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I never thought I’d find myself in this position but, believe it or not, I’ve just hired a Private Investigator!  Don’t worry, I’m not have Gary followed or anything just as seedy though.  I’ve hired him to find our final missing sister! 

I did manage to resist asking him if he wears a fedora and mac - I’m not sure how well that would have gone down.  I might wait until he’s actually done the job I’ve hired him for and then ask :D  He might have a sense of humour, you never know!

He seems quietly confident that he will be able to track her down and then the ball will be in her court as to whether she wants to initiate contact with the rest of us.  I do wonder if she even knows about us, whether her adopted parents told her she was adopted and whether she has actually got her adoption file.  If she does have it, I’ll be the only other child listed as she’s the second eldest - unlike Laura’s whose file includes myself, Elizabeth (our missing sister) and Tony, but doesn’t list Emma, Helen or Rachel.  So Elizabeth could be in for a rather large surprise.  I just hope it’s a surprise she welcomes!  But if she makes the decision that she doesn’t wish to have contact with us, if we can get the question as to whether she is alive and happy answered then I, for one, will be satisfied.

Wish us luck and I’ll keep you guys informed!

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Over the last 18 months, my brother and I have been trying to track down three of our sisters who were taken away from the family.  One went with her father when he split with our mother, the other two were put up for adoption.

We regained contact with the first in February 2007, due to Tony (my brother) discovering that he worked with someone who knew her and it snowballed from there culminating in us finally exchanging IM details, addresses and mobile phone numbers and have kept in touch since.  She didn’t remember any of us (except Tony) and was taken away at a very early age so it’s been around 25 years since we saw her last.  I managed to visit her in March this year and spent a couple of hours at her home.

This left two to find.  These were much harder as they had been adopted and there was every possibilty that their names had been changed.  To be honest, it was hard to find somewhere to start so I tracked down their original birth certificates which confirmed they’d been adopted and then contacted the local adoption services.  Due to being pregnany, I let searching fall by the wayside and didn’t chase up the services  to see if they’d discovered anything and was thinking about taking back up the search over the next few weeks.

So, imagine my surprise when Tony calls me early Friday evening, all excited and told me that the second sister (his full sister, my half sister) had been in touch!  She’s only been wanting to find us for the last 10 years.  It turns out that Tony dated her best friend when she was 16 and happened to have a photograph of him which she spotted a few nights ago.  They then trawled up and down a street looking for his best friend’s house and she left her mobile number with his parents.  We’ve spent the weekend catching up and filling her in on the family history (skeletons and all!)  So it’s been quite a crazy weekend.  The craziest part is that Laura got in touch with us all on her 29th birthday (Friday 18th April) 27 years later!

So now we just have one more to find.  Once again, I’ve spoken to the adoption services and they’re going to call me back (hopefully today!) and see if we can chase her down.  Obviously they won’t give me her contact details but I’m hoping they will contact her for me and that she or her parents still live at the contact address they have.  Otherwise it could become a costly endeavour. 

Wish me luck!

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My grandfather’s eldest brother Ron died during world war two. Rumour has it his mother woke up on the night he died with a premonition of his death – and told her husband that Ron had drowned at sea; a while later they received confirmation of it.

Anyway, none of his brothers knew any of the details of what happened to Ron – other than being lost at sea, so during my research I decided to make an effort to discover what happened to him.

Thanks to the phenomenal members at the Family Tree forums we’ve managed to track down Ron, the ship he was on and what actually happened.

The ship he was on was a Catapult Armed Merchantman, with 1 Hurricane fighter on board, called SS Empire Lawrence. She served in several convoys before her final, PQ16. Older readers will know that means the Arctic… LINK tells us that her final convoy set sail from Reykjavik on 21st May 1942, bound for Murmansk, Russia. Her cargo on this voyage was explosives and ammunition. On the 25th May 1942, she launched the Hurricane and Pilot Officer A J Hay attacked a formation of Luftwaffe aircraft attacking the convoy. He was himself shot down in that attack. During the attack, SS Empire Lawrence was hit by a stick of bombs from the attacking Ju 88’s, and blew up immediately, with an enormous explosion. The ditched pilot was one of only a handful of survivors of the loss.

There is a first hand account of the event from the captain who picked up P O Hay, at LINK, as well as another at LINK . One of my favourite sites to search is LINK and that turns up some verbatim accounts of PQ16 as well.

From LINK ( go to 218.pdf)
The steamship Empire Lawrence was bombed and sunk by German aircraft on May 27th, 1942, off the North Cape on a voyage from Reykjavik to Murmansk. The captain, 11 crew and three gunners were lost.

Ronald Henry Swift is commemorated on panel 43 of the Tower Hill memorial in London, LINK which commemorates men and women of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and who have no known grave.

My aunt went to Tower Hill a couple of weeks ago and located the panel to take photos. I will upload the pictures as soon as I receive them.

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