The only image I have that contains them all
Rhoda Sunley (nee Featherstone 1939-2010 Ethel Brown (nee Featherstone) 1921-1988
My Grandfather: William Robinson Featherstone 1895-1964
My Grandfather was in the Merchant Navy as long as I knew him serving a a chief engineer, but in 1939 his occupation was a Fitters Engineer in a steelworks. So I presume this was taken sometime during the second world war since my aunt Rhoda was born in 1939 and my father was an apprentice fitter and as far as I know, it was in the firm of Head Wrightsons engineering works.
However this document I found explains why I have a seaman’s enginnering certificate from the Seaman’s school at South Shields giving him a pass.
The document gives the codes of a couple of ships he served on, and the type of engines he must have mainstained. He retired and he and my Grandmother move out to the village of Great Smeaton where he passed away not many years later.
He was a heavy smoker and it always fancinated me that he could keep the ciggarete in his mouth until the ash was almost at his lips, when it fell off my grandmother would complain and he would rub it into the carpet with his foot claiming it would make the carpet grow.
What I don’t know is if he was at sea when he met my Grandmother and took a shore job until war broke out.
When I was a child there were lots of pictures of ships in a draw of the dressing table in my parents bedroom, it is strange that I never asked about them I just presumed they were pictures taken by my father who I was told served in the Fleet Air Arm servicing aircraft, so presumably on Air Craft Carriers. I need to find his service record.
