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00:00Bruno, come on.
00:04My main hobby is just trying to stay fit for as long as I can
00:07so I can do the job that I do.
00:10Ross Kemp is an actor, TV presenter and father of four.
00:14When I'm running, that is a good time to be away
00:17from all the other duties that you have as a dad, as a human being.
00:21In the 1990s, he became a household name as Grant Mitchell in EastEnders.
00:27And where have you been?
00:29Don't tell me you're worried about me.
00:31Just stop it, will you?
00:32I should have after what you said about me.
00:34That wasn't the heat at the moment.
00:36Get used to running the pub on your own.
00:38He now makes award-winning documentaries,
00:41travelling all over the world.
00:43It's been two and a half years since I was last in Afghanistan.
00:49Doesn't matter whether I'm in Afghanistan or in Colombia,
00:53I'm always going to be Grant Mitchell in a leather jacket
00:55going, get out of my pub.
00:59Ross grew up in Raynham in Essex with his parents and younger brother.
01:03My dad was a senior, primarily homicide,
01:07investigator, detective.
01:09My mum was a hairdresser.
01:12I would say for my father, I get the need to find out the truth,
01:17to get to a resolution.
01:21And for my mum, I just get, I love that she's a storyteller.
01:26I'll tell you one thing that really, I think, had a massive impact both on myself and my brother
01:30is that we travelled at an early age, when a lot of people weren't doing that, in the early 70s.
01:37And we travelled most of Europe, before it became a place to go.
01:42There was a sense of something different and the sea.
01:49I've always loved being in water.
01:52I loved baths when I was a kid.
01:55I think my mum and dad used to say, to get us out, you know, you'll go down the plug
01:59hole.
01:59And I used to go, let's find out what's down the plug hole then.
02:03I strongly suspect that there is a connection to the ocean and to travel in my DNA.
02:14There has to be.
02:15Come here.
02:16Bruno, completely ignore me.
02:19I know a little bit about my immediate family.
02:22And I assume I've been told a few porcupines along the way.
02:29If half of what I've been told about my great-grandfather, Pop, is true,
02:34then he was a very interesting chap.
02:39But the big story was always that he was shipwrecked at least twice
02:44during his career as a merchant seaman.
02:48And I'd like to find out if that's true.
02:55You know, I've made three programmes about shipwrecks
02:58because they've been supposedly being shipwrecked.
03:00So I better bet you.
03:02Pop, you better have been shipwrecked.
03:03Pop, you better have been shipwrecked.
03:06Pop, you better have been shipwrecked.
03:44I love history, but the fact that you're looking at your own family
03:50is very different to, you know, reading about the monarchs of England
03:55or, you know, the pyramids.
03:57There is definitely an element of vulnerability about doing this.
04:07I'm on my way to my mum and dad's house.
04:13My dad may well be in his office.
04:15He may be talking.
04:16He might not be, depending on the mood it takes him.
04:19But my mum always has something to say.
04:24And I think she knows quite a bit about her side of the family.
04:28So I'm going to ask her a few questions.
04:33These are practically all me when I was a baby.
04:37There are a lot of ex-girlfriends in these pictures, Mum.
04:40Ex-girlfriends?
04:41Yeah.
04:41All of yours, yeah.
04:44It did happen for you.
04:48Really organised, aren't we?
04:51Mum, you've got any more pictures of me?
04:52That's one of them.
04:53You were very much like that.
04:56What does that mean?
04:58What does that mean?
04:59Well, that means you were in charge.
05:05You look like you are.
05:07Who thinks he is?
05:08Do you want me to tidy this up, Mum?
05:10No, I certainly don't.
05:11I've got a day.
05:12I've got a week to do it.
05:13Sure?
05:14Yeah, as opposed to...
05:16As long as you've got everything you need and everything you want.
05:19All right, Mummy.
05:19She's always been a bit like that.
05:22Everything you need and everything you want.
05:27Those holidays in Spain were pretty good, weren't they, Danny?
05:29Yeah, wherever we went, we were lucky.
05:31I mean, you and your brother were, I'd say, like fish.
05:33And your mum was a very strong swimmer.
05:36Tell you about the rubber boat.
05:37And we took it all the way to Greece.
05:39That's you telling the story, Mum, not Dad.
05:41Well, she always has, isn't she?
05:47She has always.
05:48Can you remember when you met?
05:50Yes, I can.
05:51And we never looked back, did we, darling?
05:53You had your lovely dress.
05:55It's 66 years this year.
06:00Mum, I found a picture of your grandad.
06:02That's Pop, that's my grandad.
06:03So he's my great-grandad.
06:04Do you remember him?
06:06His first name was Arthur.
06:07Yeah.
06:08But why was he called Pop?
06:09He was called Pop because in Norfolk, where he lived, when he was not at sea, everybody
06:16called him Popeye the Sailor Man because he was the only sailor man in Norfolk as far
06:21as I can make it.
06:22He wouldn't be the only sailor man, but probably in the village, yeah.
06:25Yeah.
06:25I can sort of remember sitting on his lap, I think while you sort of cut his hair, touching
06:30the back of his neck and it all being prickly.
06:32Yeah.
06:32Well, he had a pipe, didn't he?
06:34He used to smoke that all the time and he used to drink quite a bit as well.
06:38He enjoyed gambling, didn't he, as well?
06:40Yeah, he gambled.
06:41Nan said to me, so your mum said to me, that he tried to sell his watch to the milkman
06:45two
06:46days before he died to put it on horse.
06:48Is that true?
06:48Yeah, I think that's true.
06:50But what did he do?
06:52Porn.
06:55Did he?
06:56No, no, Porn P-O-R-M, Porn P-A-W-M.
07:02He used to go to horseback.
07:03I wouldn't be surprised if he did both, Mum.
07:05No, he didn't.
07:07So this is him on his wedding day?
07:08Yeah.
07:10Well, he was very young there.
07:11He wasn't around very much, was he?
07:13No, no, he wasn't.
07:14He just went from one ship to another ship to another ship.
07:18Yeah.
07:18There's another picture of him.
