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That is very useful information - especially as it explains his musical training. The full address in the FindMyPast transcript of the census record says it's Aldershot, but the actual address could well have been Farnham. Both places are mentioned. Great to have chapter and verse on the Queen's Regulations. I'm sure his father would have been very happy for him to join the army, as his younger brother Edward by then was a bit of a tearaway - already in 1871 at Feltham Young Offenders Institution after convictions for petty crimes.

Thanks - yes, that is indeed him in 1861. There are complications with the Willis family (his mother seems to have gone walkabout several times), but the presence of his grandmother in 1861 confirms this entry is correct! He had three younger brothers who are harder to track down, but that's another story. One had persistent trouble with the law (so I even found an 1876 police mugshot of him), and the family self-destructed after the death of their father in 1877, so the youngest ended up in the Barnardo's home in Stepney. Probably the best place for him, as it saved him from the life of petty crime, he learned a trade and had a steady life afterwards.

Charles Alphonso Vine (born Horsebridge, Hailsham, Sussex, 1855), a cousin of my g-grandad, was a bandmaster in the Royal Navy in the late 19th century according to his newspaper obituary in 1909 (Bedfordshire Mercury 10 Sept 1909 - image attached). In that year he was bandmaster of the Bedford town 'silver prize' band. He had previously taught music in at least 3 schools, including some years at Harrow. I have contacted the schools (Harrow, Cranleigh, and King Edward's, Witley) for any information they may have - but I don't know where to start on finding out about his service with the Royal Navy. There is an 1871 census entry for a Charles Vine born Brighton 1856 (not Hailsham 1855), private soldier in Aldershot but this seems wrong - army, not navy, and an 1881 census entry for Charles Vine, 'attendant' at Earlswood Asylum, Reigate Foreign, born Brighton 1857, seems even wronger. The 1891 census at last makes sense - he is music master at Cranleigh, Surrey, which is one of the schools identified in his obituary.

I don't really know where to start, to find details of his Royal Navy musical service. Any suggestions welcome! I have an FindMyPast subscription but that seems of little use for this.
 

Thanlks for the reminder, Jebber! I have a few like that too - I guess most of us have. But in this case the father is named and is real, he's just disappeared from the records since his son's baptism in 1810, and doesn't even get listed in the 1841 census, yet the marriage certificate doesn't say he is deceased. The son is a tailor - but maybe he didn't even know his father's trade if they were no longer in touch. If Dad had been a silk mercer during the son's childhood, he would have been selling his wares to upholsterers, so maybe the son thought that was his trade.

Thanks, indeed so. Not only that - he and Frances did have 3 children later, but never married. If it's the same person (and the 1901 census is the only evidence we've found for this), he returned to his home town, Brighton, had an unlawful marriage in 1901 (the sister of his first wife who had died in 1898), and another, this time legal marriage in 1904, three more children, but died in 1908. In 1901 he had just returned from 9 years in Australia where he had run a successful hotel business. If it was the same person, then for about 4 years he must have had a complicated life commuting between Dartford (later Faversham) and Brighton where he had become the licensee of the Black Horse in Church Street.