Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  Big Dave is chatting with his taxi driver. Every trawlererman seems to have his own taxi driver who automatically comes to the dock to meet him and take him home. Big Dave gives me a lift in his taxi. He drops me off at the Mission before heading for his home up on the Yorkshire coast.

  The next day I go down onto the dock and see a few of the crew by the office. They have got their ‘Settlings’. Not a bad trip, but not the best, seemed to be their verdict. I say my final farewells to them as they then head off to the Subway Club on Subway Street for a few beers. I walk on up the dock looking at the trawlers getting ready to sail and reflect on the trip. It has been an eye-opener to life at sea. Whatever I do I cannot really see myself becoming a trawlerman. That, I think, is something that you are born to and is not really a career choice. In spite of that my fascination for Arctic trawlers and the life they entail is deeper than ever. I have found enough in what I have seen and learnt to know that I certainly want to do something connected with the sea and ships. Time alone will tell me what. The memories of this trip will stay with me and will never be forgotten.

  I reach the end of the dock. Lord Lovat is still berthed on the market quay. Now everyone has gone, the fish has been landed and sold and she lies on the berth, forgotten, silent, empty and dead. However, later today she will be towed down the dock where she will be refueled, fresh ice will be loaded, new and replacement nets will be put aboard, and fresh food stores stowed. Then tomorrow night the crew will return, her boilers will be fired up, generators will hum into life, lights will go on and she will come back to life. At high tide she will sail north for the Arctic again. I wonder whether I will ever return to Hull Fish Dock and the world that revolves around it. I take a last look at Lord Lovat, listen to the bustle of the dock then turn and head for Hull Station. In fact, I was to return to Fish Dock and work for Hellyer Bros. But that is another story.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Royal Navy – Officer Training

  With the innocence of youth and the blindness of inexperience, I set out on a route that would pitch me head first into the life of a Nelsonian seaman where I was to become the subject of a Royal Naval board of Enquiry on my very first day at sea. I had been struggling to decide which career path to take. In spite of my love for travel and the sea, vocational tests pointed to architecture as the best career for me. As I had some doubts, before embarking on a seven-year college course I went to work in an architect’s office in London as an ‘architectural assistant’, which was basically, an office boy. The work consisted of learning to draw different scale plans of drainage systems under supervision from one of the partners, as well as making the coffees, getting rid of unwanted sales reps, and visiting the local printers two or three times a day. Unfortunately, after working in there for nine months and seeing first-hand what the daily nine to five life of the qualified architects consisted of, I was convinced that this was not really the career for me.

  Having spent so many hours staring aimlessly out of windows dreaming of ships and the sea, I had seen an advert for the Royal Navy and decided to try and see if I could get in on a five-year Short Service Commission. I would then, hopefully, be able to say that I had done something of note that was recognized in civilian life and might even help me on in the world afterwards. So, one lunch time, I walked down to Whitehall and up the grand steps into Old Admiralty Building. I was met by a slightly surprised civil servant and I asked him, ‘Excuse me but how do I join the Navy?’ He did not seem sure, not an encouraging start, but he went away and returned with a form for me to take home and fill in. This was duly sent off. Some weeks later and after having decided that my application had been rejected, I was stunned to get a letter inviting me to the Admiralty Interview board in HMS Sultan, a naval shore establishment in Gosport.

  The Admiralty Interview Board

  This was three days of non-stop activity. The boards were run throughout the year with each board selecting two or three candidates for the next term’s entry. In our batch of applicants there were about twelve to fifteen of us, all competing for two or three places at the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, where if we were successful, we would be trained to be naval officers. Most of the activity took place in a red brick, two-storey building where we slept in a dormitory, ate in a mess room and did our written tests in the classrooms, and the oral phases of the interview process took place in a large board room on the ground floor.

  The first day was spent doing written tests. These essentially were testing us for basic literacy and included mathematics and geometry, essay writing and tests on the use of English. We also did a number of psychometric tests that looked at our abilities, personality traits and attitudes. After dinner on the first night one of the officers came in and said ‘You do not have to stay here all evening you know. Why don’t you go to the pub for a drink? It’s just down the road’ ‘How friendly the Navy is’, we all thought. So off we all trooped down to the pub. It was not too crowded. There was a mixed group of people at one table and a couple of men on their own playing darts. Most of the men seemed to have naval haircuts, but then in Gosport so did everyone as nearly everyone was Navy. Once we had got our beers, I found myself chatting to Nick, a guy about my own age who also wanted to do a Short Service Commission and had been on a trip on the Malcolm Miller, though not a full Tall Ships Race. After a couple of beers, Nick and I decided to go back to the mess but a group of the others who were beginning to enjoy themselves stayed on ‘just for one more beer’.

  In the brief that was sent to us before we came to the board we were asked to bring swimming trunks and plimsolls. The next day we found out why. At breakfast we were all given a set of navy overalls and told to wear them over our swimming trunks. As we were being mustered by the POs, Nick nudged me in the ribs. ‘Aren’t they the two guys who were playing darts at the pub last night?’ I looked across. They were! It was now clear that they had been in the pub, appearing to be normal pub goers, but were in fact watching us and our behavior once we were clear of HMS Sultan. I wondered whether those that had stayed on for another beer or three had spotted them too!

