We Joined The Navy

by John Winton

  ‘Buck up, you guys,’ pleaded the Cadet of the Watch. ‘I’m catching my death of pneumonia standing here.’

  The Junior Cadets, sensing like new boys at school that it would not be wise to offend their seniors from the start, hurried on board and stood in a miserable huddle on the quarterdeck. In his haste Ted Maconochie accidentally trod on a red setter dog which had been inspecting the new cadets from the side of the quarterdeck. The dog gave a howl and flashed out of sight down a hatch.

  ‘Look, you fellows,’ said the Cadet of the Watch. ‘Thin out a bit, will you? Get going. You worry me. You bring back my horrible past. Hey Bluey!’

  The Bosun’s Mate, who was already halfway towards the snugness of the quartermaster’s lobby, turned reluctantly.

  ‘Show the sprogs the messdecks, will you?’

  ‘O.K. Whacker.’ Bluey nodded to the cadets. ‘This way, you guys.’

  Bluey led them forward and down a ladder to a large compartment. The deck of the compartment was covered with corticene of a depressing sickly green colour. Pipes, cables, trunkings and hammock bars ran overhead. Bare tables and benches were placed in rows on either side. A couple of Royal Marines looked morosely at the new cadets from a serving hatch. The atmosphere of the compartment was one of utility; it was plainly a space to be used and quitted as quickly as possible. It had the odour of Oliver Twist’s workhouse. It was not a room for the enjoyment of meals but a site for the eating of sufficient basic food for survival against a pitiless life. It was the Cadets’ Messdeck.

  The problem of accommodating over 200 cadets in a limited space was solved by strict allocation. Every cadet was fitted into a niche, a cell in the honeycomb, from which he was not allowed to move. Barsetshire’s Chief G.I. met the cadets on the messdeck and organised their joining routine. He portioned them out into divisions, into classes, into watches, and into parts and subs of watches. He allotted them a gunroom in which to stow their books and instruments, a mess table at which to eat, a slinging billet for their hammocks, a chest for their clothes, and a bathroom to wash in. The Chief G.I. impressed on the cadets that they were not to stow their books, sling their hammocks, eat their meals, keep their clothes or wash themselves in any other place than that allotted to them. The Chief G.I. gave each cadet a ship’s book number, a gunroom number, a mess number, a slinging billet number, a chest number and a bathroom number to help him remember. Finally, each cadet was given a name tally which he pinned on his jersey so that any officer or petty officer could know his name without troubling to ask him.

  ‘All I need now is a suit covered in broad arrows and a pick for breaking stones,’ said Paul and straightaway learnt the first lesson of the Cadet Training Cruiser which was that idle jokes always recoiled on their author’s head. The Junior Cadets were ordered to shift into overalls, given hammers, and spent the afternoon chipping paintwork on the upper deck in the rain.

  After tea the Juniors mustered on the messdeck for a speech of welcome by the Cadet Training Officer. They had heard that Barsetshire had a new Cadet Training Officer, a man keen on training, who had arrived with the intention of setting Barsetshire and its cadets to rights. The Juniors awaited his arrival with almost as much trepidation as they had awaited the arrival of The Bodger, long ago on their first evening at Dartmouth, although their anxiety was now tempered by the knowledge they had gained from Dartmouth, that nothing in the Navy would ever turn out to be as bad as it sounded in the speech of welcome.

  The Cadet Training Officer’s arrival in Barsetshire was preceded by almost the same preliminaries as The Bodger’s had been at Dartmouth. The Chief G.I. first ran a disillusioned eye over the rows of cadets and reported to the Cadet Gunner, Mr Piles. Mr Piles then came and glanced round the messdeck, presumably to test the evidence of the Chief G.I.’s eyes, and went away to report to the Cadet Training Officer. A file of assistant training officers, divisional officers and instructor officers came in and sat down in the front row. After them came the new Cadet Training Officer; he was, unmistakably and without any shadow of doubt, The Bodger.

  The Bodger appeared to enjoy the mingled astonishment and consternation which his familiar figure had caused. He himself had only just recovered from the shock of his new appointment. He had received the appointment because he had broken one of his own stoutest maxims. The Bodger had done a thing which he himself had warned the Beattys never to do. He had spoken idly to an Admiral and he was now reaping the consequences.