07:20That must be a cruise ship of some kind.
07:21He was on cruise ships.
07:24He's got the ensign behind him.
07:26So, Mum, wasn't there a story about Pop going missing during the war?
07:29I mean, not going AWOL, I mean, like, they thought the ship had sunk.
07:33Yeah, we'd heard that his ship had gone down and we assumed he was missing.
07:37I remember I opened the door.
07:39You opened the door to him, did you?
07:41At the cottage, yeah.
07:42Yeah, and he was standing on the doorstep and he had an American army uniform on.
07:47Army?
07:48He wasn't in the army, he was in the navy.
07:50I know.
07:50Merchant marine.
07:52Perhaps it was a navy uniform.
07:54I can't remember.
07:55He grew up in a pub, didn't he?
07:57Yeah.
07:57So, he grew up around beer.
08:00He grew up around tobacco.
08:01That's right.
08:02He was born right there.
08:04Portsmouth.
08:04Portsmouth, yeah.
08:05Yeah.
08:06But I've got a feeling that his father came from Ireland.
08:12So, who's on this list then, Mum?
08:14How many children do you think they had?
08:16I thought they always thought they had 13.
08:19Oh, no, those two are parents.
08:21Yeah, so John Chalmers, my great-great-grandfather,
08:24and Olive Chalmers, my great-great-grandmother, right?
08:27Yeah.
08:27Basically, as soon as she's having a baby, she's falling pregnant with one.
08:31And then the last one, which is pop, Arthur Chalmers, born July 24th, 1892.
08:41Ross's great-great-grandparents, John and Olive Chalmers, had 11 children.
08:46And Ross's great-grandfather, Arthur, known as Pop in later life, was their youngest.
08:53Ross wants to investigate the family story that his great-grandfather was shipwrecked
08:57while he was in the Merchant Navy.
09:00But first, he wants to find out what it was like for Pop growing up in a pub with 10
09:04siblings.
09:07I actually know the pub where Pop was born, along with his brothers and sisters.
09:16So if I'm going to sift the fact from the fiction, maybe Portsmouth's a good place to start.
09:35Ross is meeting genealogist Maggie Lewis.
09:38This is all water.
09:40Exactly, yeah, before the very terminal was built.
09:43Because the story is that my great-great-grandfather, John,
09:46would throw him out the window if they wanted a bath, allegedly.
09:50Maybe that's made up.
09:53So Maggie, my mum gave me this piece of paper, which I believe relates to this pub.
10:02Yep.
10:03I've been told by more than one relative that this pub was owned by John Chalmers.
10:10Your great-great-grandfather.
10:12Yeah, I was told that John came over from Ireland.
10:15Right.
10:16This could all be made up.
10:18Yeah.
10:18But this is what I was told.
10:19Right.
10:20And promptly had a lot of children.
10:22Yes.
10:23Which are all this list here.
10:25This list here.
10:25Yep.
10:26So they certainly had 11 children.
10:29And if we look at the 1881 census...
10:31Wow.
10:32Can you find your great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother on there with their family?
10:39Yeah, there's no...
10:40There he is, John Chalmers.
10:43And it says bargeman.
10:44That's right.
10:45But can you see where they are?
10:49The ship and the castle.
10:50Yes, the ship and castle in Rudmore Road.
10:54Which is where we are.
10:54Which is where we are sitting now.
10:55Exactly.
10:56And it's also interesting to see that he was a bargeman.
10:59Right.
10:59And he was running the pub together with all the ports.
11:02Did he own the pub or did he run it?
11:03We think he just ran it rather than owned it.
11:06Right.
11:06Yeah.
11:07And if you look to see where he was born...
11:09There?
11:09Yeah.
11:10Portsmouth.
11:10So he was born here.
11:12Yeah, be it born in Portsmouth, yeah.
11:13Certainly a few generations back are almost from Portsmouth.
11:17So it does appear that the Chalmers were very, very firmly set in this part of Hampshire.
11:23Right.
11:24Not Ireland.
11:25I'm slightly disappointed.
11:26Not that I don't love Portsmouth or Portsmouth or Hampshire.
11:30What have you got for me now, Maggie?
11:31OK, this is a birth certificate of your great-grandfather, Arthur.
11:36It says 6th Byerly Street, Rudmore, which isn't here, is it?
11:41It's about two minutes' walk that way.
11:45So they have moved.
11:46They have.
11:46They've left the pub.
11:47Not far.
11:48They're only around the corner.
11:48But why am I told that he grew up in this pub?
11:51Well, obviously, a lot of the older ones were born in the pub.
11:55So it's probably just got a bit garbled over the course of the years that your great-grandfather
12:01was born here as well.
12:03Didn't stop him liking alcohol and tobacco.
12:06No.
12:06That's for sure.
12:08OK, Ross, well, let's have another look at your list.
12:10Yeah.
12:11Albert James, your great-great-uncle.
12:13Yeah.
12:14He was the brother of your great-grandfather, Arthur.
12:17Yeah.
12:17And he appears in the local papers an awful lot.
12:22I've got a few articles here about him.
12:24Let's have a look.
12:26Albert Chalmers, a young laboring man, was charged on a warrant with using threats towards
12:32his mother, Olive, on the 12th of June, and it was alleged that he threatened to cut his mother's head
12:45off and all the rest in the house at the same time running after her with a table knife.
12:53His father said that prisoner had been discharged from the Navy and since then constantly got drunk and coming home
13:03behaved riotously.
13:05This is Albert, is it?
13:07This is Albert, who's ten years older than his brother, Arthur, your great-grandfather.
13:11So Pop would have been around when this happened?
13:13He would, so he'd have been a young boy.
13:16He was probably being chased around the house along with his mother with this out-of-control older brother waving
13:22a knife around because he'd got irritated.
13:25It signifies that there must have been a lot of tension in the house.
13:29Albert.
13:29He's a bit of a wrong-un.
13:30He is a bit of a wrong-un, yeah.
13:32But he's also been in the Navy, so he's been in the Royal Navy and he's come out.
