There was a well-respected Captain Reynolds, who sailed numerous ships (such as the SS Glaucus and the labour vessel Helena) around Wellington & Adelaide. Here’s a news report from the Evening Post of Captain Reynolds arriving from Surprise Island in 1917.
(2) A company called “T A Reynolds & Co” or “T A Reynolds & Partners” in Hobart bought some ships from USSCo but then sold them back to them later that year (1896). T A Reynolds were “loosely associated with USSCo” and had the contract to build the Strahan to Zeehan Railway, according to this page.

All very interesting, but sadly not even close to helpful as yet. Ah well, I’ll keep on chipping away at the mountain…

Finally, as I mentioned at the top I’ve exchanged some intriguing emails with the Anonymous Lady, who (I think it fair to say) has quite a lot on her mind, with the Unknown Man merely one of many things she is trying to resolve. She’s the person who owns the H C Reynolds ID card, and it was also her who sent that off to Professor Maciej Henneberg. As far as many of the open questions on the ID card go, she noted that:

“The underside corner of the photo was signed and matched that shown on the front. Initially I tried to remove the photo to see if any other information was there,but it was stuck down so hard it would not budge. I thought something this old would give way easily. Glues used in 1918 would be inferior to what’s around now surely? Also HCR photo has the appearance of a dimple or cleft on the chin. I almost did’nt send it due to that, however Maciej found on examination that it was only a mark on the photo. I don’t know if it was placed there deliberately. The back of the I.D.,where it states “Port of……….is empty. His status…Division 1 …….2 ……..3 is unmarked and is unsigned by the Immigration Inspector. If the I.D. was dodgy though, why not just fill it in?”

In a separate email, she mentioned that her father had somehow implied that Reynolds was some kind of artist. Interestingly, I discovered a pavement artist called Ernest Reynolds in some old Australian newspapers, who seemed a curious mix of talent, chutzpah and delusion: he called himself “King of the Pavement Artists”, and traced his lineage back on his father’s side to none other than Joshua Reynolds. There’s even a 1908 interview with him reproduced on a blog here.

In 1933, the same Ernest Reynolds also claimed to have invented a car that could travel at 100 miles an hour over poor ground [I checked AusPat, but he appears not to have patented this]. Also in 1933, he was living in Cassidy Street, Kalgoorlie, way over in Western Australia.

Really, you couldn’t make this stuff up. More as it happens…

The indefatigable Cheryl Bearden has been filling in the gaps for our elusive “H. C. Reynolds” tenuously linked to the Tamam Shud cipher mystery man, and has dug up nine more crew manifests in the Sydney archives with his name on, two of which helpfully list him as “Chas Reynolds“. (Yes, the names are slightly different, but it’s highly unlikely that there were two 18-year-old Tasmanian lads called Reynolds both working as purser on the same ship at the same time). As Reynolds’ job on the Koonya was Purser, it would be unsurprising if it was he who wrote up the crew manifests to hand in to the Sydney port authorities: so it could well be his handwriting Cheryl has been examining. Perhaps that is what he felt gave him the licence to write his first name as “Chas” rather than just an initial, who knows?

Additionally, Cheryl points out that because the Koonya crew list dated 2nd February 1919 lists his age as 18, we can narrow HCR’s possible birth date range down yet further, which is also great!

So, it seems that the person we’re looking for is H. Charles Reynolds, born in Hobart, Tasmania between 2nd and 12th February 1900, who worked for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand for at least 18 months between 1917 and 1919 as Purser or Assistant Purser aboard the SS Manuka, the RMS Niagara, and the SS Koonya. Also known as Charles / Charlie Reynolds. 🙂

I should add that I found a truly magnificent online bibliography relating to the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand, which notes that…

The archives of the Union Steam Ship Company Ltd and Wellington Harbour Board are now at the Wellington City Archives and will be accessible to researchers which has professional archivists, a facility built for archival storage, a public Reading Room and other specialist support systems. A considerable part of the Harbour Board collection is on the public access database The archives of the Union Steam Ship Company came from its head office in Wellington.