  ‘I’ve cast my bread on the waters,’ The Bodger said to his wife when he opened the envelope and read his appointment, ‘and it’s come back like a bloody boomerang and caught me a dastardly blow behind the ear.’

  The Bodger looked round at the faces of the cadets who had been Beattys as though he were refreshing his memory of them.

  ‘Well,’ he said, grinning, ‘this is as big a surprise to me as it is to you. I don’t think there’s any need for me to introduce myself. Those of you who were Beattys are old enemies and should know my name by now and those of you other lesser breeds, without the law, will soon be able to find out. I don’t know very much more about this ship than you do. I only joined it myself three days ago. So I can’t tell you much about the details. You’re going to do two cruises in this vessel. This time we’re going to the Mediterranean, next cruise to the West Indies. You’re here to learn some of the practical side of your profession. You learnt a lot of theory at Dartmouth, here you’re going to put in into practice. There are very few seamen in this ship. You’re the seamen and you will have to live and work as they would have done if they had been on board. I can’t tell you much more than that just now. I’ll speak to you all again later. All I can do now is welcome you to the ship and hope that you get full value from your time here. Your divisional officers and I will do our best to see that you do whether you intend to or not. I think that’s all. Unless you’ve got anything to add, Mr Piles? No? Well, that’s that.’

  The cadets rose as The Bodger put on his cap.

  ‘Oh, one more thing,’ said The Bodger at the door. ‘The cadet who kicked the Captain’s dog immediately on joining the ship, report to my office.’

  The senior cadets had rejoined Barsetshire a day before the juniors and once the junior cadets were on board the ship lost no time in leaving England. It was as though, having once let the new cadets have a glimpse of Barsetshire, the Captain was anxious to put to sea before any of them had an opportunity to break ship.

  Passers-by on the dockside the next morning observed intense activity in Barsetshire. The ship swarmed and hummed with life from stem to stern and from masthead to waterline. Parties of cadets were doubling from the quarterdeck to the fo’c’sle, milling about for a few minutes, and doubling aft again. Other cadets were playing an endless game of tag up and down the ladders leading to the bridge. One group of cadets by A turret were hauling on a rope, unknown to a further group on the other side of the turret who were hauling on the other end of the rope. Periodically a cadet with a piece of paper in his hand doubled forward along the upper deck, disappeared round the other side of the ship and reappeared a few moments later still doubling forward and still carrying the piece of paper. Boats were being lowered, hoisted, re-lowered and again hoisted. Flags were run up to the yardarm and hauled down again. Decks were scrubbed, covered in ropes, tackle and grease, and again re-scrubbed. The whole scene was orchestrated by shouts, cries, oaths, pipes and bugle calls.

  After half an hour, the spectators on the dockside had split into two main groups. The first thought that it was all some form of new evolution connected with defence against atomic attack and the second--with a taste for the dramatic--maintained that the officers and ship’s company of H.M.S. Barsetshire were preparing to abandon ship. Neither party, who had perhaps been influenced by the Merchant Navy practice of entering and leaving harbour with two men and a dog on the fo’c’sle and a cat on the quarterdeck, guessed that Barsetshire was, in fact, preparing for sea.

  Four hours earlie
r, a brown haze had crept from the funnels, followed by a thick black pall from one of them which had continued in ever-increasing density and volume until the Chief Stoker in that boiler room found time to get across and cuff the ear of the stoker who had turned on a sprayer without lighting it. The boilers had been flashed, steam had been raised and the main engines had been warmed and turned to ensure that they still worked. The Engine Room Branch had then confessed themselves satisfied and the Chief Stokers and Chief E.R.A.s had settled back to suck their teeth and predict that something would go wrong.

  The yeast of preparation which had been fermenting in the bowels of the ship then boiled over and effervesced into the light of day, filling the decks with the running, pulling, shouting figures, jerking to and fro like the puppets on a screen, which afforded the dockside audience with such unexpected diversion.