13:35He's probably behaved not very well there.
13:37I do this with trepidation, but I will have a look at the next one.
13:41I can read what it says from here.
13:43A son's revenge.
13:47Albert, you're letting us down, mate.
13:49The father said the accused came to him for money.
13:53He had been drinking and for the last ten years, he had not been able to do anything with him.
13:59This is ten years after he's been, he's tried to, or he's allegedly said,
14:04I'm going to cut his mum's head off.
14:06Yes.
14:07And that's a family feud that goes on for ten years.
14:10Within the home and outside it as well.
14:12And so my great-grandfather, who is the youngest of all of them, would have been exposed to this.
14:18Definitely, yeah, yeah.
14:21Evening news again.
14:23Albert Chalmers, a bargeman, pleaded not guilty to a charge of being drunk and disorderly.
14:28There was a bad record against Albert Chalmers, who pleaded guilty to willfully smashing the windows of his father's house.
14:35Chalmers was very, very violent on the way to the police station.
14:39Albert Chalmers, a bargeman, denied being drunk and disorderly.
14:42Again, on his own confession, Albert Chalmers, a bargeman, was charged with stealing half a hundredweight of coal from a
14:52barge.
14:53The prisoner, who was said to be a blacklister, was discharged.
15:00Now, I don't know what that means, but I think it means that once you're blacklisted, you can't go back
15:08into the services.
15:09You can't go back into the Navy, I'm guessing.
15:11Well, I think your next port of call will be to go and find out exactly what a blacklister is.
15:23What have I found out?
15:24Well, it's very early days, but in terms of the Chalmers, a lot of it's true.
15:28They did run a pub called The Ship and the Castle.
15:32They did have a lot of children.
15:33But Pop wasn't born in The Ship and the Castle, as I was told.
15:37My great-great-grandfather, John, didn't come from Ireland.
15:41You know, he was actually born in Portsmouth.
15:44And one story in the family that I think's been very conveniently forgotten is Pop's brother,
15:50my great-great-uncle, Albert, who was a bad man.
15:55Ha! Sort of sums it up.
15:57He's a blacklister, and I'd like to find out exactly what that means.
16:03To help him, Ross is meeting historian David Beckingham at another pub in Portsmouth.
16:10David, I found out that my great-great-uncle, Albert, was a bit of a black sheep of the family,
16:18but also he was a blacklister.
16:21Can you tell me what a blacklister is?
16:25I can, yeah.
16:26What is it?
16:26I'm going to pass you a little document, might give you a clue.
16:28This is a clipping from a local newspaper.
16:33Another.
16:34This man was in the evening news more than I've ever been in any newspaper.
16:39Blacklister's Christmas Folly.
16:42At the Portsmouth Police Court today, Albert Chalmers, great-great-uncle Albert,
16:48who is one of the 14 blacklisters in the borough,
16:53entered the Centaur Public House in a drunken state and called for a drink.
16:58The landlord recognised Chalmers as a gentleman belonging to the local roll of honour,
17:05and he called the attention of PC Wheatlands to the matter.
17:10The sentence was 14 days imprisonment.
17:13A blacklister is somebody who is blacklisted from going into a pub.
17:18Exactly.
17:18So that came in with the 1902 Licensing Act.
17:22At the end of the 19th century, there's a big debate in Britain about what to do about drink.
17:27And the response is to target drinkers, like your great-great-uncle,
17:32with this kind of tool here.
17:35So he's been drunk too many times, and he's been put on a blacklist.
17:41And why the landlord is so keen to report him is if the landlord would be spotted serving him drink,
17:48the landlord would be fined.
17:50Would lose his licence.
17:51And potentially, yeah, have his licence endorsed and then lose his licence.
17:55And great-great-uncle Albert manages to make the top 14?
18:01Yep.
18:02And to qualify for inclusion on the list, you had to be a kind of repeat offender
18:06in terms of being in court on charges of drunkenness, in effect, or drink-related offences.
18:11Is that a lot?
18:1314 in a town this size with so many pubs?
18:15I don't think it seems like a lot.
18:17Or is he just really, really bad?
18:19There's probably a combination of being somewhere between bad and unlucky.
18:24So in terms of exploring the blacklist, these are from a different place.
18:28These are from Birmingham, so not from Portsmouth.
18:31But it gives us a sense of the kind of information that's being used.
18:34And it's being shared with publicans.
18:37And the idea would be that they would then know who exactly is on this blacklist.
18:41And there's pictures of all these.
18:43I mean, some of those faces in this book are just...
18:47Well, they're...
18:48Just keep overwhelming sadness.
18:53This is a woman.
18:54She's 5 foot 2 and 1⁄2 inches.
18:57Complexion fresh, hair brown, shape of face round.
19:00Slight scar inside right forearm.
19:02That's exactly the point.
19:03So distinguishing features would be the thing.
19:05Yeah, yeah.
19:06So you couldn't dress up and pretend to be somebody else if you had a kind of facial scar?
19:09So they profile people.
19:11They're profiling.
19:12Yeah.
19:12So the kind of question is, like, for the state,
19:15if there's all this drinking society and there's all these pubs
19:18and we're all kind of vaguely agreed that something has to change,
19:21what's our target here?
19:23And the point of this is the target is them, right?
19:27It's not...
19:27Yeah, not the system.
19:28Not the system that creates it.
19:30Yeah.
19:31It's the by-product.
19:32Yeah, this is a court document and you'll see that if you look for your man here,
19:38towards the bottom of the page.
19:39William Albert Chalmers.
19:42So we've got LAR.
19:44Larceny.
19:45Larceny is theft.
19:47It's stealing, right?
19:48Yeah.
19:49And habitual drunkard Portsmouth.
19:53Sentence.
19:54Yeah.
19:54Three weeks and three years this time.
19:58Yeah.
19:59Inebrite before...
20:01Is that inebriated?
20:02Yeah, inebriate reformatory, that's saying.
20:04What does that mean?
20:05His sentence for being, for larceny is three weeks.
20:09Yeah.
20:10And in addition to that...
20:11For being an habitual drunk.
