Certificate of Discharge for TITANIC steward Frederick D. Ray

Seaman's Discharge Book

Booklet titled "Continuous Certificate of Discharge" for Frederick Dent Ray, who was a steward in the TITANIC'S first class dining room. This booklet was issued by the British Board of Trade that governed merchant marine ships and seamen and was used to record all of a seaman's voyage. The first page contains details about the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894. The next page notes that this is a "Renewal book/ Original lost through shipwreck." It provides Ray's personal information and a physical description. The first few voyages listed in this book were aboard the OLYMPIC in 1911 and 1912, all of which have the note "extracted from agreements," which means the information is being reconstructed from elsewhere after the 1912 loss of his booklet. Voyage no. 10 is the TITANIC voyage, from April 10 to April 15, 1912, with the destination "intended New York." The book notes the place of discharge was "at sea"-- the crew members of the TITANIC lost their jobs and their salaries when the ship went down. Ray was kept in New York after the disaster to testify before the U.S. Senate inquiry; however, by the end of June he was back on the OLYMPIC, and he continued sailing on the OLYMPIC and other White Star ships through 1914 and then he was back on the OLYMPIC in the spring and summer of 1919, when it was transporting troops home after WWI. Dent became a farmer sometime in the 1920s and lived to the age of 97.