  Peter Cleghorn was a Screw-Flagsman. He was given a pair of flags by the Chief G.I. and ordered to hold them out from a small platform by the mainmast.

  One of the flags was red and the other was white but Peter Cleghorn was not told their significance. He began to experiment. He observed that when he held out the white flag the panorama below him was one of organised and controlled movement. But when he held out the red flag the pattern broke up and dissolved into chaos. Men ran, stopped short, and pointed, as at a comet, pulled on ropes, dropped them, and pulled again; and telephoned, put down the receiver, and almost immediately seized it again.

  A feeling of omnipotence swept over Peter Cleghorn. He felt like a god, commanding the world below. Merely by holding out a flag he could alter the natural course of events. When Cleghorn chose to hold out the white flag, the law of gravity and the principles of physics held sway. But when Cleghorn showed the red flag, all was anarchy. He held out the white flag and the red alternately and observed their effect. Just as he was determining to hold them both out simultaneously, he was knocked to the ground by a colossal blow on the back. The flags fluttered impotently down to the upper deck.

  Peter Cleghorn looked up and saw the Gunnery Officer standing over him.

  ‘WHAT do you think you’re doing, fluttering your flags about like that? When you hold out the red flag it means there’s a wire fouling the screws. You’ve been holding that flag out and we’ve had all the wires in ten minutes ago! Where do you think you are, a bloody Palio?’

  As the ship moved down harbour, the ship’s broadcast kept up a stream of growling unintelligible remarks, like those of a caged but ungagged lunatic, interspersed with notes on the bugle, when The Hands who had fallen in by their parts of the ship for leaving harbour came to attention and gazed out over the water at solemn dockyard workmen and, later, waving holiday-makers.

  Halfway down the harbour, Barsetshire fired a gun salute to the Commander-in-Chief.

  Gun salutes were Mr Piles’ responsibility. They were for him the supreme moments of a cruise. Mr Piles approached a gun salute as a conductor approaches the performance of a sacred oratorio, with awe and humility. Although no conductor ever had so inexperienced an orchestra, for the Saluting Gun’s Crews included Dewberry and Spink, Mr Piles persevered and rehearsed every movement and when he raised his voice to start the salute it was like the opening bars of a stupendous overture.

  ‘Saluting Gun’s Crews, stand to your guns! One Round--Load!’

  Mr Piles watched while the crews loaded their guns.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gunner-I-wouldn’t-be-here-fire-one!’

  The shot boomed out across the water.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gunner-I-wouldn’t-be-here-fire-two!’

  Again the reverberations rolled back and forward between ship and shore.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gunner-I-wouldn’t-be-here-fire-three!’

  A third time a delicious smoke clouded Mr Piles’ eyes and an exquisite concussion wrung his ears. Mr Piles smiled. The first movement was going according to rehearsal.

  The fourth gun was manned by George Dewberry who was gazing at the shoreline slipping past.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gunner-I-wouldn’t-be-here-fire-four!’

  There was silence after Mr Piles’ voice. It was as though a soloist had missed his entry. There was no sound except the flapping of the ensign halliard against the mast and the scream of the seagulls.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gunner-I-wouldn’t-be-here-fire-four-clot!’

  George Dewberry awoke and fired. Simultaneously Spink, the next cadet, startled by the ferocity in Mr Piles’ voice, involuntarily fired. There was a shattering double explosion.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gunner-I-wouldn’t-be-here-fire-five!’’

  Once more there was silence.

  ‘If-I-wasn’t-a-Gun--’

  ‘Please sir, do I count that last one as four or five?’

  ‘Out of my way!’

  The orchestra jumped back as the conductor sprang at them.

  Alone, Mr Piles loaded and fired every shot, running round from gun to gun and muttering ‘If-I-wasn’t etc-six!’ up to seventeen, when he stood back triumphantly.

  ‘Checkcheckcheck!’

  Mr Piles strutted off the saluting gun deck, clucking like a hen who has just laid seventeen eggs.

  Outside the breakwater, the special sea dutymen fell out and were relieved by the normal sea watch. The anchor cables were secured so that they swung just enough to disturb the men in the messdecks below. The hands lining the upper deck were dismissed and the ship settled down for the passage to Gibraltar.

