What can be achieved with your Coastguard Ancestor Research. Three things are necessary: Patience, Patience, and more Patience. There are many Coastguard service records at National Archives, Kew. London. With a little luck you can find out all about ancestors personal characteristics, postings to stations, conduct medals, pensions etc. Add in a few family photos, letters home, station photos etc. Suddenly the man is alive again and a valuable addition to the members of your Family Tree....
John Frederick George Blanchard: Coastguard and Navyman
John F G Blanchard was born in 1856 in Deptford, London. His mother Sarah Ann Fittock, granddaughter of a coffee and eating house keeper of Deptford, and his father John Blanchard of Winchester Hampshire, a naval dockyard carpenter, married on 30th September 1855 in Deptford. Their six children were born in Deptford.
They named their first child using both their father's names. John Frederick George Blanchard was born on 25 August 1856. A brother who only lived a few weeks followed him and then his four sisters: Alice Mary Ann, Emma Sarah Ann, Keziah Elizabeth, and Ada Abigail.
Although the family grew up in Deptford in the 1881 Census they were living at 11 Duke Street, Portsea Island. John senior was working as a joiner, and Keziah and Emma were employed as stay fanners (i.e. corset makers). The census shows John junior as an able bodied seaman aboard The HMS Duke of Wellington in Portsmouth Harbour.
Service Record of John Frederick George Blanchard, Number 55592:
Joined 1871
10 year period of engagement began 25.08.1874 - 17454B
A small point, but the initial rate should read B1C and then Ord. For the uninitiated the first is Boy 1st Class and the second is Ordinary Seamen.
The transition from Boy to Ordinary could not take place until the mans eighteenth birthday was reached, at which point he could then sign on for 10 years continuous service in the navy.