Old Gaffer

Category: Royal Navy

  • Stealing

    Shoplifting I have great sympathy for those who have absentmindedly taken something and walked out of the shop, only to be nailed. I have walked into the street many times with a book, a birthday card, you name it, unpaid for. The interest in other products I didn’t buy in the end, distracted me and it was only when I was outside I found I still had the book or whatever, in my other hand. I had a friend who suffered from Alzheimer’s and would lift things in shops and casually walk out with them. His wife had circulated his photo, plus a reference from his doctor to the neighbouring shops with her telephone number and an explanation – it saved everyone stress and inconvenience.

    Burglary We lived for 42 years in a corner, detached house, were burgled six times and had my car stolen four. The burglaries started almost as soon as we moved in and were still a chance when we left. The first one had an amusing side, if being burgled can ever be called amusing. It was Saturday, 6 am, when Spicer, our Golden Retriever barked. It woke me and I told him to ‘Shut up!’. At eight o’clock I went to make the tea and found little piles of goodies, silver, cut glass etc in all the downstairs rooms, drawers ransacked and electrical goods missing. My wife joined me and you can guess the pantomime which followed, but the most interesting part, of which, was her attitude when she had almost recovered. She went from room to room, looking at the piles and exclaiming that a lot of her prized articles had not been selected by the burglar, obviously not to his taste. She was affronted.

    Car Stealing I have driven off in someone else’s car on three occasions. Same make, same colour, the key worked, and it was only when I found different contents that I discovered my mistake. In one case I thought my mates had played a practical joke by gluing a Madonna and Child to the dash My car was stolen, four times, during the period of the ‘Troubles’, a common occurrence. After a couple of instances I had a secret ignition switch fitted so that if it was hot-wired it still wouldn’t start. The lads who were stealing invariably broke into the car, pushed it down the path, out the gate into the road before starting it. On the third occasion it was found by the police half across the road. I was dragged from my bed, shown the car and asked to drive it back into the drive. My job at that time was sensitive and I would check my car for bombs, when I remembered or not in a hurry.. There were three policemen there with their Landrover. I asked if they had checked it for a bomb, they all nodded, so I got into the car and searched for the secret switch. While I was searching I noticed they all retreated to a safe distance – the liars. I guessed it was joy-riders not the IRA, they would have left the car in the drive. I smiled, thanked the police, drove in and went back to bed.

    The Theft Of A Grandfather Clock The most awful event of stealing, was perpetrated when I was at sea, well, not exactly at sea, rather on it, at anchor. The whole ship’s company was embarrassed. We had taken a convoy out into the Atlantic and there was a delay in picking up the one coming back. Our Skipper, a Scott, was basically a kind man and took the ship to a bay in the north of Scotland where, in peacetime he had fished. When we arrived and dropped anchor all hell broke loose ashore, because the residents thought we were the advance guard of a defence force and Scotland was about to be invaded. The Home Guard was called out, phoning and all else took place, with the result that when they discovered we were just visiting, the relief had a profound effect. It was Sunday and the pubs didn’t open on Sunday in Scotland but this one did – and how. They had cases of fishing flies and some of the men were given these as souvenirs, drink was on tap, we ate and by the time we went back to the ship we had had an extraordinary day. It was late at night when we were woken and the ship was searched from end to end. Someone – I assume, obviously drunk – had stolen the grandfather clock from the hotel hall, wrapped it in a rug and smuggled it on board. Every mess was searched – nothing. Hammocks were examined, those slung, those still in the hammock rack – nothing. Then the ship rolled as it did, invariably, and a loud ‘Dong’ was heard. The clock was well concealed but it could still chime. The Skipper and the crew were fit to be tied. The miscreant was sent back to the hotel, with the clock and the rug, in the whaler, under guard, to apologise, before being courts marshalled.

  • The First day Afloat

    Travelling since early morning, provided with food vouchers, eating on the run was difficult. The trains were full, and one spent the journey uncomfortably seated on a suitcase, while guarding a small case and kit bag, with a hammock in the guard’s van, At big junctions there were barrows selling sandwiches and tea and there were always the canteens run by the Salvation Army ( God Bless ’em ), but the problem was that, if you were alone, you risked having everything stolen, or had to take it with you to make a purchase, and risk missing the train. One tended to buy food at termini and not on the way. When I arrived at the ship, it was late afternoon, she was about to leave harbour to pick up a convoy in the North Atlantic. My first impression was of how small it was, two hundred and fifty feet odd in length and only twenty odd in the beam was not what I had expected, but as I was hurried aboard and sent straight down below, I saw little in that first glance.