  The First Lieutenant came down from the cable deck and ordered himself a large gin.

  ‘I thought that wasn’t too bad at all, Jimmie, for the first time,’ said the Communications Officer to him. ‘Bit slow over that last spring though.’

  ‘What can you expect,’ growled the First Lieutenant, ‘with only two men and a dog up there.’

  The principle of the Cadet Training Cruiser was similar to that of a corrective school for juvenile delinquents. The cadets were hardened to their first serious experience of life at sea by shock tactics. Their time was portioned out to the last minute. Their lives were ruled by bosun’s call and bugle which were the audible instruments of a routine as inexorable as time itself. Never again in their lives would the cadets perform manual and repetitive tasks for such sustained periods and never again would they be expected to assimilate the material of lectures under such difficult conditions. Their lives were a combination of officer and seaman. They were called upon to entertain guests and to scrub decks, to act as Officer of the Watch and to paint the ship’s side, to waltz and to pull a boat, like sociable galley-slaves.

  No cadet had any excuse for not knowing where to go or what to do at any time on any day. A large notice-board stood outside the Cadet Office with every cadet’s name upon it and his watch, class, special duty and time of duty. The board showed the prophesied life of any cadet throughout the day and by looking at the symbols against his name a cadet could see his day’s programme. The notice-board combined the functions of score-board, employment exchange and horoscope.

  The cadets’ day began at a quarter to six when they were wakened by Reveille. The Duty Petty Officer followed and completed the harm done to the fabric of sleep by walking among the lines of hammocks, prodding any remaining occupants and calling out: ‘Wakey wakey! Rise and Shine! The sun’s burning yore eyes out!’

  At six o’clock the Port and Starboard watches of cadets, or a sufficient number of both watches to convince the Commander that they were a quorum, mustered on the quarterdeck to scrub decks, Water was hosed over the upper deck and lines of cadets marched up and down with brooms, scrubbing up, turning round, and scrubbing back in obedience to the chanted words of command: ‘Scrub Forrard, Scrub Aft, Scrub Forrard, Scrub Aft!’ Afterwards, when the cadets looked back on their service in Barsetshire, scrub decks became the symbol of the Cadet Training Cruiser. It was the trade mark of the ship, the common starting point for all reminiscences; the words ‘Scrub Forrard’ and ‘Scrub Aft’ became embedded in the subconscious me
mories of every cadet who passed through Barsetshire and were remembered long after they might have been forgotten, instinctively, like a primitive invocation to a savage African rain-god.

  After breakfast, half the cadets went to instruction in the class-rooms and the other half remained on deck to work in their part of ship. The cadets did instruction or worked in their parts of ship on alternate days.

  Class-room instruction was normally given by the divisional officers. Michael and Paul’s divisional officer was a Lieutenant du Pont, a Fleet Air Arm pilot doing two years as a seaman executive officer and considering himself to be dwelling in the tabernacles of the uncircumcised in doing so. His seamanship was of the empirical school and he shared The Bodger’s distrust of the printed word, preferring to place his faith in his own judgment and in his own view of a situation as he saw it at the time. He conducted his seamanship, in his own phrase, off the cuff. He was a raconteur of some notoriety, having an inexhaustible fund of the anecdotes which the rest of the wardroom referred to as the ‘there was I, upside down, nothing on the clock and still climbing. . .’ variety. He was known as Pontius the Pilot and listening to one of his stories, suffering under Pontius the Pilot.

  Pontius the Pilot was supported by two other divisional officers, Lieutenant (E) Piggant, who lectured on engineering subjects, and Instructor Lieutenant Evans, who lectured on navigation and mathematics. They played stand-off and scrum half respectively for the ship’s rugby team.

  Lieutenant (E) Piggant, known as Ginger, was not an exceptional engineer officer. His lectures, like those of Pontius the Pilot, tended to be rough and ready. He had originally volunteered to be an engineer officer, not because of any driving ambition to be an engineer, but because his training included four years ashore where he could play rugby football. His final passing-out from the engineering college had not been so much a reward for his technical ability as a recognition of his services to the college fifteen and his five Navy caps.