The Wellington City Archive summary notes that the Union Steam Ship Company “started in Dunedin and in 1922 its head office shifted to Wellington”: however, if you search their archives for “Union Steam Ship”, none of the 80 hits returned seem to be relevant to what we’re looking for (staff records or correspondence). It does add that “other Union Steam Ship Company records can be found at the Hocken Library in Dunedin” at the University of Otago: here’s the summary page of their USSNZ holdings.

Now that is more appealing: AG-292 “includes a wide range of records including minutes, correspondence, financial and shareholder records, staff records, shipping information, publications, some correspondence of James Mills and the records of the John Jones Trust: AG-292-009-001/005 contains “Staff Salaries Vol. 4. 1913-1917”. Similarly, AG-922 “relates particularly to employees of the Company. It includes salary books, a list of staff, and staff newsletters” (AG-922/002 is listed as “Salaries book, Dunedin Branch. 1915-1955”). Yet having trawled through the 1000+ entries for AG-292, there’s precious little I can see related to staff records for 1917-1919 (apart from correspondence, which may or may not mention anyone).

But wait! According to the first (USSNZ bibliography) page, the Museum of Wellington City & Sea apparently has “the majority of the staff records of the Company”, so that is almost certainly where our trail for the elusive H C Reynolds leads. I’ve emailed them, and will let you know what I find out…

Finally, for any passing H C Reynolds research completists, this is the current list of crew lists we have (Cheryl’s nine new entries all preceded by *, thank you again!):-

19th November 1917. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Wellington). H. Reynolds, age 17, born Tasmania, Assistant Purser.
* 10th December 1917. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Wellington). H. C. Reynolds, age 17, born Tasmania, Assistant Purser.
17th December 1917. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Hobart). H. Reynolds, age 17, born Tasmania, Assistant Purser.
26th January 1918. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Hobart). H. Reynolds, 17, born Australia, Assistant Purser.
17th February 1918. RMS Niagara: arr Sydney, NSW (from Vancouver). H. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Assistant Purser.
20th April 1918. RMS Niagara: arr Sydney, NSW (from Auckland). H. C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, 2nd Mate.
5th May 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Burnie). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobert, Purser.
20th May 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan & Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 12th June 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Launceston). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 21st June 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 30th June 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
16th July 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 28th July 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Burnie & D’port). Chas Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
12th August 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan & D’port). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
26th August 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Burnie). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
22nd September 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 6th October 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Burnie & Strahan). Chas Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
21st October 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Launceston). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
4th November 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Burnie). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 18th November 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
* 23rd December 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
19th January 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Tasmania, Purser.
* 2nd February 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
9th March 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Newcastle). C. Reynolds, 18, born Tasmania, Purser.
31st March 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 19, born Hobart, Purser.

Yet more for you on our elusive young Tasmanian merchant seaman H. C. Reynolds, who may or may not be the mysterious “Unknown Man” found dead on Somerton Beach in 1948, etc etc.

Firstly, I note with great interest Gerry Feltus’ comments on the whole H. C. Reynolds thing. He writes:-

In early February 2011, I received a letter from the woman (not identified in the article) containing comprehensive detail, a photograph of HC Reynolds and the circumstances under which it was found. This was followed up by a number of telephone conversations. I had no doubt about the authenticity of the information supplied to me. I became aware that the same photograph and details had been forwarded to a number of other interested parties. I was also advised that Professor Henneberg had advised her: “The similarity, however is substantial and in my opinion warrants further investigation.” I wrote in my reply inter alia, “I have no alternative but to accept his (Prof Henneberg) learned opinion. As I explained to you during our conversation I don’t see any resemblance to the ‘Unknown Man’. After studying his photograph for years (the Unknown Man) there is nothing in the face of Reynolds that ‘jumps out’ at me that is similar… Also Reynolds has a square chin with what appears to be a cleft or dimple, whereas the ‘Unknown Man’ has a rounded chin. My opinion, and I will stand corrected if I am wrong.” I provided details of a record relating to H Reynolds, Able Seaman, on ‘Empress of Asia’, Suez Canal 1941, and advised that I could not locate any details to authenticate the U.S. Identity Card.

