Royal Marines Victorian activities

[Ray Lewis]

Can anyone help? John Henry Denny, my wife's grandfather was a Royal Marine from 1877 - 1898. All of his time as far as I can make out was spent as a private. His service record has a mystery that I can't solve because the fold in the original has obscured some of the information.

The problem is this - he embarked on what looks like 17 March 1893 on or for something that looks a bit like "Cynsia per Lyons". He was involved in this venture until 14 July 1894 (there are two entries - one ends 31 Dec 1893 and the other begins 1 January 1894 - standard practice as far as I can see). The comment under Cause of Discharge from Division or Ship is "Paid Off"

Does anyone have any knowledge of what he could have been doing for this 15 months? (Lyons, France isn't near the coast, though the Gulf of Lyons is a large bay bounded roughly by the Franco-Spanish border and Toulon.)

My knowledge of Victorian era history and politics for this time is limited to knowing that Victoria's jubilee was 1894 and that it was a time of rivalry between France and Britain in Africa. Was there a de-facto blockade of the French coast by the British at the time?

Any comments and assistance please would be met with gratitude.

Thanks in anticipation
Ray Lewis
Western Australia

[busyglen]

Ray, you might like to try here: www.rmhs.co.uk

I had a query recently regarding my father's service in the RM during WW1 and someone kindly gave me the above link. I wrote to them with my query and had a marvellous response. Someone went to Kew and dug out all sorts of information for me. It's free as they are a charity, but I made a donation to their funds, for all the help given.

Being an historical site, they are probably the best people to help you. It's worth a try. :)

Regards

Glenys

[busyglen]

Ray, sorry....just realised you are in Australia, and they don't have an email address. Still, it's always worth a letter, even if it is snail mail! ;)

Glenys

[Ray Lewis]

Hadn't known about the RMHS. Perhaps I'll get one of my wife's UK relatives to give them a call. After all, they are all descended from the bloke, so they should be interested.
Ray

[busyglen]

Hope they can turn something up for you Ray. Good luck!

Glenys

[Ray Lewis]

Further to my earlier postings, I have been reading John Henry Denny's service record once again. I had noticed before but it hadn't sunk in that under the headings "Towards GC Badges" and "Towards Pension" he has a two day period marked "Cells" and two 14 day periods marked "C". The first 2 day period and the first 14 day period fall in the mystery time of his service that I can't decipher. At that time he had been a RM for about 15 years (all as a private) and had not spent any cell time and nothing is expalined about the "C" annotation.

Can anyone throw any light on these annotations?

Thanks
Ray

[busyglen]

Hi again Ray,

This might be of some help to you.

Sorry, can't copy and paste for some reason, and it's a long ulr, but if you go to Google, and put in Royal Marines Abbreviations, it comes up with a list that gives you all of the terminology used including Cells.

Failing that, it comes from www.royalmarinesmuseum.co.uk website.

Glenys