YESTERYEAR

Can anyone identify the sailor who appears on Players Navy Cut cigarette packets?

Charlie Pottins, London, UK

  • It is said to be modelled on Charles Stewart Parnell MP, the famous Irish historical & political figure of the 1890s.

    Roy Foran, Cork, Ireland

  • The sailor was modelled on Charles Stewart Parnell MP, a famous Irish leader of 19th Century.

    Roy Foran, Cork, Ireland

  • The sailor was my great grandfather Thomas Huntley Wood. I have the photos in my possession which prove it.

    David Thomas Wood, Thornton, Fife, Scotland

  • A very good, but probably fictitious, account is given in Ian Fleming's 'Casino Royale' by the characer Vesper Lynd.

    Rick, Redhill

  • The young Captain Birdseye?

    Andrew Keogh, London UK

  • It's Keith Reid, who wrote 'A Whiter Shade of Pale', and a hundred other great Procol Harum songs. The whole story is at

    Jenny Drew, Bristol, UK

  • Thomas Huntley Wood is the sailor on the packets. He is the nephew of my great great great great grandad. My family and I are still in the process of finding our full family tree.

    Natasha Price, Newport, Gwent, Wales, UK

  • I can concur, up to a point, with the lady from Lancing who said it was Thomas Huntley Wood. I lived in Portslade as a Child, during the 1940's, and I remember him. He was a near neighbour of my Grandmother in Lower Portslade and was well known locally as the sailor on the cigarette packets. However, whilst Thomas Huntley Wood may have been the face of Players in the 1920's or 30's (I have a Player's advertising poster featuring him) I do believe that the picture on the packet is a lot older and is not Thomas Huntley Wood. In short, it is my opinion that we are talking about two different people. One appearing on the packet and the other featuring later in Player's advertising.

    John Upton, Shoreham, West Sussex, UK

  • I am currently researching the Wood family who were mariners of Lyme Regis in Dorset. My great-grandmother was the cousin of Thomas Huntley Wood( her mother was his eldest sister) and she knew him as a child from the age of 2. She was adamant that when his father died in 1882 he joined the Navy and while serving there his face and beard were used from a photograph as the basis for the illustration on the Players Navy Cut packets. She last met up with him at Lyme Regis (where he was born) in about 1936, by then he had shaved off the beard as he was fed up with being recognised as the "sailor".I would therefore concur with all those who offer Huntley Wood as the originator of the image. I would very much like to hear from anyone interested in Thomas Huntley Wood and his family in order to enable information about this family to be disseminated.

    Tony Teal, Guildford, Surrey, England

  • I am the great-grandson of Thomas Huntley Wood and have in my possession the original photo taken of Thomas in 1897 and also the advertising photo used from 1898. I would welcome any contact from Tony Teal to investigate the Wood family further.

    David T Wood, Thornton, Fife, UK

  • The Flemming book was in fact Thunderball. Domino gives a very good account of a ficticious sailor, in chapter 15.."cardboard hero".

    bren, dublin ireland

  • I'm 54 and live just outside the small Michigan village of Dexter . But I grew up in the now decomissioned coast guard house (281/279 Albion Street, Southwick. My dad (now 90 and living in Portslade) smoked Players unfiltered. He always told us that the sailor on the package used to live in "our house", after reading some of the comments, it may be possible he was right.

    Carl Thompson, Southwick, Sussex, England

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