We Joined The Navy

by John Winton

  Instructor Lieutenant Evans, known as Evans the Slide Rule, owed his entry into the Navy to ability rather than to football, though he played football with a Welshman’s national fervour, lie had won a Cambridge scholarship from a Welsh mining valley school and he treated his commission in the Navy as a pleasant but hardly serious interlude before taking up his true work in research physics. He looked upon the Navy as a harmless pastime for amiable eccentrics and he found the company of naval officers fascinating, but unreal, as he would have found the company of charming lunatics. He did not properly understand his colleagues in the wardroom, and particularly The Bodger, and they did not understand him, but they appreciated his service from the base of the scrum and for that they would have tolerated anything.

  The cadets’ work in their parts of ship was supervised by the Captains of the Tops. The cadets in the Quarterdeck Division who had been Beattys recognised their Captain of Top at once. He was the taciturn Petty Officer Moody in Rowbottom.

  Petty Officer Moody was a Diver, First Class. He had requested to be drafted for diving duties and had been drafted to Rowbottom. On leaving Rowbottom he had again requested to be drafted for diving duties and had been drafted to Barsetshire. He had never been kindly disposed to cadets and he now walked the decks of Barsetshire with the temperament and outlook of a man allergic to bees who has been imprisoned in an apiary. It his custom to restrict his use of words to a minimum. He would silently indicate to a cadet to follow him, lead him to a bulkhead or a rope and silently point to it. The cadet was then left to decide what operation Petty Officer Moody required to be done.

  ‘I didn’t know whether to chip it, paint it, or pee on it,’ said Paul one day in the cruise after Petty Officer Moody had shown him a bulkhead.

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Maconochie.

  ‘I got a bucket of water and scrubbed it. It seemed the safest thing to do.’

  ‘How did you manage to get a bucket from Froggins?’

  ‘Asked him for it.’

  ‘And he gave it to you?’

  ‘Yes. Mind you, he acted as though he was giving me his firstborn child.”

  Able Seaman Froggins was the divisional lockerman. He lived a crustacean existence in the darkness of the tiny compartment on the upper deck from which he dispensed metal polish, cotton waste, scrubbers and general cleaning gear. He was very seldom seen to leave his locker but lurked behind the coiled ropes and tackles, invisible except for his beard, like a hermit crab. Every new cadet joining the division believed that Able Seaman Froggins had personally paid for every item of cleaning gear issued, for he portioned each tin of metal polish out as reluctantly as though its contents had been siphoned from his own veins and each scrubber as warily as though it were one of his own limbs.

  Able Seaman Froggins had a magnetic effect on cleaning gear. It leapt into his hands. Scrapers, brushes, buckets and squeegees collected round him as readily as animals around St Francis of Assisi. He conducted a perpetual war with the other lockermen, and his rare sorties from his locker were invariably bandit raids from which he returned laden with gear which re-appeared a few days later freshly painted and inscribed with new initials. In the course of time Able Seaman Froggins’s locker had become an Aladdin’s Cave of all the implements necessary to keep a ship clean and it was curious that while other parts of the ship were reduced to their last scraper and their ultimate bale of waste, Able Seaman Froggins was able to issue every cadet in his division with a scraper and provide waste up to the last day of the week.

  However rich his treasure-house was, Able Seaman Froggins parted with nothing without a struggle. When Maconochie was ordered to clean and grease all door clips in his part of the ship and went to the locker for cleaning gear, Able Seaman Froggins gave him half a tin of polish and a handful of cotton waste.

  ‘I can’t clean much with that,’ Maconochie said.

  Able Seaman Froggins leaned out of the gloom and fixed Maconochie with an eye like the Ancient Mariner’s.

  ‘I could ------ clean the whole ------ Forth Bridge with that

  ------lot,’ he said. ‘Any------could.’

  ‘Well, I can’t.’

  ‘You must be------wet as a------scrubber,’ said Able Seaman Froggins and retreated into the gloom.

  Maconochie, however, had a consolation. He may have been wet but he was not unique. In Able Seaman Froggins’s opinion all cadets were as wet as scrubbers.

  After supper on Barsetshire’s first night at sea, Michael noticed a small blue button numbered ‘Eleven’ pinned beside his name on the Cadet’s Notice Board. A legend on one side showed Eleven as Port Look-out and a small tally at the top of the list of names which included Michael’s read: ‘0200-0400.’ The Notice Board’s system was at work. It showed that Michael’s sub of the watch were on watch from two until four in the morning and furthermore that Michael himself was one of the lookouts on the port side of the bridge for the same period.

