How to clear your accounting before you sail

On the USS Boston during WWII, when a sailor was either Absent Over Leave (AOL) or Absent without leave (AWOL), his absence would be noted EVERY morning in the ship’s deck log.  For a ship that is working through it’s training exercises like the Boston was from June to October, this means that lots of sailors left and came back late, or decided that they were ‘free spirits’ and needed to leave the ship without leave.

This means that the longer the ship was in port, the longer the daily list was in the ship’s log every morning.  So as to not go crazy, the Navy came up with a clever method of fixing this ‘accounting’ problem: The day the ship sails, any missing sailors are transferred to the local Naval station.  On October 20th, the Boston sailed (I believe it was to Norfolk VA), forty eight (48) sailors were ‘transferred’ from the USS Boston to the navy personnel station in Boston, Mass.  The effect of this was to move the records and personal property of these sailors to Boston’s Navy office.

Some of these sailors were reassigned to other ships (after facing Navy discipline for being AOL/AWOL), and some returned to the USS Boston and faced disciplinary hearing on the ship.

So on the day of sailing we had 48 absent sailors noted in the ship’s log (including when they were absent), and the next day while under sail,  no absent sailors!  A miracle!  Actually, it served an important purpose, because while under sail important events needed to be documented in the ships log, and a lot of space was wasted on a list of people who could not rejoin the ship while at sea.

Sailor Records Update:

I currently have basic records for sailors who arrived and were transferred to/from the Boston from June 1943 to end of December 1943, I have promotions from June to Dec 1943, I am working on Notes right now (where people were reassigned, presonnel file notes, transfers to the hospital, ) from june to October 1943 and my discipline files are from June to august 1943.  We currently have 2,387 sailors in the database, I have 356 rank changes (including demotions), 96 discipline actions, and 195 notes for individual sailors.

Please use the contact form if you’d like to ask a question about the records.

-Bill