It soon became obvious that a number of people were ‘tripping over each other’ to obtain information about Reynolds so I removed myself from that line of inquiry. I have not seen an official statement from Prof Henneberg. I have every respect for Prof Henneberg and accept his qualifications. If he is positive that Reynolds is identical to the ‘Unknown Man’ I will reconsider my views on the subject.

Personally, I’m not sure over whom Gerry thinks people like me would be tripping: just about every stone I examine seems to be turning over for the first time. Historically, the nice thing about the Reynolds claim is that (true or false) it should, with persistence and lashings of lateral thinking, be checkable: the more of his antipodean sea career we can find, the more chance we stand of uncovering some instance where he crosses over into another (hopefully land-based) archive or database.

What have I been doing? Well, without any access to the archival omniscience of the “Log of Logs” as yet, I’ve been trying to find log books for the SS Manuka and RMS Niagara. However, it turns out that this is complicated by the fact that ships can reasonably have multiple types of logbooks, which often overlap:
* rough logs (compiled on the go)
* smooth logs (copied out nicely)
* compass logs (or “compass error logs”)
* incident logs, and so forth.

For the SS Manuka, Archives New Zealand have a compass log but the ship’s log has been destroyed bar one fragmentary page. Similarly, MS 851 in Auckland Museum contains RMS Niagara’s compass log for 1917-1918 compiled by M. Clark-Campbell, who was presumably the third mate “C. Campbell” on board at the same time as Reynolds. However, this is probably both a rough log (because it’s for two ships Clark-Campbell served on, the Niagara and the HMNZT Willochra) and a compass log: Hamish Lindop at the Auckland Museum very kindly examined MS 851 for me, and told me that “the information in it is strictly pertaining to coordinates for sailing; it doesn’t have any information about what was happening on board or Reynolds.”

So, a bit of a dead end, really. But at least now we know that the Manuka and Niagara probably had multiple log books: hopefully the “Log of Logs” will point us to some of the others.

But that’s not the really exciting news. Cipher Mysteries regular Cheryl Bearden has been carefully trawling ancestry.com’s online copies of the crew lists arriving at Sydney, and has found (what seems to me, at least, extremely likely to be) the next section forward in young Mr Reynolds’ timeline. Unless there just happened to be two 18-year-old pursers from Hobart called Reynolds active in the same port at the same time, it seems very probable that the two were the same person, and that he preferred to be called by his middle name:-

19th November 1917. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Wellington). H. Reynolds, age 17, born Tasmania, Assistant Purser.
17th December 1917. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Hobart). H. Reynolds, age 17, born Tasmania, Assistant Purser.
26th January 1918. SS Manuka: arr Sydney, NSW (from Hobart). H. Reynolds, 17, born Australia, Assistant Purser.
17th February 1918. RMS Niagara: arr Sydney, NSW (from Vancouver). H. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Assistant Purser.
20th April 1918. RMS Niagara: arr Sydney, NSW (from Auckland). H. C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, 2nd Mate.
5th May 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Bunnie). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobert, Purser.
20th May 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan & Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
16th July 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
12th August 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan & D’port). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
26th August 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Bunnie). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
22nd September 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Strahan). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
21st October 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Launceston). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
4th November 1918. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Bunnie). C. Reynolds, 18, born Hobart, Purser.
19th January 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 18, born Tasmania, Purser.
9th March 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Newcastle). C. Reynolds, 18, born Tasmania, Purser. [*]
31st March 1919. SS Koonya: arr Sydney, NSW (from Devonport). C. Reynolds, 19, born Hobart, Purser.

As before, the next plausible sighting we have is of a foot-passenger called “Mr H. C. Reynolds” travelling on the TSS Ulimaroa on the 22nd November 1920. So, thank you very much indeed, Cheryl, for this nice long set of sightings! But once again this is where the Reynolds trail goes cold. 🙁

Curiously, onboard the SS Koonya in August there’s also a fireman (i.e. for stoking fires, not for putting them out!) called “R Reynolds” age 18, but born in Birkenhead. Probably just a coincidence, though. 🙂

The SS Koonya was registered in Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island: its Master was the 39-year-old New Zealander P. L. Molyneux. Note that the Tasmanian archives hold a number of logs and crew records for a previous ship called ‘Koonya’ (sank in 1898), which are almost certainly no use to us. The Koonya we’re interested in was, according to this online list of Tasmanian shipwrecks, a

