SOMERTON MAN MYSTERY: A CARL WEBB THUMB PRINT?..UPDATED CARL WEBB HAD A BRITISH PASSPORT....

...MERCHANT SEAMAN'S
IDENTIFICATION CERTIFICATE...

The Administrative Authority in 1944 was the 

United States Coastguard:

....This Merchant Seaman's Identification certificate is dated 1944 so it is a little later than the years we think Carl Webb served on the Golden Sun, still awaiting responses from a couple of sources in the US on that issue....

If we are fortunate and we manage to get a copy of Carl Webb's document and assuming it is the right Carl Webb, we may find a real bonus because these Certificates of Identification carry a thumbprint of the owner of the document, at least that was the case in 1944:

And here's a Certificate of Service from 1937 which is exactly in the right time frame. You will see that the administrative authority in 1937 was the United States Department of Commerce:

 I don't have the Identification document for this man, it would be interesting to see whether there was a thumbprint on that document as was the case in 1944.

It's a big IF we have the right man and right now we don't know that for certain. 

Here's what we have:

1. Merchant Seaman by the name of Carl Webb who, according to the Aliens Crewman form, was the same age as Carl (Charles) Webb. 

2. In recent days it looks as though we have a height for our Charles at 5' 8" and that matches the height of the crewman AB Carl Webb who sailed aboard the SS Golden Sun in the 1930s. 

3. We know that in all likelihood he would have had a British Passport stamped  'Commonwealth of Australia'.

4. We also know that it was common practice for Alien crewmen to take on US residence which might explain the Column of 'American' found on the Alien crew form.

If the man's details are a complete match including place of birth, we might also have the thumbprint which we can compare to the fingerprint record of the Somerton Man. 

I should qualify this point because some years ago when examining the fingerprint form, the form itself had not been certificated, we don't have Jimmy Durham's signature on the form nor anyone else's.

In the meantime, we wait and hopefully get a response from the US sooner rather than later.

Could we be that lucky?

UPDATED

We now know that according to Ancestry records the Able Seaman Carl Webb was 'English' nationality.

This means he had a British Passport. As per previous recent posts on this topic, British passports were issued to Australians in those years.

We also know that a search on Ancestry for Carl Webb born in 1905 or 1906 in the UK, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales returned no results.

It is looking increasingly like we have found Carl (Charles) Webb serving on a US merchant ship, SS GOLDEN SUN in November 1934. THIS SHIP AND OTHERS OF THE SAME LINE REGULARLY CALLED INTO AUSTRALIAN PORTS

BRITISH AUSTRALIAN PASSPORTS

A copy of a 1934 British Passport with 'Commonwealth of Australia' and Coat of Arms beneath it.

Australians were regarded as British Subjects until 1949. Thus the term ENGLISH was regularly applied to Australians working abroad.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES:

A copy of a record form, Merchant Marine from US Archives. As you can see they hold a full set of fingerprints. Should point out that the date on this form is 1945, I am not sure when they started recording fingerprints.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Whilst this is encouraging news, we really do need to see his Merchant Seaman ID documents or at least the record of them to be absolutely certain and the process for obtaining them is underway. 

We should bear in mind though that prior to 1949, Australians could only hold the status of British Subjects. Hence the use of the term 'ENGLISH' on the crew list included those who were born in Australia.

It is possible that other British Territories issued British passports to their citizens. If that was the case and another person called Carl Webb of the same age and height were to be found in those records then this would be a different outcome. We must await the responses from the USA.