My father had lost his discharge book in a shipwreck and never got round to replacing it. So he survived on loose discharge certificates until he got his own command and no longer needed them. This certificate shows him being signed off the Ribblemere by my maternal grandfather.

I was puzzled by the shortness of this voyage - two days - until I got copies of the crew agreements from the Maritime History Archive in Canada. Then all was explained. The ship had sailed from Swansea to Brest on a Home Trade Agreement. She was then ordered to Loctudy to load. A Home Trade Agreement covered voyages to ports on the continent lying between Brest and the River Elbe in Germany and as Loctudy was just around the corner to the south of Brest it was outside those limits. So the H.T.Agreement had to be closed and a Foreign Going Agreement opened. That lasted until the ship returned to a U.K. port, two days later. It must be one of the shortest completed Foreign voyages on record!
And as my Father had a Home Trade certificate as Mate he had to get special dispensation from the consul in Brest to sail as Mate on a Foreign voyage!

Of purely family interest, my Mother, then 18, was also on the ship, having a fortnight's holiday with her father. Possibly the first time that Mum and Dad met. Below is a picture of the Ribblemere in later life when her name had changed to Bannrose.

Bannrose

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