Steel steamship, 1093/663 tons. # 109641.Built at Grangemouth, UK, as the Yukon. Owned by Union Steamship Co. Lbd 225.0 x 34.2 x 13.2 ft. In 1908, she had towed Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod 1510 miles from Lyttleton, NZ to the Antarctic Circle and was the first steamer in the Antractic. She was then employed in the New Zealand and Tasmanian coastal trades. Captain Francis Warner Jackson. Sailed from Strahan for Burnie on 3 June 1919 but failed to arrive; wrecked on Sandy Cape, Tasmania, 6 June 1919. Vessel Taviuni sent to search and found her wrecked on Sandy Cape, north west coast Tasmania. All saved. [NH],[#TS2],[DG]

Once again, we see Reynolds employed by the Union Steamship Company. However, when the Koonya went down in 1919, Reynolds was not on board! The report of the wreck that ran in Adelaide’s Register on 9th June 1919 listed the crew (who luckily all survived) as:-

Capt. F. Jackson, S. L. McDonald (chief officer), R. Sanderson (second officer), McNeill (third officer). Ward (chief engineer), Stewart (second engineer), Davis (third engineer), Thorby (chief steward), Dodd (purser), Kohler, S. Foley, and R. Millhouse (firemen), McLeod, Mulholland, Neilson, Newlands, and Stavis (A.B.s), Harris (chief cook), Alexander (assistant cook), Marshall (donkeyman), Foley, Howard, and Armstrong (trimmers), and Allen (boatswain). The names of the second steward and two other ordinary seamen were not obtainable.

It seems likely to me that between March 1919 and June 1919, Reynolds had served a full year on the Koonya and so moved on to work on another ship, most likely within the same Union Steamship Company fleet… perhaps Cheryl will now find this! All the same, the Koonya is another ship whose various logbooks I will now try to track down when I finally get to see the legendary Log of Logs…

If you’ve been following the flurry of recent posts (and indeed comments) here on the Unknown Man, you’ll know we’ve done two things:
* successfully linked the “H. C. Reynolds” on the US seamen’s temporary ID card to a young “H Reynolds” working on the SS Manuka and the RMS Niagara, and constructed a six-month timeline for his sea-life from late 1917 to early 1918; and
* eliminated pretty much every other “H C Reynolds” of broadly the right age and location.
So, the question is… where to look next?

Following the Manuka trail, there are plenty of plausible looking documents in the National Archives of Australia office in Tasmania relating to the Manuka’s arrivals in Hobart. If you just happen to be passing the State Library building at 91 Murray Street on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday and want to look these up, here are the Manuka references you’d need in volume P2005 which covers arrivals (though volume P2004 covers departures, it unfortunately has a big fat gap from June 1917 to December 1923, bah!):-
* 22 Nov 1917 – 767481 – passenger list
* 24 Nov 1917 – 767502 – ships report inwards
* 13 Dec 1917 – 767523 – passenger list
* 02 Jan 1918 – 767583 – passenger list
* 24 Jan 1918 – 767701 – passenger / crew list

Of course, it’s an outside shot that any of these would reveal (for example) H. C. Reynolds’ first name, but it’s probably worth a shot. Having said that, given that Reynolds was from Hobart, it would seem likely that he worked on other ships out of Hobart prior to Nov 1917: so it would probably be a worthwhile exercise to check the (relatively small) number of other ships’ entries in P2005 for 1917. After all, did he really land the Assistant Purser role as his first ever job on a ship? (I suspect not, but that’s just my guess…)

Alternatively, following the RMS Niagara trail, I managed to dig up the passenger manifests for Victoria and Vancouver (both in British Columbia) for what appears to be Reynolds’ final journey on the Niagara [RG 76 T-4873] and [RG 76 T-4858]. These noted the following dates:-
* 28th February 1918: dep. Sydney, New South Wales
* [no date] Suva, Fiji
* 15th March 1918: dep. Honolulu, Hawaii
* 21st March 1918: arr. Victoria, B.C.
* 22nd March 1918: arr. Vancouver, B.C.

