These are the discharge papers 1913-1972 I've been looking at. There are also ships' manifests etc, and presumably these would have crew lists, but of course you'd need to know the ship, as the national archives site don't appear to list the crew names in their index.
Interestingly, my partner's discharge papers are also in the index, though he was discharged after 1972... so I'm a bit confused about what event has to fall into the 1913-1972 period to qualify for inclusion.
I believe some of the discharge papers are missing from around WW1.
I bought a digital copy of Maurice's papers today.... was a little strange for Mike to see the photo of his dad taken so many years after he last saw him... though I could definitely see a family resemblance.
On the papers they gice a different birthdate to his index date, 26th Nov 1932, which fits closer to Mike's Mum's memory of the date (she was one day out).
To be hoonest, these discharge papers don't hold a great deal of unknown data... just name, birthdate & place, address, next of kin, national insurance number and a photo... but if searching for an older record, this information could be much more useful, particularly address, which could lead to further info from the census... not to mention a photo which would be great if it was someone who was around before living memory. I'm not sure when they started to include photos, but I know my gg grandfather's UK residency permit included one int he late 19thC (he was a Danish sailor who settled here but retained his Danish nationality)... so it's possible they were attaching photos to Merchant sailors' papers quite early on.
I think we may be leaving it a little late to order a birth certificate by post from Barbados now, but with it being a small island, processing may by quite quick, so I think we may just wait til we get there and order it int he first day or 2, I think they may be able to process the same day with his exact birthdate and full name. That way we could have time to buy the parents' marriage certificate, too... which could give us the names of the previous generation and hopefully then we'll be able to find them in IGI, which is fairly complete for Barbados, but doesn't cover the period of Branforde's birth... it should contain Branforde's parents, though.
We also have other West Indian sailors in Mike's line, inparticular his great grandmother, Catherine Lyon's, father, Charles Frederick, born about 1825. He and Margaret Lyon didn't marry, but family stories tell of Nin, an Irish "grandmother", who we think was Charles Frederick's wife, Ann, born in Ireland. The Frederick family lived a few houses down from his illegitimate daughter, Catherine Lyon and her mother, Margaret, and stepfather, John Murray, a Barbadian sailor born about 1845. I can only find these men in the 1881 census... they may not have arrived before then. According to Margaret Murray/Lyon's marital status in 1891, John was still alive then, but clearly on board ship... she seems to be a widow after that. I can find no definite record of Charles Frederick... so I can't say with certainty which Caribbean island he came from, but Barbados had the largest number of immigrant sailors in the UK of all the islands... so I believe they were likely Barbadian.
Lastly, there's Thomas King, who Catherine Lyon bigamously married in 1914 after her husband, Robert Henry Colebourn "did a bunk" for a few years. Thomas was West Indian, born about 1875.... again, very likely Barbadian.
I would love to piece together more info about all of them, but of course Thomas King & John Murray aren't blood relatives... and with little time (and lots of Caribbean sun to absorb), there's a limit to how much I could hope to achieve in Barbados, especially having so little information on the earlier men.
Impy