20:12Because he's an habitual drunk, he's going to prison for three years.
20:14He's going to an institution for three years.
20:17An institution.
20:18There was a piece of legislation in 1898 called the Inebrite Act,
20:21so he's being sent here to Warwick.
20:23Yeah.
20:23What, it's a mile away from here.
20:25Exactly.
20:26The Inebrite Act creates space for local authorities
20:30to move problem drinkers if they want to,
20:33so no longer tens, twenties, hundreds of times in police courts like this lot.
20:38Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:38It's not philanthropic.
20:39It's not done by some very well-meaning charity.
20:42Yeah.
20:42It's state.
20:43We want this man off the streets of Portsmouth
20:47and as far away from Portsmouth we could possibly get him,
20:50and Warwick looks like a very good option.
20:53The inebriate reformatory in Warwick, where Albert was sent,
20:57was the only one for men in England.
21:00Despite its name, it was based in a prison.
21:03And Albert would have spent his strictly regimented days
21:06attending morning prayers and sewing mailbags.
21:10None of the inmates would have received any medical treatment for alcoholism.
21:17He's got a chemical addiction.
21:19I mean, how did they...
21:20Did they know anything about that then?
21:21Yes, they are aware.
21:23They're thinking about what addiction means,
21:25and the great question that I think this population presents
21:29for the observation of those who would look at the system is,
21:32is his drink a cause of ill behaviour,
21:37or is it a consequence of something that's kind of intrinsic to him,
21:42either biologically or because of the environment in which he grew up?
21:47What? He grew up in a pub?
21:49Well, they would have been fascinated to know that.
21:51That is exactly the kind of information that someone analysing that population
21:56would have wanted to see.
21:57Yeah, he grew up in a pub, to which I would say, but so did his siblings.
22:00And if they didn't have an alcohol addiction,
22:02then maybe that environment...
22:04Or there are other triggers.
22:05Exactly, it's not...
22:06And as we all know, it isn't often just one thing.
22:09It's a grouping of many, many issues
22:12that can cause people to take certain routes in life.
22:15Yeah.
22:15So, he's going to spend three years in prison.
22:18Mm-hm.
22:19Is this in the hope that three years without alcohol
22:23is going to make him clean?
22:25Is that what they're hoping?
22:27Shall we see what happens, Stu?
22:30I feel very sorry for him.
22:32I don't know what I just do.
22:33Is this a picture of him?
22:34Mm-hm.
22:35Oh, wow.
22:37Well, he doesn't look very good.
22:39I don't know how old he is there.
22:40He's admitted February 20th, 14, age 31.
22:48And where is he?
22:49Have you noticed that at the top of the document?
22:52He's in Portsmouth Corporation Mental Hospital.
22:56And though that's not necessarily the language that we would use today,
23:00I think it is important that he's back in Portsmouth,
23:03but he's not back home, is he?
23:06He's in a psychiatric hospital, is he?
23:08Yeah.
23:10So, he's not served in three years at all, because it's 1914.
23:14No, he's not made it through that end of sentence, no.
23:16But I have to say, having been to prisons in the UK recently,
23:21I see mental health issues and I see people with addiction issues.
23:25And so, what's dreadful to think in one, two, three, four generations,
23:31very little's changed there.
23:35So, I look at the picture of him...
23:41And I just think, you know, there was a life there.
23:45And he wasn't remembered by anybody.
23:50He wasn't remembered by, even by his own brother.
23:53I mean, my great-grandfather never mentioned him to his daughters.
23:56I know he didn't.
23:58I'm pretty sure he didn't.
23:59And it was definitely not handed down to my mum,
24:01and it certainly wasn't handed down to me.
24:16You know, this is not what I was expecting.
24:20I was expecting, you know, that they all lived in the pub
24:24and it was all kind of slightly Disney.
24:28And the reality is, you know,
24:30my great-great-uncle was an alcoholic with mental health issues.
24:35And there is nothing romantic or sweet or sugar-coated about that.
24:42Albert's life was never really mentioned in the family history,
24:46but what was spoken of quite frequently by my nan and by my mum
24:52was that Albert's brother, my great-grandfather, Pop,
24:56was shipwrecked, allegedly more than once.
25:01And now I'm beginning to wonder whether that's true.
25:11Ross now wants to focus on his great-grandfather, Pop,
25:15to find out if he was ever shipwrecked when he was a merchant seaman.
25:20Ross is meeting historian Harry Bennett,
25:22just up the coast in Southampton.
25:25So, Harry, what I know...
25:27Oh, no, hang on.
25:28What I've been told about Pop
25:30was that he joins the Merchant Navy
25:34and he stayed in the Merchant Navy all his life.
25:36So, Pop first crops up on a crew list
25:39for the Merchant Navy in 1913.
25:43So, it's just before the First World War.
25:47The Mac Bain.
25:49Let's see, where is he? Where is he? Where is he?
25:52Arthur Chalmers, age 21.
25:55Obviously, the Royal Navy is a military institution
25:58and the Merchant Navy as a commercial institution, right?
26:02These are the people who are carrying goods literally around the world.
26:06The people on who the lifeblood of the United Kingdom depends
26:10in terms of commerce coming and going from British ports.
26:13To what capacity engage?
26:16OS, ordinary seaman.
26:19He's starting to learn the trade of the deck of a merchant ship.
26:24Learning the ropes.
26:25Learning the ropes, quite literally.
26:27So, 1914, we've got the outbreak of the First World War.
26:30Yeah.
26:30And in August 1914,
26:33he volunteers for effectively hazardous service.
26:37He's going to move from that kind of, you know,
26:40in and around the British coast
26:42to potentially longer sea voyages.
26:45And he's going to move up, not just one league,
26:47but several leagues in terms of what he's doing
26:50in terms of life on board ship.
26:53So, here we see him.
26:57James Church, Derny Glass, Howard Chalmers.
26:59Here he is.
27:00He's 22.
27:03And it gives, obviously, in what capacity,
27:08he's one of the quartermasters.
27:11Quartermasters, yeah.