From this, we can see that the date stamped on the US seamen’s temporary ID card was not the arrival date in Hawaii, but the departure date from Sydney. I think it likely that these cards were issued on board the Niagara at the start of the voyage by (say) the Purser – this would also account for the British date field order (which some people have flagged as implying a forgery). Sadly, though, both manifests only contain passenger lists, not crew lists: and so fail to move us any further forward. 🙁

It may seem that we’ve hit another brick wall: but given that all we’re really hoping for at this stage is Reynolds’ first name, the Australian archives still has a vast number of plausible-sounding documents for us to grind our way through, such as:-
* “Registers of ships crew engaged and discharged at South Australian outports (including Darwin).” [D8]
* “Registers of ships crew engaged for the home trade at South Australian ports” [D9]
* “Register of vessels (arrivals and departures), Port Adelaide” [D1]
* “Original Agreements and Accounts of Crew (Form M & S 3)1, with Ships Official Log Books (Form M & S 16 & 12),alphabetical series” [D13]
* “Statistical chart of ships’ movements and list of persons not required to pass education test” [SP83/11]
* Crew and passenger lists for the Port of Newcastle [C667] (even though Cairns and Townsville both have passenger lists for this period, neither seems to have crew lists).

Yet even though Reynolds was from Tasmania, I suspect that it will be New Zealand’s ships’ log books (at Archives New Zealand’s Christchurch Regional Office, descriptions accessible via Archway) that will have some answers, because the SS Manuka and RMS Niagara were both New Zealand-owned:
* Shipping Report Books, Foreign – Outwards (R18282773) – CAVL CH443 26 / 6/6/3
* Shipping Report Books, Foreign – Inwards (R18282772) – CAVL CH443 25 / 6/6/2

In fact, the definitive answer of where to look next may well come from the ominously huge-sounding 8-volume “Log of logs : a catalogue of logs, journals, shipboard diaries, letters, and all forms of voyage narratives, 1788 to 1988, for Australia and New Zealand, and surrounding oceans” by Ian Nicholson. If anyone reading this happens to have access to this truly stonking epitome of maritime bibliomania, please let me know if it lists the Manuka’s and Niagara’s log books and/or related crew records, thanks! Even knowing which volume(s) to be looking at would be a great help to me (the British Library only has an incomplete set).

As far as pursuing our elusive man via normal avenues, I hate to say it but we may well be out of luck. Because voting was reserved for the over-21s, the young H. C. Reynolds won’t appear on Australian electoral rolls prior to 1921, and I have a sneaking suspicion he had left Australia by then (probably for America). But if (as I suspect) he left the RMS Niagara in early 1918 for medical reasons, will he be listed in the Auckland Hospital Register of Patients Admission and Discharge, first series, Vol. 3 (1918-1920) (ref: R20388997), shelfmark “YCAB 15266 4/a D”? Hopefully we shall see… I remain optimistic! 🙂

I’ve done a bit more digging on our ever-elusive “H. C. Reynolds”, and thought it was time to post a quick update.

Firstly, though there was indeed an “H. C. Reynolds” playing golf in Murray Bridge in the late 1930s (and he would almost certainly have played some away matches at Glenelg Golf Club, perilously close to where the Unknown Man died), it seems that this particular Harry Reynolds was still alive in December 1953 when his son Graeme Campbell got engaged to Christobel Jane Taylor (ref#1, ref#2). So it seems we can basically rule him out. 🙁

All of which reduces our scope back to the only two remaining leads of any substance: (a) Reynolds’ relatively brief employment on the SS Manuka and RMS Niagara (1917-1918), and (b) the birth (and apparent death) of a Horace Charles Reynolds in Tasmania, who may or may not be the same person.

However, a few days ago I realized that seaman Reynolds almost certainly had structured employment, because the Manuka and the Niagara were both owned by the same company, the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand – though this was taken over by P&O in 1917, it retained its own identity and archives. Searching the New Zealand Maritime Index (a database maintained by the Bill Laxon Maritime Library) yielded three interesting hits relating to seamen’s sick pay in 1916-1917 and 1918-1919 for “Reynolds, H.” (1, 2, 3).

