Uncover objects from the Titanic, find out about life at sea and learn about the port of Liverpool.
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Uncover objects from the Titanic, find out about life at sea and learn about the port of Liverpool.
Maritime Archive and Library
Reference number DX/991
Thomas Holding was born in 1749 and served at sea during the early years of the Napoleonic Wars.
This certificate verifies that he was unfit for sea service and had been rejected as a volunteer for the Royal Navy as a result of deafness in the right ear.
This document would have been very important to Thomas Holding as it granted him immunity from impressment, and even imprisonment, during a period when the Royal Navy was in desperate need of more men to crew the warships fighting the forces of Napoleon.
The full document reads:
'PORT OF LIVERPOOL
THESE ARE TO CERTIFY that the Bearer hereof Tho[ma]sHolding / AB [Able Seaman] hath been examined by me, and found UNFIT for his Majesty's Sea Service, from Deafness by Abcess in right ear, having offered himself as a VOLUNTEER to serve in his Majesty's Navy, but rejected for said complaint.
The said Tho[ma]s Holding is 46 years of age is a Native of Ramsay in the Island of Mann and Kingdom in the Isle of Man. Five feet six & half inches high, brown complexion, black hair, tied hath deafness by abcess in right ear.
Given under by hand in Liverpool this twenty fifth[?] Day of July 1795.'
The document is signed as approved by the 'Regulating Captain' and the 'Agent and Surgeon for Sick and Wounded Seaman and Surgeon to Prisoners of War at this Port'.