Robert Davies
The man before he was Grandfather
A little more about the man himself
This project follows Grandfather from his teenage years into early adulthood, using a small surviving seaman's book as the doorway into the larger life around it.
The purpose is simple: to meet Robert Davies before the family knew him as Grandfather — and to preserve both the evidence and the memories that make that possible.
I'm piecing the story together from family photos, documents, ship records, remembered details, and reliable historical sources. Names, dates, places, jobs, captions, numbers, and other small clues are checked carefully. Facts are kept separate from historical context, and anything imagined is clearly labelled. Historical photographs come from real archival collections whenever possible.
Choose how you want to enter the story
The Robert project has two finished narrative editions, a living Research Notebook and a Family Album. The deeper Captain Ted material has now grown into a separate companion story — Story #2 — rather than remaining an appendix to Robert’s.
The Full Historical Edition is for adults and readers who want the complete documentary story: ships, records, family history, historical context and the life that followed.
The Young Readers’ Edition is written for ages 10–14. It keeps the real evidence and difficult questions, but organizes the central story around Bob’s own ages — fifteen through nineteen — so younger relatives can meet him near their own stage of life.
The Research Notebook holds the unresolved questions and next archival leads. The Family Album lets the photographs stand on their own.
Five Summers on the Lakes
The book, five ship summers, the life outside the ledger, and the man the family remembers.
The Book With the Red Number
The same true history, built around Bob at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen.
Research Notebook
The unresolved evidence is kept separate from the finished narrative so the investigation can continue.
Family Album
Browse the family and archival photographs without the narrative around them.
A few echoes I left out of the story
Bob the Rufous, the same waters fifty years later, Germany, and the personal connections that surfaced while reconstructing Robert’s life.
From orphaned Halifax boy to wartime master
The research that began behind Robert’s sea story now stands on its own: Captain Edward “Ted” Davies, Halifax, the sister network, Imperial Oil, the O.B.E., seventeen convoys and the Atlantic war.
Scroll. Tap. Take your time.
The stories are designed mainly for a phone or tablet. Start with whichever edition fits the reader, then scroll at your own pace.
Photographs and source references are part of the story, not decoration. Pause on them; they often contain the clue that explains the next section.
If a question remains unresolved, the Research Notebook keeps it visible rather than forcing the story to pretend there is an answer. Captain Ted’s larger story now lives separately as Story #2, with its own narrative and research record.
The aim is to leave the family two things at once: a good story about the teenager Bob was, and a careful record of what we actually know.
Brian Robert Lefebvre