It seems tempting to infer that this was the same person, and indeed very tempting to speculate that Reynolds contracted influenza as part of the 1918 pandemic and was incapacitated in New Zealand – the records relate to sick pay to an “H Reynolds”, and the virus was most devastating to young adults (paradoxically, because of their strong immune systems). However, the pandemic only properly hit Australia in December 1918 while the last sight of Reynolds we have is in April 1918, so none of this is in any way certain as yet.

All the same, because this money was paid out as sick pay in New Zealand, it seems highly likely to me that the recipient would have been admitted into a New Zealand hospital: and with the major port there at the time being Auckland (which is where the Niagara docked), I’d predict the place to look next would be the admissions and discharges register for Auckland Hospital.

Luckily, the NZ government’s Archway archives portal points us to the Auckland Hospital Register of Patients Admission and Discharge, first series, Vol. 3 (1918-1920) (ref: R20388997), shelfmark “YCAB 15266 4/a D”. This is a “heavy, bound volume” in the Auckland Regional Office (close to Auckland Airport), and contains exactly the kind of meaty information we’re hungry for:-

Register number, ward, date of admission, name, address, sex, age, occupation, malady, nature of operation (if any), date of operation, result (relieved, cured, incurable, died), date of discharge or death, number of days in hospital, married or single, if married number of children, nationality, if child or married state father’s or husband’s occupation, length of time in New Zealand, name of medical practitioner, religion, amount owing at date of discharge, remarks.

It’s not clear whether these records are indexed (my guess is that they probably are), but I strongly suspect that there will be an entry in there for late April, May or June 1918 for 2nd Mate H. C. Reynolds admitted off R M S Niagara, possibly with influenza. Who will be the first to find it? Do we have any Cipher Mysteries readers in NZ?

Up until now, most of my historical research has been based on the Renaissance, so I haven’t had any great need to look at the kind of databases and tools people use for genealogy (which tends, unsurprisingly, to focus on the last couple of centuries before the pervasive haze of history obscures all practical vision). So, I thought I’d have a go at seeing what I could find from online newspapers about our mysterious Mr. H. C. Reynolds, though doubtless experienced genealogists would be 100x more effective than me…

I quickly found one particular “H. C. Reynolds” doing his thing in Melbourne. Trove (digitized Australian newspapers online) throws up a birth announcement from 24 April 1920 from the Argus in Melbourne:

REYNOLDS (nee Evelyn Ivory). –On the 12th April, at Sister Wain’s private hopital, Hoddle street, Elsternwick, to Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Reynolds, of 80 Tennyson street, St Kilda–a daughter (Norma Mavis).

The Argus similarly reported that (presumably the same) H. C. Reynolds was made a fellow member of the Australasian Institute of Secretaries (Inc.) on 25th May 1939. But its entry for Wednesday 30 August 1950 would seem to rule him out:-

Mr. H. C. Reynolds, secretary of Smith Mitchell & Co. Ltd., is retiring at the end of this week, after 28 years’ service. He will be succeeded by Mr. H. N. Martin, who has been an accountant for many years.

Alternatively, Trove also throws up a quite different “H. C. Reynolds” whose 1940 Chrysler Imperial Sedan (number plate BU-054) was stolen in late 1947: he was the proprietor of the Phoenix Hotel, 82 Flinders Street, Melbourne (which is due to be demolished next year and rebuilt as apartments 29 storeys high). However, this was presumably also the same H. C. Reynolds who transferred a hotel licence for Phoenix Hotel Co not long before 27th April 1950, so we can almost certainly rule him out too. We can also rule out the eminent visiting American zoologist Dr H. C. Reynolds who specialized in the reproduction of marsupials (no, I’m not making this up) and who visited Tasmania in 1954. 🙁

Finally, our mysterious man might possibly be the “H. C. Reynolds” who was a member of Murray Bridge Golf Club (SE of Adelaide), and who qualified for the club championship in July 1939. Curiously, “Harry Reynolds” (presumably the same man) is mentioned on the website as one of the club’s “chief planners” when it moved locations in 1945, so the club may still have records or some collective memory of what happened to him. Perhaps someone could contact the club and ask them if a club historian or archivist happens to know what happened to Harry Reynolds? Just a thought!

