Walter J Ferrand, 31/12/1943, Merchant Navy, non-CWGC

The missing at sea/supposed drowned comment does not mean he went over the side. These comments are fairly routine on records where ships have been torpedoed and sunk and bodies have not been recovered. However, that said, I have a copy of the Deaths at Sea Register for WW2 and Walter J. Ferrand is noted as 'missing at sea'. My reading of that is that he did indeed go over the side. The comment in red re 'not to be included in the ROH' suggests his death was considered as not being attributed to enemy action or increased war risk. For merchant seamen to be commemorated deaths must be attributed to enemy action or increased war risk. That rule stinks by the way.

You would need to obtain the ship's [FORT WELLINGTON] official logbook for the year 1943 and see what the master of the vessel had to say about it. The ship was only built in 1943 and he died in December of that year and I cannot see a logbook for 1943 so I would suggest it is in with 1944 so you could look at BT 381/3094 Be sure and check the narrative section as it is a big document.

Regards
Hugh

 

Walter J Ferrand is one of over 5000+ cases I looked into several years ago.

It is unknown by many, that the commemoration of Merchant Navy war dead has long been overlooked due to the rules and regulations the CWGC are governed by. In 2008 I volunteered to transcribe from 4,716 digital pages from copies of the1939-1945 Deaths at Sea Register on behalf of the National Merchant Navy Association to compile the names of all those Merchant Seamen who died during the war years who are not officially commemorated, as well as trying to gain a more precise figure on losses and more importantly to have all those who died in service commemorated in some form no matter how they lost their lives while fighting for the freedom so many now take for granted. Each one of these pages contained on average, the names of twenty seamen both war dead and non-war related dead, which included ship name, official number, date and place of death, age, rank/rating, last place of abode and cause of death. After three years I eventually documented the names of a further 5,361 men from all corners of the British Commonwealth who died in service in the Merchant Navy during WWII and have up until now been forgotten due to the circumstances of their deaths. These range from various illnesses to being washed overboard, falling down hatches, murder, suicide, drowning or just simply recorded as "disappeared at sea" Without trying to be too controversial, when you consider there are ten British soldiers commemorated on the Brookwood War Memorial who were hung for murder during WWII, who due to the fact they were in uniformed service, automatically qualified them for war grave status, suggests something is wrong. It would probably take an Act of Parliament to amend the rules the Commonwealth War Graves Commission are governed by, which once again raises the old adage that the Merchant Navy are and always will be the "Forgotten Fourth Service" Project completed 2011 and handed over to the CWGC for consideration. July 2015 informed by CWGC all 5,361cases rejected by Commission. Six years work and waiting for nothing, which leaves me feeling the term “Lest We Forget” seems to ring somewhat rather hollow.

 

No wonder you sound bitter, Billy - if there are an average of 20 Names on 4,716 digital pages, that's close to 95,000 Names, plus 5,361 or almost 100,000 unacknowledged Wartime deaths.

If that's the case, surely some MP (or more with Port or fisheries connections) ought to take this further?
Apologies for thread drift.

 

Billy as Kevin suggests MP or better still the Defence minister.
Secretary of State for Defence - GOV.UK

looking here things do get discussed in Parliament War Graves:Written question - 39158

regards
Clive

 

No I think that's the number of names he will have looked through in order to find the 5000+ names that he submitted.

 

Good to see you posting again Billy.
Regards
Hugh

 

No the files are just stored my system in Excel format.

 

Each entry in the DASR actually takes up two pages