27:12Now, I know one of those is in the army.
27:14In the army, they're in charge of supplies, basically.
27:17Yeah.
27:18Is that what he's doing?
27:19No.
27:20He's now on the deck of a merchant ship on the bridge.
27:25He's one of the principal individuals
27:27working the wheel, serving as a coxswain.
27:30He's steering the ship.
27:31He's steering the ship.
27:32He's got his hands...
27:33He's gone up.
27:33He's gone up quickly, hasn't he?
27:35He's not just gone up quick.
27:36He's kind of, you know,
27:37really, really rising through the ranks really quite quickly.
27:40He'll play a critical role when they're coming into port
27:43in terms of ship handling, things like that out there.
27:47Parking a ship like that, you mean?
27:49Yeah.
27:49You can see it's a difficult job here.
27:52You know, he's clearly got an aptitude here,
27:54which is why he's occupying that particular job.
27:57But so this ship is the Kildonan Castle.
28:01What type of ship is this?
28:03She's a liner.
28:04I mean, 1914, one of the first jobs that she's actually doing
28:07is she's rushing to South Africa, carrying arms and ammunition.
28:12Carrying a load of explosives?
28:14Yeah, I mean, not necessarily the best cargo,
28:16but it's an absolutely vital one
28:18in the circumstance of the First World War.
28:21Are they running the risk of being torpedoed?
28:23Yes.
28:23And in 1915, that vessel is serving as a hospital ship.
28:28They're seeing war here
28:29in terms of those patients
28:31who are actually being loaded on board that ship.
28:33They can be taken away and treated in field hospitals
28:36away from the battlefront.
28:40Throughout World War I,
28:41the merchant navy ships that Pop served on
28:44played a vital role transporting goods and troops
28:47and acting as makeshift hospitals.
28:52Pop served on ships that went on to evacuate the wounded from France,
28:56witnessing the horrors that war inflicted on land as well as at sea.
29:01Over 3,000 British merchant and fishing vessels
29:04and over 14,000 merchant seamen were lost during the war.
29:10It's a very different world that he's experiencing.
29:13You know, the German navy literally is no pushover.
29:15They've got U-boats operational,
29:17they've got surface vessels operational.
29:20So, you know, he is in some danger.
29:22So, it's perilous.
29:23Yeah, it is very perilous indeed.
29:26So, there is one big thing I was told about him,
29:30that he was shipwrecked.
29:31Now, is that true?
29:33So, although there's no evidence
29:35that we've got in terms of the surviving records
29:38and we've got quite a few gaps
29:39that he was involved in a shipwreck,
29:42given the kind of conditions of the period,
29:43it's not unlikely.
29:45It's not unlikely, but we have no evidence to support him.
29:48We can't prove it, but it's not unlikely.
29:50It sounds like I want him to be shipwrecked.
29:52I don't.
29:53It's just that that was one of the stories
29:55that was banned in a mouth.
30:02Clearly, I love to travel.
30:04Most people know that about me.
30:06But for him, his world must have completely changed
30:11very, very quickly.
30:15And he's promoted to quartermaster,
30:18standing where I'm standing now,
30:20on a very, very large ship
30:22that ends up being involved in the First World War.
30:27He'd have been sailing a ship full of munitions
30:29through waters where there were U-boats
30:33and, you know, enemy ships.
30:36So he would have been exposed to the kind of brutality
30:38and the harshness of that awful, awful First World War.
30:52Ross knows that his great-grandfather
30:54stayed in the Merchant Navy after World War I
30:56and worked on a very different type of ship,
31:00the cruise liner.
31:01To find out what life was like for Pop,
31:04he's meeting cultural historian Anne Massey.
31:08So, and this is a picture of Pop.
31:11No idea what year it is,
31:13but he's definitely, you know, on a launch
31:16and he's definitely got members of the public,
31:18so he's on a cruise liner or something like that.
31:20Yeah, OK.
31:21Well, that's really interesting
31:24because look at the photograph that you have.
31:28We can compare it to this brochure.
31:30It's very similar.
31:32Yeah, yeah, yeah, at the front.
31:33And the day trip is going out.
31:35And the old hats are very similar.
31:36Oh, look.
31:37Yeah.
31:37Yeah.
31:38It could almost be him, really, couldn't it?
31:40He was working on this line, the Royal Mail line.
31:44The Atlantis.
31:45The Atlantis.
31:46It was one of the most popular cruise ships
31:48in the interwar period,
31:50and he was on that ship.
31:52And the bigger picture is that these ships
31:54are important symbols of national identity,
31:56so they're all competing with one another.
31:59But other countries?
32:00Yeah.
32:00Countries become very invested
32:02in having the fastest ship,
32:04the most glamorous ship.
32:06This is straight after the First World War.
32:08Yes, they're building up this shipping fleet.
32:11And because America at this time
32:13puts a stop to mass immigration,
32:16the ships have previously prospered on that,
32:18sort of taking a lot of third-class
32:20steerage passengers to America,
32:22one-way trip.
32:24But that's now frauding away,
32:26that kind of business.
32:27So they have to find other ways,
32:29you know, they have to diversify.
32:31So they offer, you know, glamorous travel.
32:34The 1920s and 30s were the heyday of ocean liners.
32:40Floating luxury hotels with art deco interiors,
32:44fine dining and on-board leisure activities.
32:48They fast became the must-have experience
32:50for the travelling elite.
32:53Pop now found himself rubbing shoulders
32:56with a new world of wealthy, upper-class passenger.
33:01So this is another of the brochures.
33:05And then you can see the routes.
33:08And he was definitely on this particular set of cruises
33:12in 1931.
33:14And here we've got some idea of the itineraries.
33:18So out of Southampton, then Villa Garcia,
33:23Casablanca, Les Palmas, Tenerife, Madeira, Southampton.
33:28Mm-hm.
33:29And Oasis and Tripoli.
33:30Yeah.
33:31I mean, the weird thing,
33:32looking at a lot of those destinations,
33:34they are probably harder to get to now,
33:36particularly Tripoli, which I've been to,
33:39than they would have been then.
