I am researching my grandfathers service history and I am finding his service record (acquired via Payment Ledgers) a little confusing when it compares with a ships movements. For example, the record states he left HMS Collingwood (Hampshire, UK) on 11th Dec 1944 and joined HMS Cumberland the following day. However, at that time HMS Cumberland was in Cape Town (and confusingly, I have a diary from Dec 1944 showing that rather than being in Cape Town at this time he was indeed setting off from Glasgow, arriving in Sri Lanka in Jan 1945, where the diary ends). Likewise, a few months later his service record says he returns to Collingwood in July 1945. At this time, HMS Cumberland is in Malaya. So if anyone is able to advise whether these discrepancies can be explained that would be much appreciated e.g would he have been on his way to HMS Cumberland when he left Glasgow and therefore is registered as such even though he was on a different ship?
I suspect that the problem was that RN systems recorded which ship was responsible for accounting for the man's pay which was not necessarily the ship he was physically on. When I was reviewing the RN's payroll systems at HMS Centurion back in the 70s they were still wrestling with this issue.
The naval records kept by the mod are pay records, his actual service records were given to him on discharge as he was drafted to Cumberland they started paying him even tho it took a month for him to get on board
I think that it is more a case of a sailor having to be employed somewhere for recording purposes. If he was at H.M.S. Collingwood one particular day and received orders to join the company of another ship, he would be given a warrant to travel and would cease to be on H.M.S. Collingwood's pay roll from that day. His pay would become the responsibility of his new ship, even though it may take him weeks to actually catch up with her. Apologies, having just read James Harvey's post I know realise that he put it rather more succinctly than I did.
Many thanks for all your replies, that sheds a lot of light on matters. So it sounds as though I could probably have a fair amount of confidence in my Grandfathers day to day activities in the middle of a posting to a ship but not necessarily at either end when he may have been on his way elsewhere (Unfortunately his service record for the second half of the war is incomplete so we are having to rely on pay roll). So one other question arising from this, does anyone have any thoughts if it is possible to trace a ship movement from a specific port on a specific day? So i know my Grandfather left Glasgow on a specific day in Dec 44 and arrived in Colombo on a specific day in Jan 45. There's the naval-history.net website but it looks like i would have to trawl through 1000 ships before stumbling on the information I was after
Not so sure. I think HMS Cumberland was in Trincomalee, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) preparing to go to Malaya in support of Operation Zipper. She left Ceylon on 15 August. Tim
