From the office: Beating the January blues

We’re all basking in a warm glow at Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine this week – just as well really, given the rotten weather. Our feelings of benevolence are the result of helping a reader solve a family mystery. Sounds simple, but there was more to it than that. It all started when Rosemary Booth emailed us her query…

It concerned the suspicious death of a merchant seaman, Charles Skilliter, aboard the cable-laying ship Monarch (3) off the Russian coast in 1925. Our Navy expert Janet Dempsey from The National Archives took up the challenge of uncovering the exact details of Charles’ demise.

After a lot of detective work (and a bit of luck), Janet managed to locate the relevant records tucked away at TNA, and wrote a gripping account of her search for us. Read it in our February issue, on sale from 25 January.

She suggested we contact Bill Burns, who runs the website of Atlantic Cable, the ship’s owner, for a suitable picture for the piece. Astonishingly, Bill directed us to an area of the site dedicated to Charles. It included some pictures of officer Skilliter himself, along with scans of documents detailing his maritime career, supplied by Nick Rees, Charles’ grandson.

Contacting Nick, we discovered that, like Rosemary, he was keen to unravel his grandfather’s fate. Janet forwarded him copies of the documents she’d turned up – he was delighted to finally have the answer to the riddle he’d been wrestling with for so many years. We also put him in touch with Rosemary. A doubly happy ending and warm fuzzy feelings all round!

I’d love to hear your tales of brick walls you’ve broken down for other people – or perhaps someone has helped you out with your research. You can contact me via our comments section below…