The hot cipher mystery news from Australia a few days ago was the intriguing suggestion that a certain “H. C. Reynolds” might well have been the “Unknown Man” found on Somerton Beach on 1st December 1948(AKA the “Tamam Shud” case). A couple of intrepid Cipher Mysteries readers decided to see what they could find out about this mysterious person: all they had to go on was a US seaman’s ID card dated 28th February 1918, which may or may not be genuine…

Cheryl Bearden & Knox Mix quickly found a number of references to an “H. Reynolds” / “H. C. Reynolds”, and very kindly left comments on the previous post here documenting what they had found. I’d already checked a number of free online databases of passenger / crew manifests without any luck, so guessed they were using ancestry.com, which has scans of quite a few passenger lists. Hence I decided to have a quick look here myself, to see if I could pick up on anything they might have missed: so here’s what I found…

* Manuka: dep. Wellington, arr. Sydney NSW, 19 Nov 1917. H. Reynolds, age 17, Assistant Purser, born Tasmania.
* Manuka: dep. Hobart, arr. Sydney NSW 17 Dec 1917. H. Reynolds, age 17, Assistant Purser, born Tasmania.
* Manuka: dep. Hobart, arr. Sydney NSW, 26 Jan 1918. H. C. Reynolds, age 17, Assistant Purser, born Australia.
* Niagara: dep. Vancouver B.C. via Auckland, arr. Sydney NSW 17 Feb 1918. H. Reynolds, age 18, Assistant Purser, born Hobart.
* Niagara: dep. Vancouver B.C. via Auckland, arr. Sydney NSW 20 Apr 1918. H. Reynolds, age 18, 2nd Mate, born Hobart.
* (Ulimaroa: dep. Hobart, arr Sydney NSW, 22 Nov 1920. H. C. Reynolds, male passenger.)

The RMS (“Royal Mail Service”) Niagara regularly crossed the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver, Sydney, Auckland and Suva (in Fiji) for more than 25 years, making it the furthest-travelled steamship ever. But what, then, of Reynolds’ ID card? What for me seals the deal is a nice blog post I found by Haley Hughes talking about letters her great-grandfather Geo. W. W. B. Hughes sent to her grandfather Noel while travelling on the RMS Niagara back in 1931:-

“The ship departed Sydney on 25 June, with stops in Auckland, departing 30 June; Suva, Figi Islands, departing 3 July; Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, departing 10 July; and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, arriving 16 July, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, arriving 17 July.”

I think this gives us enough broad brushstrokes of how the journey worked to finally tie all the loose ends together!

It seems very likely to me that Reynolds first came on board the RMS Niagara at Suva or Auckland on its way to Sydney (perhaps to replace a sick crew member?). He then continued with the Niagara on its next trip across the Pacific to Vancouver, stopping off in Honolulu for the first time in his life. This was almost certainly where he picked up his US temporary seaman’s identification card, the one that was to become his keepsake of the experience: looking again at his photo in it, I think he looks excited, perhaps even a little exhilarated by the whole experience. Perhaps – if Reynolds was indeed the Unknown Man – this is also where he took to Juicy Fruit chewing gum, possibly as a (arguably slightly unhealthy) memento of Hawaii.

All the same, this was only a brief peak moment for him, for it seems that not long after this he left his life on the sea. Could it be that his experience dealing with the New Zealand gunners on board the RMS Niagara stirred something in him, causing the 18-year-old Reynolds to sign up to fight in the Great War?

Post-WWI, the next glimpse we see of H. C. Reynolds might possibly be as a passenger between Hobart and Sydney in November 1920 on the Ulimaroa… but it’s hard to be sure. It seems entirely possible to me that he still had a family in Hobart: a presumably quite different “H. Reynolds” made a number of trips between Hobart and Sydney early in the new century – might this have been H. Reynolds Sr?