    After saluting the quarter deck, giving my name to the Boatswain’s Mate, I dropped my hammock and kit bag through a hatch and followed gingerly down a steep steel ladder into a world of new noises and smells. The nickname for those ships was the ‘sardine tin’ and it was apt. Passing on the corridors, or ‘flats’ as they were called, was an intimate affair and all living a prescription for claustrophobia, even before they battened down the hatches on us at times of action. There were strict levels of social strata, unwritten rules concerning movement from one stratum to another and relationships across strata boundaries, but these rules, provided stability if not confidence. I had arrived just as the evening meal was concluding and someone asked me if I was hungry. I was starving, and was presented with a huge plate of roast meat, potatoes, and vegetables all swimming in greasy gravy. I tucked in. I have written elsewhere of my initial problems with being a Hostilities Only rating and in living in the Petty and Chief Petty Officers’ Mess.

    We left the Firth of Forth even before I had finished eating and for a while I tried to get myself sorted. We sailed north and then followed a route the men referred to as ’round the North Cape’, which I took to mean through the Pentland Firth, and out into the Atlantic. That was where we really found the weather. The ship rolled and pitched for all she was worth and it was then I regretted the roast dinner; I was ill.

    At some point later, one of the Radar operators came and told me that one of the sets had broken down and that I would have to fix it. Seasickness was no excuse and duty came first, so I went. I discovered that soldering was called for and that was my personal Waterloo, in more ways than one. The radar set I was working on was large enough for me to be able to fix a bucket within its confines and use it as needed while breathing in the cloying and stinking fumes of the soldering flux, which only added to my nausea as I hung on for dear life, while the ship tossed itself about. At the same time, I was trying desperately to give a good account of myself on my first trial. From that moment until we brought the convoy to harbour more than a week later I was permanently ill, I could not bear the heat of the air at hammock level and slept on the floor of my office, which was not much better as the steel floor vibrated in tune to the engines. I prayed for death and gave not a single thought to those who would accompany me. I was prostrate, in pain and almost demented. When I ultimately went ashore, the jetty appeared to be rolling and pitching as the ship had, until my brain got itself in gear. This affect is not uncommon after very bad weather. The strange thing is that after that voyage, in similar circumstances later, irrespective of the weather and not withstanding that some of the experienced men around me were sick, I was never ill again.

  • Naval Life in 1940

    The Changes WW2 Wrought On The Royal Navy 2 Once it had dawned on the Government that the war would not be over in a month, and Dunkirk reinforced this thinking, people were inventing new, and improving existing weapons and systems. fast, resulting in a constant state of change within the services. New categories of ranks were created, space had to be found for the new equipment and what was generally more difficult, for the men to operate and maintain it. I was one of those men and, to complicate it, I held a seaman’s rank, was educated to the level of a Petty Officer and dressed like one, without the gold-braid. I was a Leading, Wireless Mechanic later to be called Radio Mechanic, responsible for the maintenance of the Radio and Radar transmitters and receivers on the ship. The Chief Bosun, the Lower Deck mover and shaker, was at a loss where to put me, especially as the ship was crowded already. Unfortunately I finished in the Chief and Petty Officer’s mess, resented for my age, inexperience, being a Hostilities Only rating, and not having had to earn such an august place. Day and daily I paid dearly for that decision because I was resented by most of the members of the Mess.

    We collected convoys at the mouth of the Thames and took them out into the North Atlantic to join other ships, and shepherded other ships home from the Atlantic to the Thames. From somewhere off Lowestoft, right up and beyond the Tyne minesweepers cleared a path for us and our charges, and buoys marked the cleared path. Over this stretch we were generally at action stations, especially at night. Then Jerry thought up a new strategy. He had fast torpedo boats we called E Boats. They were made of plywood and effective. They would tie up to the buoys in the dark and when the radar had an echo, initially it was ignored, thinking it to be the buoy. Then after a few ships had passed, Jerry would flash into the middle of the rest and sink a few, causing chaos. That stretch of water was called E Boat Alley. The Admiralty then inducted German speakers, who sat up at night listening for the plain language between the skippers of the E boats. What goes around comes around. Having to find accommodation for them, a new Engine-room artificer, a Gunnery-artificer, the two German speakers and someone else, they took a small compartment 3.5m square and made a Mess for specialists, a place where we ate, slept, and lived when off watch, I was included and swapped my durance vile for overcrowded camaraderie.

  • ‘Hells-a-poppin’

    We were entering harbour with our new Skipper in charge and most of the crew were getting into what was referred to as their Number Ones, their shore-going gear, their Sunday suits, when suddenly we were thrown to the deck. We’d hit the harbour wall. It was at the time when our place at the head of the convoy as Flotilla Leader had been usurped and we were demoted because of the rank of our new Skipper. No one was pleased with the situation and, if by chance he had won the Irish lottery, the crew would have griped that he had managed to do it when the kitty was low, that was how they felt about the state of things. He, the Skipper, had inadvertently called for ‘full ahead’ when he had meant ‘full astern’, or that was the gossip, the scuttle-butt. That was not what annoyed the men, they would have applauded the act if it had come off properly, but the idiot had managed to hit a rubbing strake, a fixed fender made of hardwood which was attached to the harbour wall just for that event, instead of hitting the wall itself. The blow had been fended off to some extent and all that was damaged was the Skipper’s pride and a few of the bow plates; instead of shifting the engines on their mountings and putting us into dry dock for a month with oodles of home leave. He was not popular. What was worse still was that as we were shortly due for a boiler clean they proposed putting a collision mat on the bow and sending us off on convoy next day, with the pumps trying to keep the water down.. A collision mat is a heavy tarpaulin which is tied over the hole and mainly held in place by the pressure of the water as the ship ploughs through the waves. It is a bit more scientific than that, but that’s the main idea. The whole business had been totally mishandled as far as the lower deck was concerned.

