If I can make this week's blog about Tommy, rather than Some Mother's Son, then next week's blog will be about Some Mother's Son and a little less about Tommy.
This time last year I think I was getting around 50 views a week on my blog. Now, I am getting a consistent 300 views a week. In the bigger scheme of popular blogging this may seems a wee small amount, but personally, consistency can often be the game changer. I am more pleased that people seem to be regularly checking in, than getting big audiences, then small audiences.
I know that many of you have heard these details before, but for the newer viewers, here is where we are at with Tommy Jones' story.
Tommy was reported going overboard the Northern Star cruiseliner between Plymouth, UK and Roscoff, France on the evening of the 14th June 1975. Tommy was an 18 year old chef in the merchant navy at the time. Tommy's body was never found, and apart from a four hour search by several ships at the time, no one, to date, has ever considered investigating where he may have ended up, should he have washed ashore on a coastline somewhere.
So with the help and permission of Tommy's family I have done my own research. Since November of last year, when I first met Helen, Tommy's sister, we have found out a lot of what went on on the ships back then, and have started to piece a story together of Tommy's last ten day cruise on this ship.
On April 25th and 26th this year, Brittany Ferries gave five of us, three family members, a family friend, and myself, a free overnight trip from Plymouth to Roscoff and back. They diverted the ferry on the return trip to pass over the exact spot Tommy reportedly entered the water. Brittany Ferries treated us so well, and as we left and said our thanks, the Captain, Captain Coic, said it was natural for them to help, "He was one of us", he said. Meaning: "A sailor, a voyager of the high seas".
The French press interviewed us in Roscoff, and reported our quest to see if there was any evidence or possibility that Tommy had washed ashore on the Northern coast of France, and had consequently been buried without a name. 1975 being pre DNA days.
Two days later I got an e mail from a French lady who said she and her family had found a partial skull on a deserted French island in 1984, and they still had possession of it. The island they found it on is 45 miles Southeast of where Tommy reportedly entered the water, and according to a UK forensic oceanographer, "within plausible reach, knowing the ocean currents in that area".
I collected the partial skull on May 2nd and took it to the French regional police in Brittany the next day. They took statements. I asked if they would keep it and test it. They said no. They said I was free to take it back to the UK. Which I did. I still have it.
And with a total of two visits to that police station, numerous requests for help from Hampshire Police, who are in charge of Tommy's case, conversations with forensics, an MP, the French Embassy, the situation we find ourselves in now is...Neither the French nor the British Police will, (for the time being) test the partial skull for DNA. The Forensics company in the UK will not test it either. They all have their reasons.
But we have a laboratory in France who will do a Carbon Dating test on it. They say that if the skull dates from the 1970's timeline, then it ought to be relatively accurate. The accuracy around this timeline is apparently due to the high amounts of carbon expelled into the air after the Japan atomic bombs and the level of atomic bomb testing in the 1960's and 1970's. I am no scientist, but when I googled it, it sort of made sense to me.
For 50 years Tommy's family have had little to no help in trying to find out where Tommy's body may have ended up after he entered the water.
So, after a trip 6 months ago to his resting place in the English Channel, a random e mail from a lady who found a partial skull in 1984, 4 or 5 months of doing the rounds contacting police, MP's, Embassies and forensics, we are left with a piece of speculative evidence, that in the smallest of smallest of chances, could belong to Tommy. Helen and her family realise the odds are heavily stacked against them, but who wouldn't want to find out, rather than push aside the smallest of possibilities that this could be what they are looking for.
So, to explore that smallest of smallest of chances, we are raising the money to get 0.3 grammes of this partial skull, carbon tested, to see if it is 1000 years old, 500 years old, or may even 50 years old.
It's not an exact science, and the test could always fail, for one reason or another.
I am looking to raise £950. With the help of Tommy's family, and three other people that I know, we have raised £450 so far, and that's without asking anyone else yet.
Once the money and sample are in the hands of the lab, CIRAM Forensics in Bordeaux, it will take about a month to get a result, and be aware, we are not guaranteed a result.
If any of you reading this would like to contribute to our GofundTommy campaign, please either contribute through this site, or contact me and I will send you my bank details. If any of you would like to know more, please do contact me.
I have thought hard about whether to do a direct gofundme campaign, but my gut feeling from the start was to do it out of the limelight. The French Lab are happy for me to send the sample through recorded delivery, and they are happy for the campaign to go on the internet.
It's illegal for me to have the skull in my possession, but the French Police don't want it, and on my last visit, the policeman said, "Take it. It's Yours". The British Police told me report it to the French Embassy. I did. They weren't interested. They said if the French Embassy weren't interested, then take it back to the French Police. I did. They don't want it.
The bottom line is, that we have a chance to carbon date it. If it came back as a favourable result, then we could potentially go back to both the French and British Police and say, "Hey, the timescale is right. Can you now DNA test it please".
But that's just a far off dream at the moment.
Authority says no. But I still have the skull, and someone willing to test it.
Any help with the funding will be greatfully received. But please don't feel you are obliged to help, or need to help. We'll get the money. The process makes sense. We have to test it.
On the right of the picture, Tommy's sister and nephew at Coordinates 49 degrees 22 minutes North 3 degrees 49 minutes West. Tommy's last known whereabouts.
