Monday 6 July 2020

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no.46

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.
Peruse and wonder.
The Port of New York on 31st July 1918 and British seaman Frederick Arthur Kennett wishes to disembark from his ship. This is his portrait on the US Seaman’s Identification Card which was required of all foreign seamen arriving in the USA during the Great War. The official opinion was, 

'...a large number of dangerous and undesirable aliens are using every effort to enter the country in the guise of seamen.... It is known that many such desert.'
  
Fred Kennett is seen here in the uniform of a chief petty officer in the Royal Navy. The Great War will be over in four months and Fred will exploit his experience to obtain a Master’s Certificate, sailing during the 1920s and 1930s from the British ports of Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff and Liverpool across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and Vera Cruz. In World War 2 he crosses the Atlantic in 1942 arriving in New York on 4th October and in 1946, at the age of fifty eight, he is in Miami.

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