33:40Yeah, they would have been very open,
33:42very different to today.
33:44North Africa was a very popular
33:46and glamorous destination.
33:48It was seen as very exotic.
33:50There was a film called Morocco
33:51with Marlene Dietrich that she starred in.
33:54Right.
33:54As someone travelling by boat to Morocco.
33:58It's at the height of Hollywood, isn't it?
33:59That's right.
34:00Everything that everybody aspires to
34:01is being fed to us through the cinema.
34:04Yeah.
34:06Fashionable travel destinations of the time
34:08were heavily influenced by Hollywood.
34:11And cruises were the best way for rich travellers
34:14to experience these distant cultures.
34:18In taking them ashore,
34:19Pop also had the opportunity
34:21to experience hundreds of new places for himself.
34:28Do you know how many different countries Pop travelled to?
34:31Yes, I do.
34:32Looking at the voyage cards and doing the research,
34:35I've done a lot of digging
34:36and put together this map.
34:39Wow.
34:39Which shows a dot for every country he visited
34:42during the interval years.
34:44He goes to Jakarta, Indonesia,
34:47somewhere I've been to.
34:48He goes to India.
34:49Yeah.
34:49He goes to the Yemen,
34:50Mauritius, South Africa,
34:52Rio de Janeiro.
34:53Yeah.
34:54He goes all over the Caribbean.
34:56Yeah.
34:57Lucky man,
34:59ticks a box I've never ticked.
35:00She goes to Hawaii.
35:01Oh.
35:01So, 1, Hawaii,
35:042, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
35:0514,
35:0716, 17,
35:09Argentina,
35:1055,
35:1036, 37,
35:1128, 39,
35:11We're already at 40.
35:13Yeah.
35:1341, 42, 43,
35:1553,
35:1756.
35:1856.
35:19I think I've done 52,
35:22but I've been back to a lot of them.
35:23And I've been going for some time,
35:25but just in between the war years,
35:26between 1990 and 1939,
35:28he does 56 countries.
35:30So, he can't have spent a lot of time at home.
35:33Oh, no.
35:34And I have to ask you this question,
35:36because it's been a theme running through my life,
35:40growing up.
35:41Did Pop, my great-grandfather,
35:43get shipwrecked during this period?
35:45No.
35:46None of the records we found show that.
35:48Mmm.
35:49Having said that,
35:50you're less likely to get shipwrecked
35:52in a time of peace
35:53than you are in water.
35:55In water.
35:56And there's a big war just about to happen.
35:58Looming.
35:59That's right.
35:59Do you know what happened to Pop
36:00during the Second World War?
36:02I don't know,
36:02but I can do some digging.
36:04Do some digging?
36:05Yeah.
36:06Get the shovel out.
36:07Yeah.
36:12They must have appeared to my great-grandfather
36:14in, like, two different worlds
36:16when he was above decks.
36:18On those luxury cruise liners
36:20compared to where he'd grown up.
36:23But the one thing I am very envious of
36:25was the time that he was travelling.
36:28Many of those places
36:29would have been pretty untouched.
36:31And the indigenous culture
36:33would have been the only culture.
36:35So I would love to have been on his shoulder.
36:42While he waits for information from Anne
36:44about what happened to his great-grandfather
36:46during the Second World War,
36:48Ross is turning to his dad's side of the family
36:50to see if there's any travel or adventure there.
36:54The family come from Norfolk,
36:56and Ross has a photo of his grandmother, Doris,
36:59to get him started.
37:00That's definitely my nan,
37:03my dad's mother,
37:04when she was a child.
37:05That's Doris.
37:06She's got eyes a bit like my dad's,
37:09which were a bit like mine,
37:10which were a bit like my son's.
37:13And that is the mother,
37:15and I think her name was Elizabeth.
37:18And they were from Norwich,
37:19as far as I know.
37:21She's married to a Hoskins.
37:24He was an Albert,
37:25who was my great-grandfather
37:27on my dad's mother's side.
37:32With the family names and places Ross already knows,
37:36he can search online
37:37for their birth, marriage and death records.
37:40Albert, Edward Hoskins,
37:42marriage and divorce.
37:43Should you look at that?
37:45And I think he worked in shoes.
37:47I'm not sure.
37:49So, Hoskins.
37:51There we go.
37:52What's that?
37:52Albert, Edward Hoskins, 23.
37:56He was in shoes.
37:58That says shoe finisher.
38:00It says here,
38:01Edward Hoskins with his father,
38:04and he is a greengrocer.
38:07Gosh, we really are knocking on the doors
38:09of blue blood here, aren't we?
38:10Greengrocer and William Wall.
38:14Ah, so he's my great-great-grandfather.
38:18He's a shoemaker.
38:20So, the guessing is here,
38:22is that Albert and Elizabeth met
38:25over a pair of size nines.
38:28What have we got here?
38:30Marriage.
38:311867.
38:33William Wall, bachelor.
38:36Father's name.
38:39Moses.
38:41Ranked profession.
38:44Shoemaker.
38:46Moses.
38:47Not a name I expected to see.
38:50Moses is my great-great-great-grandfather.
38:54I wonder if I can go further back.
38:57Baptism.
38:58There we go.
39:03Wow.
39:05County of Norwich.
39:06We're still in Norwich.
39:07That's even there, boy.
39:09Moses.
39:10Moses.
39:11Come on, Ross.
39:13It's there.
39:14Right at the top.
39:14I missed it.
39:16Moses, son of Jeremiah.
39:24Weaver.
39:25So, Jeremiah was a weaver.
39:28Right.
39:30Shall we see if we can find out about Jeremiah?
39:33Jeremiah Wall.
39:37Burial place.
39:39Oh, and look where he is.
39:40He was at Greenwich Hospital.
39:43Well, that was...
39:44Because that was a maritime hospital.
39:47I think it was.
39:49Because that's the home of the Navy.
39:53Ross has traced his family back six generations
39:56to his four-times great-grandfather, Jeremiah Wall.
40:01Intriguingly, Jeremiah was buried in Greenwich Hospital in London.