Will all this be enough to track Reynolds down? The problem with ancestry.com (and, in fact, the Internet as a whole) is that it’s easy to fool yourself that records accessible through it are even remotely complete, when they simply are not. The world has many million times more data than that, but you just have to get at them the hard way. Still, as Cheryl and Knox pointed out, it seems that we know that his 18th birthday fell between 27 Jan 1918 and 17 Feb 1918, so I’d like to think we’re doing reasonably well! Next stop, Tasmanian off-line birth records, eh? 😉

PS: ancestry.com.au lists a “Horace Charles Reynolds” born in 1900 to Edwin Reynolds and Mary Ann Matilda Reynolds, with the birth registered at Hobart, Tasmania: and a Reynolds family tree listed there has “Horace Charles Reynolds” born 8 Feb 1900 in Triabunna, Tasmania, but (it is claimed) dying on 16 May 1953 in Hobart. Does this rule out H. C. Reynolds as the Unknown Man, or might there possibly have been two people with the same name? It’s all pretty specific stuff, so perhaps the Anonymous Lady who proposed Reynolds in the first place might know a little bit more to help narrow this down?

A massive thanks to Cipher Mysteries reader Cheryl Bearden for passing along to me some breaking news on the Somerton Man case: a story by Emily Watkins in Adelaide’s Sunday Mail dated 20th November 2011, already inserted in the Taman Shud Wikipedia page by retired Southern Australian WLRoss.

So, what’s the big news, Nick? Well, an unnamed Adelaide woman found a US identification card in her (late?) father’s collection of documents & photos, showing a fresh-faced 18-year British seaman called “H. C. Reynolds”.

The general resemblance between this person and the Unknown Man is extremely strong, but specific similarities between their ears (again) and a mole on their faces was enough to convince Adelaide University’s “internationally renowned anatomist and biological anthropologist Professor Maciej Henneberg” that the two were a perfect match. Personally, I’m not 100% convinced yet, but the parallels between this and what I concluded here a few days ago are pretty impressive.

The only downside is that searches carried out for the Adelaide Sunday Mail for H. C. Reynolds at the “US National Archives, UK National Archives and Australian War Memorial Research Centre” all drew a blank. So… what was the secret history of H. C. Reynolds?

Firstly, the date stamped on his id card is intriguing: 28th February 1918 was towards the end of the First World War, not too long after the US had joined in. A US draft of 21 year olds was already running, and would be extended later in 1918 to a draft of 18 year olds. Conscription in the UK had already been put in place in 1916 for single men aged 18 to 41, so if Reynolds (apparently aged 18) had just come from the UK, then he was apparently dodging the UK draft. Hence, I have to caution that this might possibly be a false name… just so you know!

It also struck me that Reynolds might possibly have been a British merchant seaman somehow shipwrecked or otherwise forcibly landed in a US port. One of the most notable WWI sea incidents connected to the US was the sinking just off Nantucket of three or four British merchant ships (and some Dutch ships) by the German submarine SM U-53 on 8th October 1916. This caused widespread consternation, and may well have been a prime thing that helped persuade the American people that the US should enter the war.

It’s a fascinating story, and I eventually tracked down the list of survivors and passengers of the Strathdene, the Stephano, and the West Point (it’s in the New York Times archive for 10th October 1916, if you’re interested). However, there was apparently no “Reynolds” on board any of them. I also managed to find the passenger & crew list for the Florizel which sank on February 24th 1918 (though from hitting a reef, not from another U-Boat action) off Newfoundland, but there was no Reynolds there either. (Just so you know, it was named after Prince Florizel in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale).

Having said that, I wasn’t able to fully determine whether or not U-53 sank the British freighter “Kingston” / “Kingstonian” (the newspapers of the day ran numerous conflicting reports on this, probably the most reliable source would be Hans Rose’s reports), so it is just about possible Reynolds could have been on one of the Kingston’s lifeboats allegedly seen “30 miles SE of Nantucket”. Alternatively, if you happen to know of other British ships that sank just off the US coast between 1916 and 28th February 1918, please let me know!

To be honest, though, I find the date of the sinking of the Florizel (a mere four days before the id card was issued) more than just a touch coincidental: I do wonder whether (for example) the Florizel’s waiter “Henry Snow” (whose age we don’t know) might possibly have changed his name to “H C Reynolds” in order to somehow stay on the USA.

Right now, Reynolds’ id card would seem to have triggered far more questions than answers: but that is, at least, a better place to be in than having no questions at all, right?