    During the previous trip I had developed severe tooth ache and as the Sickbay Tiffy was not licensed to do dentistry I had to be content with pain killers until we reached Sheerness. There I went ashore to the Naval hospital and was attended to by a Surgeon Captain Dentist – a four-ringer, no less. “Does this hurt?” he asked tapping a tooth and trying to anaesthetise me at the same time with a waft of stale gin. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Nor this?’, tapping again. ‘Ouch’ I said. I’m no stoic. ‘Right!’ he said, but I could not answer as I had a mouthful of his right fist. There was a push and a pull, a quick tweak, and there was one of my sacred molars at the end of his pliers. He admired it from every angle. ‘Nothing wrong with that one,’ he said, ‘Must have pulled the wrong one’, he added. ‘Had to come out sometime. Open wide!’

    I was sore and annoyed and fed up into the bargain. It was raining cats and dogs. I had missed the rest of the crew who were off somewhere and so I mooched the streets until I espied a cinema with a film called ‘Hells-a-poppin”. It is that daft film where a man comes on at the beginning of the film with a pine tree sapling in a pot, and all through the film he reappears with it having grown more and more each time until in the last reel the tree is on its side, on a low loader, with a bear up in the top branches. The film cheered me so much I nearly forgot the incident, the idiot dentist, his halo of gin, but not ‘Hells-a-poppin”. Think what I could have claimed from the Government today for incompetence.

  • That 1st Day In The Navy

    The Chameleon Theory Seven years old, now inured to Africa, I adopted a chameleon. We watched one another, daily, although it mostly watched insects – as dinner – from a bush beside the front door. I was enthralled by the stillness of this ugly creature, its strange jerky movements, and the speed of the rapier-like thrust of its long tongue. It was probably there because the door had an insect screen and at night fall the light from inside attracted insects, an electric larder. My father kept repeating that old clich?. “Do you want to know how to drive a chameleon mad? Set it on a tartan rug’. I spent some part of every day watching the mostly motionless, bulky body supported on its spindly legs, change hue as the sun moved round, wondering if it really could assume the pattern of a tartan. Years later I devised the Chameleon Theory which states that an individual, in the presence of strangers and acquaintances, changes his identity by an amount
    proportional to his degree of insecurity. The ‘telephone voice’ is a common example. where the accent changes as soon as the instrument is lifted.
    The theory was formulated on that horrendous ‘first day’ as a sailor. I was instructed to report to the recruiting office and there joined about five other sheepish youngsters with a general air of quiet trepidation and no idea what awaited them. I remember we hung about quite a lot, a foretaste of long periods of hanging about to come. We did some form filling, were sworn in, given travel warrants and some documentation, and then were sent on our way to Skegness via Victoria. The change in one of our number as soon as we were clear of the recruiting office was amazing. Another chap and I chatted quietly. One man was quiet to the point of being stolid and kept himself to himself, but there was one, Smith, who made the trip a real event. The further the train went the further from home we all were, which seemed irrelevant to the rest of us, but it was having a marked effect on the man in question. I would guess he had a Chameleon Factor of about 90%. He started by making a great play of offering cigarettes and lighting up with a great flourish. This he followed with expletives interspersed with bawdy comments and by the time we reached Victoria, no real distance, his language was appalling, and he was beginning to assume what he believed were the attributes of Jolly Jack Tar, I had the impression that even his gait had a roll to it, but that was only the curtain raiser.

    We crossed London to Liverpool Street Station and a long delay. Smith insisted we should all adjourn to the Salvation Army canteen supplying tea and food on one of the platforms, for servicemen passing through, Smith by now was convinced he was a sailor through and through even in civvies. Servicemen rarely wore civvies in early 1941, they would have been excess baggage we could all do without, our issued kit was more than enough when it included a hammock and bedding. We were stupid enough, or too reticent to object when this idiot over-ruled us. We felt extremely self-conscious at presenting ourselves for free meals when we still thought of ourselves as civilians. We wanted to go to the buffet but apathy and his persistence won the day. I can still feel the embarrassment as this idiot sat shouting his bragging, implying we were all well seasoned sailors on leave, fooling no one but himself, but including us by implication in his shoddy fantasy world. Even when later he was in uniform and went ‘ashore’, (the Navy’s name for leave from any base be it afloat or concrete) he implied he was always just back off convoy with tales of derring-do. No one believed him as the people of Skegness would know he was from the Butlin’s camp, Life in the services, and especially the Navy is a very intimate experience and tolerance is paramount for the general good