40:05Ross has travelled there to meet historian Catherine Beck
40:08to find out more.
40:10So, Catherine, what I've found out so far
40:13is that my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Jeremiah,
40:17was buried here when he was 71 years old in 1858.
40:24So, how did he end up being buried here?
40:28This was the Royal Navy Pension Hospital.
40:30Right, so it's the equivalent of the Chelsea Pensions,
40:32but for seamen?
40:34Yes.
40:34But again, I have his occupation as a weaver,
40:38not as Royal Navy.
40:40To be a pensioner, you had to have served in the Royal Navy.
40:43Right, Royal Navy.
40:44It was a very privileged opportunity to enter to the hospital here.
40:48You had to be a man of good character.
40:51You had to have had meritorious service.
40:54Really?
40:55And served a certain number of years in the Navy.
40:58Do you know how many years, Catherine?
40:59So, the minimum was 12 years.
41:01Right.
41:01A slightly jeopardous career in those days, wasn't it?
41:04Absolutely.
41:05What did he get up to?
41:06Well, let's go see.
41:11We have here Jeremiah's attestation papers.
41:15Attestation papers.
41:18I, Jeremiah Wall, do make oath that I am a Protestant
41:22and by trade a cotton weaver.
41:27I voluntarily enlisted myself to serve
41:30the 1st or Chatham Division of Marines.
41:36So, he's a Royal Marine.
41:38Yes.
41:38I know that often the Royal Marines did not get on
41:41with the crew of ships because they were there ultimately
41:44not only to fight but also to police.
41:46Is that correct?
41:47And it varied from ship to ship how much cohesion there was.
41:51Can I just say what it says here, though?
41:52It says, Jeremiah Wall, aged...
41:57Is that...
41:58But I think it is.
41:59Is that three?
42:00Yes.
42:01Aged 13 years.
42:03Mm-hmm.
42:04He's 13 and he joins the Royal Marines.
42:07Yeah.
42:07He can't go in as a soldier at 13 living a drummer boy
42:10or something like that, surely.
42:11So, maybe we could circle back round
42:12to this word that was crossed out.
42:15Private soldier.
42:17It's very difficult.
42:18Does it say drummer?
42:20Yes.
42:21So, I was right.
42:22I assumed he was a drummer.
42:23Yes, that was your first feeling was right.
42:25He's, well, he's virtually the same age as my son.
42:28Yeah.
42:28My oldest son.
42:30And I certainly wouldn't be sending him off to drum in a war.
42:33So, this is from his time at Chatham Division.
42:38Right.
42:38Can you find his name?
42:39Here he is.
42:41Jeremiah Wall.
42:42If you come to the end of the line, the rate per day.
42:45Rate per day.
42:46One shilling and three quarters.
42:50Petty.
42:51But if we come down to here, do you see these?
42:55These are the private soldiers.
42:57Yeah.
42:57Do you see how much they are being paid?
42:59One shilling.
43:00Mm-hmm.
43:00So, he's getting paid more as a 13-year-old than a grown man who's already established himself in the
43:08Marines because he's a drummer?
43:09Mm-hmm.
43:10It's a vital role.
43:11This is the way communications were spread to the other Marines on board ship.
43:15You can communicate so much more with a drumbeat than you can with voice.
43:21So, how many different patterns would someone like Jeremiah need to know?
43:28To memorise.
43:29To memorise.
43:30Yeah.
43:30Up to 100.
43:32So, you have a core set of types of beats that were put together in different combinations to call for
43:39different tasks.
43:40It's like beat to quarters, which is ready for action, but also a drumroll to get all the Marines on
43:44deck for their exercise.
43:46You have the ones for parade.
43:47You have ones for calling people to the mess for dinner.
43:51So, as a Marine, in a conflict, you're going to be above deck, can't you?
43:58You have the ones for the rest of the army.
44:07You have the ones for the rest of the army.
44:46You have the ones for themen.
44:49slightly larger perhaps pick have a look at the sticks they're considerably larger than the ones
44:54that uh even iron maiden probably use yeah yeah so do you know any of the actual drum beats that
45:01that jeremiah would have signaled yeah so one of the first things jeremiah would have played
45:06would have been for people to wake up which is ravali right so jeremiah would have would
45:10need to play something like this
45:22so you don't need an alarm clock if you've got jeremiah playing that in your ear do you
45:25no do you've got any more yep so on board ship the marines were part of the policing on there
45:30yeah um and they would also be involved with uh dishing out the the corporal punishment uh jeremiah
45:37would have then have had to help keep the pace of the the whipping so he was directing the pace
45:42at
45:42which somebody was hit with the cat nine tails or something like that yes yeah how would he pace it
45:47a steady roll stop and then that would be the bang the hits and you get it yeah can you
45:52show me
45:59oh probably the most important part of his job would have been on the battlefield so he'll play
46:02a thing called beat to quarters beat to quarters so this is the alarm to make sure that all the
46:08sailors are wherever they are on board ship get to their their quarters for for battle so this is
46:14prepare to fight prepare to fight yeah
46:24it's rising isn't it
46:28so he is intrinsic to how the ship operates and how they fight both at sea and on land
46:43very surprised to find out that jeremiah the weaver was was a royal marine and a drummer no less
46:51and he was fighting the powers of napoleon i think one thing i'm finding out both from my paternal and
46:57maternal side with jeremiah and with pop is that they were probably men that didn't like to sit still for
47:04too long and i never had they saw a bit of the world so maybe i get a bit of
47:08that from them
47:11now that ross has also found adventure on his father's side of the family
47:15with his four times great-grandfather jeremiah he's returning to his mother's side
47:21and the story that his great-grandfather pop was shipwrecked
47:25he has received information from expert anne massey a 1943 passenger list relating to pop's whereabouts
47:34in the second world war
47:38name of passenger
47:41arthur chalmer here he is
47:48it says port of emparkation the port that was leaving is casablanca
47:57hang on this is a list of survivors x the duchess of york
48:04so it would imply that he did get shipwrecked at some point
48:09that's certainly what it implies to me
48:12but if i'm going to find that out i think i'm going to have to go to
48:17casablanca
48:19play it against that
48:24ross has traveled to casablanca in morocco
48:27to see if he can solve the mystery of the passenger list his great-grandfather was on
48:33he knows pop had already visited the city when he was working on cruise ships between the wars
48:40this is my first time in casablanca i've never been here before and my great-grandfather pop beat me
48:46by some way he was here in the 30s i can't imagine how different that must have been
48:54from you know where he'd grown up in ports
48:56but it's interesting to think that i'm probably walking the same streets that he walked and he'd
49:02become familiar with it walking up from the port into the medina and yeah i can imagine him you know
49:09dropping off the passengers at the high end and he'd probably have gone to the low end which is
49:16where i generally generally end up
49:21i doubt the architecture has changed that much it must have been very similar in the 30s when he
49:26came here cruising and also when he came here during the second world war
49:35in november 1942 allied forces invaded north africa and casablanca came under their control
49:43the city became the site of a large american military base
50:06ross is meeting historian sarah louise miller to find out how pop ended up in casablanca in 1943.
