Wellington, arr. Sydney NSW, 19 Nov Reynolds, age 17, Assistant Purser, born Tasmania. Hobart, arr. Sydney NSW 17 Dec Sydney NSW, 26 Jan Reynolds, age 17, Assistant Purser, born Australia. Vancouver B. Sydney NSW 17 Feb Reynolds, age 18, Assistant Purser, born Hobart. Sydney NSW 20 Apr Reynolds, age 18, 2nd Mate, born Hobart. Reynolds, male passenger. What for me seals the deal is a nice blog post I found by Haley Hughes talking about letters her great-grandfather Geo.
I think this gives us enough broad brushstrokes of how the journey worked to finally tie all the loose ends together!
It seems very likely to me that Reynolds first came on board the RMS Niagara at Suva or Auckland on its way to Sydney perhaps to replace a sick crew member? He then continued with the Niagara on its next trip across the Pacific to Vancouver, stopping off in Honolulu for the first time in his life. Perhaps β if Reynolds was indeed the Unknown Man β this is also where he took to Juicy Fruit chewing gum, possibly as a arguably slightly unhealthy memento of Hawaii.
All the same, this was only a brief peak moment for him, for it seems that not long after this he left his life on the sea. Could it be that his experience dealing with the New Zealand gunners on board the RMS Niagara stirred something in him, causing the year-old Reynolds to sign up to fight in the Great War?
Post-WWI, the next glimpse we see of H. Reynolds Sr? Will all this be enough to track Reynolds down? The problem with ancestry. The world has many million times more data than that, but you just have to get at them the hard way. Next stop, Tasmanian off-line birth records, eh? PS: ancestry. Does this rule out H.