  Britannia Royal Naval College sitting high above the town of Dartmouth.

  We spent the day undergoing physical leadership tests, which took place in a converted warehouse about a quarter of a mile away. For these tests we were divided into teams of six and each team had to complete a series of six timed tasks. One person in the team was nominated by the examiners as the leader for each task, but the other members were expected to contribute ideas as the task went on. Each series of tasks involved arranging a given set of equipment such as planks of wood, wooden poles, large oil drums, lengths of rope, and heavy ropes that were suspended from the roof. The team then had to design and build a route across or around an ‘obstacle’. They then had to take an ‘object of high value’, in most cases an old ammunition box; across the imaginary obstacle in a set amount of time. For most tests there was only one way to do it and at first glance there never seemed to be enough equipment to complete the task. The nominated team leader had to work out how to rig the available equipment and then brief and lead the team in its construction. Then he had to get the ‘object’ and all his team over it in the time allowed.

  For some tests the obstacle was a 12-foot wide by 5-foot deep tank of cold water, for others just the floor, but a floor that was deemed to be a bottomless ravine and anyone or anything that was dropped was immediately deemed to be out of the game. My swimming trunks were put to good use when I lost my balance and fell into the water tank on the second test. I was then wet and cold for the rest of the morning. On the test for which I was nominated to lead the team, we had to build a rope and plank bridge across a bottomless ravine. All the time an examining officer was yelling ‘You should have finished planning it by now!’ ‘How much more chatting are you lot going to do?’ ‘You should have your bridge built by now!’ ‘You only have ten minutes left’ Get a move on! Are you sure you have done that right?’
and other such motivational shouts. I managed not to panic, and we persevered; but when we ran out of time we had not even completed the bridge, let alone got anyone across it! We were told that we had made a mistake at the beginning by misjudging the width of the gap and the length of the planks so were really doomed before we started. However, we did not lose any men down the ravine and I thought that perhaps I had shown signs of leading from the front, but even so I did not feel very optimistic about my chances of selection.

  After we were allowed to dry off and change, the rest of the day was taken up with one-to-one interviews with a psychologist who probed us about our views, family, background and our personal prejudices. There was then a further group interview. In this, a team of six of us sat before the main board and were given a written brief of the problem to be solved. In our case it was set in Antarctica where a member of a small naval survey party had been badly injured in a fall down a crevasse up on a glacier. We had to decide how to get the injured man back to base. However, there were all sorts of limitations placed on us such as the helicopter’s fuel, bad weather and other higher priority tasks for the helicopter. This was a free-thinking session with no nominated leader but designed, I think, to find out who in the group could or would take a lead and, with help from the team, think the problem out and persuade the others that this was the right solution. Our group seemed to deal with the problem rationally and each step was worked out and agreed and we got close to some form of a solution when the captain stopped us by saying, ‘OK you seem to have a fairly good handle on this. Let’s look at what you missed.’

  On the last day we met the board individually and were quizzed about our reasons for being there as well as our background and future aspirations. This was perhaps the most daunting part as the board. I was sent in and found myself in a large and otherwise empty room. The board members, six officers led the captain, sat on a low stage behind a long table. In the middle of the room, and placed on its own facing the board, was an upright chair for the candidate. I was directed to sit down on the chair. I was reminded of the painting by William Yeames of the small son of a Royalist being questioned by a group of Roundhead soldiers and titled ‘And when did you last see your father?’ The proceedings began with a general background session and then my CV was investigated. Misleading or erroneous statements in CVs were quickly discovered and no mercy was shown if anyone tried to bull their way through. A little earlier one candidate came out almost in tears after his CV was found to contain some fiction and he was left in no doubt what the board thought about it. I was then asked to point to the correct parts of a blank map of the UK when asked where certain places were located. The same test was then done on a blank world map. The Chairman asked ‘What have you done in your life that makes you feel that you are qualified to join the Royal Navy?’ I recounted my trips to sea on the Lord Lovat, the Silvana and the Sir Winston Churchill in the Tall Ships Race. Most of the board seemed to accept that as an OK thing to do. One of the officers however did not. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ ‘A Hull trawler for goodness sake!’ The implication being that a naval officer would never do such a thing. At the time I thought this was strange as surely a naval officer would and should know what life on a trawler was like but this was all part of the interview technique and was done to try and make us lose our cool. I bit my tongue and said nothing. What could I say?

  The questions resumed. ‘If you were to join the Royal Navy what type of ship would you like to serve in and why?’ Prior to going to the interview I had no idea about the different types of naval ship. They were all just warships to me and I had not thought too much about it. However, the previous day I had noticed a large model in the main hallway of an RN County Class destroyer, (whatever that was?) and an engraved plate describing the ship and all the gunnery systems, missile and special systems with which it was fitted. When I was asked the question I tried to remember what I had read on this plaque and caused a few smiles along the board when I said in a confident voice that ‘I want to serve in a County Class Destroyer because it has stabilisers, Sir.’

