C is for - CHRISTENINGS - Blogging from A to Z April 2020 Challenge!

Today C is for CHRISTENINGS - those with ship's bells  

Blogging about British Columbia Genealogy Resources

Some years ago, happily trolling through old newspapers, I came across several articles about christenings of children on ships - with the ship's bell being used as the font. If you had family members in naval service, this may be of interest to your family history. 

On investigating, I learned that this was a time honoured naval tradition. Children's names were usually added to the bell, and the salt water used would be returned to the sea. At the Benson family christening in Winnipeg's HMCS Chippawa in 1946, the sea water was brought from Vancouver.¹ Christenings could, of course, take place far from home, depending on where the naval parent was. 

I soon found that the CFB Esquimalt Naval Military Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, had started a database with the names and dates of christenings as inscribed on the bells in the Museum's collections. I'm pleased to see that the Museum continues to add christening inscriptions from ship's bells in other Canadian collections to that database. 

Because the locations of decommissioned ship's bells are not always apparent, the Esquimalt database includes the ship's name and the location of the bells. Another Esquimalt project, "Where the Bells Are",  is documenting the whereabouts of all individual Royal Canadian Navy bells.

The bell from HMCS Swansea, built at Esquimalt and launched in 1942, is now at the Canadian War Museum and can be seen here on the Museum's website -  on it three children's names are inscribed. (CWM 19660080-001)

And appropriately, seen here is the chapel christening bell from the now closed Royal Roads Military College on Vancouver Island, located a few years ago at the Protestant Chapel of the Royal Military College of Canada in KIngston, Ontario where it's been used for at least one christening.² Some of this bell's earlier inscriptions will be from christenings in British Columbia at Royal Roads. 

Baptismal font bell, Chapel, Yeo Hall, Royal Military College of Canada, KIngston, Ontario, Canada. Photograph by Victoria Edwards, 2011. CC BY 3.0. From Royal Military College of Canada, Wikimedia Commons.

The first christening at Royal Roads was in 1942 in the main wardroom for Edward Moncrieff Sellers,³ whose father was then HMCS Royal Road's ship's surgeon.

I've kept up a little database of newspaper articles myself, mainly to do with Canadian families;  most from the 1940s to 60s. E-mail me if you'd like a lookup. 

References:

1. Winnipeg Free Press, Tuesday, 12 February, 1946, page 8. Includes a photograph. 
2. An article, "P. RRMC MEMORIES, Royal Roads Military College – Ships Bell" posted 31 January 2010, at eVeritas has more information. 
3. Winnipeg Free Press, Friday, 2 January 1942, page 8, "Ship's Bell is Christening Font for Officer's Son". See also The Daily Colonist, Saturday, 3 January 1942, page 6.