50:15so the last thing i found out was that arthur chalmers which is my great
50:23grandfather appeared to be on a ship called the duchess of york and it said survivor
50:30so what happened to the duchess of york and what happened to pop this is a picture of the duchess
50:35of
50:35york so you can get an idea of what the ship looked like right the admiralty requisitions ships
50:41particularly big ones like the duchess of york because they need to load them jam-pack them
50:47with men so she's a troop carrier oh right she's carrying american troops um allied troops over from
50:54britain so there's about 600 of them on on board the plan is to go to algeria pick up more
51:01troops and
51:02then carry on to sierra leone because there's a lot of west african men that have been trained to go
51:07and
51:07fight in burma and in india wow and he was on on that ship yes and in july 1943 the
51:14ship is about
51:15300 miles off the coast of portugal the ship is in the middle of a convoy because it's so important
51:21this ship and it is massive it's the size of about three football fields that's a very very large
51:27target for an enemy they are they're a very good target so they're not safe on their own so she's
51:33surrounded by other ships so thinking the torpedo around it yeah and they're armed armed escorts they're
51:39royal naval escorts um and one of them is the hms iroquois and she fires off a signal to say
51:46that
51:47they've spotted something that's actually quite worrying and then it's a signal coming from a
51:52fokker wolf 200 condor condor is a big aircraft german luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft so they know at
51:58this point that there is a threat on the 11th of july 1943 pop's troop ship the duchess of york
52:06and her
52:06convoy were over 300 miles off the portuguese coast when three german air force planes took off from france
52:15and headed towards them so we've got a series of signals that are fired off by the hms iroquois
52:22to the naval hq in gibraltar but also to the other ships in the convoy so they can stay in
52:27communication and kind of coordinate their response this is the first one so it says naval message
52:33homing signal from enemy aircraft already sighted at 20 55 so that's nearly nine o'clock at night
52:44so it's getting dark oh well help and it's broadcast twice help help these are going out
52:51in a few minute intervals yeah emergency two ships appear to have been hit by bombs and this one
52:58confirms to your great grandfather's ship duchess of york on fire and lowering boats and the duchess of
53:06york is struck twice so her engines are put out of order and she's hit in the stern and catches
53:11fire
53:12right so obviously the next thing we need to do is evacuate and arthur is one of the crew so
53:18he's
53:18trained to do this as quickly as possible while it's on fire while it's on fire yeah and hope that
53:24your friends and colleagues will make it with you so once you've gotten off the ship and you're on
53:31another ship being brought somewhere safe you're not safe there is still the possibility that that
53:38attack could happen again that those planes could come back not great not great very cold very dark
53:46very worrying sorry i got a bit emotional it would have been a very scary situation
53:53they survived yeah they did survive 89 lives were lost from the duchess of york that night
54:01and the next day her destroyed hulk was sunk to the bottom of the sea
54:05now in one of the escort vessels which rescued him pop was still a target he and the other survivors
54:12had little choice but to risk a 700 mile sea voyage to casablanca the largest nearby port under allied
54:21control the duchess of york's captain was later interviewed about what happened next on arrival at
54:28casablanca we were lodged in an american military camp and i must say that we were shown every courtesy
54:34and kindness by the americans every man was issued with a spare american uniform and given leave
54:47so so the way the story goes because my mom was a child in norfolk um that she opened the
54:52door and pop
54:53came through the door wearing a u.s uniform and i've always saw that was a bit you made that
54:58up mom
54:59or my nan made it up and she assumed that he because the american theater of war generally
55:04was down there right so everyone assumed that he was actually shipwrecked in the southern china sea or
55:11somewhere like that um but he wasn't was it he was shipwrecked out there in the freezing cold he was
55:17shipwrecked i don't know it sounds like i'm smiling about the fact that he's been shipwrecked but i was
55:23questioning whether that actually ever happened but he's 50 years old he's not a young man is he
55:29and that's quite remarkable he's served all the way through the first world war and he goes to
55:34sea in the interwar period as well so this man is married to the sea he's he's he just keeps
55:39going and
55:40i i find that fairly mind-blowing um the kind of metal that you have to be made of to
55:45keep going to sea
55:46through two world wars two total wars and the sea is a battlefield in both of them it's very odd
55:53i i make documentaries around the world and see lots of stuff but when it's about you
55:57and all your family it has a very different impact really does
56:07not pop
56:13yeah you've got a life you had hell of a life
56:20thank you thank you
56:31it's such a complex feeling to think about somebody who
56:37i was told about all my life by my grandmother and by my mother as being this kind of
56:46interesting traveler and there are similarities that i'm drawing from understanding him
56:54that i see in myself his life was all about him doing what he wanted to do most of the
57:01time
57:05so i'm finding out basically from my great-grandfather a bit about me
57:12casa black is the last place i thought i'd end up
57:16my great-grandfather pop was shipwrecked at least once
57:23he was shipwrecked it's fact
57:29so
57:52so
57:53so
57:58so