  After three days we were sent on our way, exhausted and confused. The board gave us absolutely no indication of how we had fared and each of us was sure we had failed to get into the Royal Navy. What would I do now? Perhaps I should now try the Merchant Navy? All they said was that if in the next week to ten days we were invited for an MOD medical examination this would mean that we had passed the board and would be selected for the Royal Navy, provided that we passed the medical tests. A week or more went by with no word, but then I received a phone call from the MOD telling me that I was invited to the Services Medical Centre in London for a full medical and dental check. Following an afternoon in Empress State Building near Earl’s Court of being endlessly prodded, poked, asked to cough, ‘now stand against that freezing cold X-ray machine’, told to put out my tongue, cough, touch my toes, and being hit with a hammer I was allowed to get dressed. ‘Right, that’s all here, now just your dental check up!’ Was joining the Navy really worth all this? Finally I was allowed to go! Happily, a couple of days later a letter arrived saying that barring a couple of fillings, I was fit enough for the Royal Navy!

  BRNC

  The Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth stands proudly behind the town, overlooking the river Dart and out to sea. A few weeks later I found myself, along with over 200 others, standing on the parade ground in the front of the college. We had been brought into the college by bus from Newton Abbot Station. As I got off the bus a petty officer yelled at me ‘Name and initial?’ ‘Gray, G.’ He consulted a list, ‘Right, stand over there by the green flag. Next!’ Why was everyone yelling? For a naval cadet on day one it was an imposing and very intimidating scene. As we waited for everyone to be sorted I looked about my new home. I felt sure that the architect, Aston Webb, had deliberately designed the facade of the college so that all the windows and tall white towers glared critically down on us. It was as if the college was already looking for our failings and weaknesses and was keeping a logbook with all the reasons why we were are not fit to follow the great naval heroes who had trod this parade ground before us.

  To our left, the gleaming white figurehead of Britannia herself, complete with her Triton, stared past us and out to sea as if we did not exist. Later we would learn that one of the biggest mistakes we could make in any written work at the college was to misspell her name. This instantly earned us the yell from the lecturer of ‘Britannia with ONE “T” and TWO “N”s’. Report to Britannia, salute her and repeat ‘One “T” and two “N”s twenty times!’ You then had to double from the classroom to the figurehead, and stand there, alone on the parade ground, saluting and calling out ‘Britannia with one “T” and two “N”s’. All the time the rest of the college watched you from the glowering windows. You only ever misspelt her name once! At the river end of the parade ground the captain of the college’s house stood in its privileged and dominant position and glared suspiciously at us all. It represented somewhere we should aspire to live one day, but really without much hope as we were mere cadets and to live in the captain’s house was something from another world.

  A young, tall and pale sub-lieutenant, called ‘SIR’ to us, took charge of about forty of us and marched us to Drake Division. Nervously, we looked about us at the long corridors with polished wood floors, the endless rows of framed photos of groups of cadets who had gone before, or of naval heroes from the past, all wrapped in the smell of wood wax polish. We went across the grand double-storied quarter deck and past the library, then up endless stairs until we were told to stop in another long, dark, wooden-floored corridor. This was the part of the college that would be our home for the next year. We were a little encouraged as the sub-lieutenant not only looked younger than some of us but seemed more nervous than we did too. I was lucky to find I was in a two-berth cabin which I was to share with a friendly Londoner called Geoff Luker. He was a friendly, easy-going guy and he and I shared
the cabin for six months, becoming good friends. In spite of all the rigours and constant demands of naval training, I cannot remember Geoff and I ever losing our tempers or falling out with each. He seemed to be able to take everything with a shrug and a smile and it helped me no end, as I tended to take things, perhaps, a bit too seriously. Unlike some cadets who had fathers in the Navy, or some form of naval family background, Geoff and I had none at all so we were able to help each other along as we unraveled the seemingly endless mysteries of naval life, its customs and language.

  Once I had settled in, one of the first things I did was to look up an old acquaintance. At school the Combined cadet Force had a Royal Naval section as well as the army and RAF sections. After a compulsory term in the army section we were given the chance to apply to join one of the others if we wanted to. The most popular was the naval section and I applied to join. The master in charge of the naval section was a teacher called Derek who was not only my physics teacher who I knew well, but also the school swimming coach, and I was part of the school swimming team. I felt that as he was a good, fair man I had a chance, but sadly my application was rejected so I had to stay in the army section and while my pals in the naval section went off for days at sea on MFVs and visited HMS Victory and modern warships in Portsmouth; my army pals and I learnt how to clean rifles and crawl through hedges and wet ditches keeping our bottoms down. A few years later Derek left the school to take up a senior science lecturer’s position at BRNC, Dartmouth. A couple of years after that, as a new cadet, I had great delight in knocking on his study door at Dartmouth. He opened it and the look of surprise on his face was a picture. ‘Crickey, Gray! What are you doing here?’ ‘I live here now Sir’, I replied, he looked at me a little mystified. ‘But you weren’t in the naval section at School!’ ‘No Sir, you may have rejected me, but the Queen didn’t.’ He smiled and invited me in for some tea.