1940 Naval wedding

What: Alun, thanks for the video. It certainly shows a similar event. Based on that I searched again, and found a page about marriage customs from the Navy Chaplaincy, which says: "There is a custom that sailor guests will haul the car or carriage in which the couple leave the church or reception for at least a part of the way."

If anyone knows, I'd be interested to hear how this custom got started, and if it represents anything.

Who: By email from Alun -

I think the first man in the background is a Petty Officer – his cap badge looks too small for an officer, and presumably they had a PO in charge of the party. Officers would most likely have been in the church, then forming an arch of swords as the couple left.
 
The men in black appear to be local, so they may well be policemen.

And this note from Frank:

The three badge sailor is an Able Rating likewise the two badge sailor.  [...] The sailors are wearing the No 6 Tropical dress and white cap covers over black caps.

When: Frank again -

This photograph appears to be post WW2 in that the cap ribbons show HMS.  Pre WW2 the Sailors would have the name of the ship on their cap ribbons.

That's a good clue. I found a page about 'RN Cap Tallies', which says rather than "post WW2" as Frank suggests, the photo was taken during WW2:

During the two World Wars various security measures were in force concerning cap ribbons and the need to keep the whereabouts of HM Ships secret.[...] During World War II cap ribbons bearing only the letters "HMS" or HM Destroyers/Submarines" were in use.

It doesn't give an exact date when the "HMS" ribbons came into use, but 1939 seems likely. So that narrows down the dates to 1939-1941.

I tried a search for wedding in the local papers for those years - but it returned 237 results, which I can't face wading through. A search for navy wedding returned a more manageable 17 results, but none were relevant to this photo.

Where: Moddsey, the Peak Church certainly had the hillside around it, but I can't match up the view above with the photos we have of the Peak Church.

One of the newspaper articles above mentioned a wedding at St Joseph's Church. Could that be the church in this photo, with the cars and men standing on Garden Road?

Thanks for all the replies, you've helped give a clearer story of what we're looking at.

Regards, David

Good catch, thanks. I've sent a message to the HKPL, fingers crossed they'll correct it.

Regards, David

Thanks for that photo. It also shows 4 rows of four men, so that looks like the standard arrangement.

I found a photo of the old St Joseph's church. There are some similarities with the main photo above, but it's not a definite match.

Regards, David

Thanks to Paul Harrison who emailed in that Thanet gets a mention in the book "White ensign - Red dragon",  appendix page A6:

Thanet arrived in HK in 1927, it had 905 tons had 3X4 inch guns and 4X 21 TT - torpedo tubes,(21 size type?) speed 36 knots, it was built in 1919 sunk in action off Malaya 1942

Thanks to Stephen Davies for his comments:

The answer to the tradition of hauling cars is that it goes back to the tradition of pulling the skipper around (pulling the captain's barge) which, if it was a large ship, often had eight banks of oars (16 pulling crew). In very 19th century fashion, this moved ashore as a way of the ship's company showing their affection/respect for their skipper if he got married (or if he died, when they would similarly pull the funeral carriage - q.v. the Royal Navy's privilege at royal funerals (and Winston Churchill's)). There are records of the practice of sailors pulling a carriage along at rural weddings, ships ' crew often being extremely loyal to their captain (especially in sailing ship days before central drafting when the skipper was responsible for finding his own crew) - you'll find it described, I think, in the Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian when Jack Aubrey marries Sophie. I've seen a pre-Raphaelite painting of the same thing in a country church in Kent.

The argument would thus be that the person getting married was Thanet's skipper. The skipper in 1938-41 was Lionel Desmond Bryan Kenny. The trouble is that he didn't get married until 1949.

That said, within a flotilla (in this case the Hong Kong Local Defence Flotilla, HM ships Thracian (Henry Graham Dudley de Chair), Thanet (Kenny), Scout (?) and Tenedos(?)) the flotilla leader's captain would sometimes get a combined flotilla attendance, so although the photo is attributed to an AB from the Thanet, there is no reason to suppose all the matelots are from that ship or, indeed, that any of them are. A search through the papers for naval weddings in 1938-1941 would probably solve the problem...and take ages!

The chap in back is a Petty Officer (no laurel wreath round the badge, so not a Chief, circular lower part to the badge, so not an Officer). The bloke to his right has one pip on his shoulder so is probably a subaltern in some regiment wearing his blues (interesting since all the matelots are in summer whites!)

I found that Henry Graham Dudley de Chair got married on 12 Dec 1936, which is too early for this photo. (No mention of it in the HK newspapers either, so I assume he got married elsewhere.)

Regards, David

Thanks Moddsey, great to have this identified at last.

Regards, David

That's a good find - it's amazing what turns up over time!