  Paul had a number Nine and Maconochie a number Sixteen.

  ‘What’s yours, Mike?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Lookout.’

  ‘That’s tough. I’ll bet it’ll be bloody cold up there.’

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Telegraphsman. What’s old Trog Maconochie got?’

  ‘Bosun’s Mate.’

  ‘They’re playing it safe. I don’t see how he can make a mistake with that. They’ll hardly want any pipes made in the middle of the night.’

  ‘I think I’ll turn in now,’ said Michael. ‘If we’ve got to get up at two in the morning we’d better get some sleep first.’

  Michael lay awake for some time thinking over his first day at sea in Barsetshire. He was glad that The Bodger was the new Cadet Training Officer. The Bodger’s face on the Cadet’s Mess-deck had somehow seemed reassuring, introducing a touch of familiarity in completely strange surroundings. Michael knew from the little he had seen of Barsetshire that it would demand more of him than Dartmouth. He could compare Dartmouth with school but Barsetshire was outside his experience. She was closer to the real Navy than the cadets had been before and Michael was more afraid of her, now that he was actually on board, than he had been of Dartmouth, once he was there.

  He woke to a tug on his hammock and the light of a torch in his eyes. Denis Hubert, a Senior Cadet who was the leading cadet of Michael’s sub of the watch, was peering in over the edge of the hammock.

  ‘Are you Hobbes? Time to get up. Quarter to two. Chop chop, the poor bastard up there’s probably freezing to death.’

  Michael relieved Isaiah Nine Smith on the port wing of the bridge at two o’clock.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come, Mike. I was beginning to feel like an iceberg. Can you see anything?’

  ‘Not a sausage.’

  ‘Well, there’re only two lights in sight. One’s jolly nearly astern now and the other’s at red three zero. They’ve both been reported. The one out there’s a ship going the same way as us. Been there all watch just about. Can you see it?’

  Michael stared out to sea but could see nothing. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he made out a faint wink of light.

  ‘O.K., I’ve got it.’

  ‘Good. Here’re the binoculars. Got the weight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘See you in the morning.’

  Lookout was a comparatively minor duty, allotted to junior cadets because it was cold and monotonous and possibly because junior cadets were more likely to see something than cadets who had had their physical properties impaired by a previous cruise in Barsetshire. Michael had been on watch for half an hour before he saw a new light. His hands were almost too numbed to hold up the binoculars and tears wrung from his eyes by the cold wind streamed down his cheeks but he was sure about the light. It was a pale glimmer bobbing close to the water and it looked like a fishing vessel.

  ‘Hey!’ Michael shouted.

  The head of the Officer of the Watch appeared at the port side of the bridge.

&
nbsp; ‘There’s a light out there to the left, sir! I think it’s a fishing vessel, sir.’

  The head of the Officer of the Watch remained at the port side of the bridge, staring at Michael. It was the Gunnery Officer.

  ‘You,’ said the Gunnery Officer, coldly. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Hobbes, sir.’

  ‘Hobbes, the Officer of the Watch in one of H.M. Ships is not addressed as “Hey” by the Port Lookout.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘When you see something and you want to report it you sing out “Port Lookout to Compass Platform” and wait until you get an answer. Then make your report, in this case--”Red Five, steady white light.” And in case I didn’t hear you the first time, you repeat it.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Well, go on then.’

  ‘Port Lookout to Compass Platform?’

  ‘Compass Platform.’

  ‘Red Five, steady white light, sir. Red Five, steady white light.’

  ‘Very good. That light has been in sight now for something like ten minutes. Resume your search.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Michael resumed his search, discouraged.

  Nevertheless, the Gunnery Officer made a careful note in a small book of the fishing vessel’s bearing and distance from Barsetshire and Barsetshire’s own course and speed. When Michael saw the book he thought it a lot of trouble to take over one small fishing boat, more than five miles away. He ventured to ask the Gunnery Officer.

  ‘Hobbes,’ said the Gunnery Officer, ‘as you get on in the service you will meet a lot of things which seem to you rather pointless. You may rest assured that everything in the Navy has a point although you may not see it. Tortuous it may be, long-winded it may be, a lot of extra trouble it most certainly will be, but deep down there is a point. This book is the Fishing Vessels Log. There’s been a feud between the Admiralty and fishermen for years. It’s like one of those Sicilian vendettas handed down from father to son. Whenever one of H.M. Ships passes within miles of a fishing fleet the Admiralty are immediately flooded with claims for broken nets and lost catches. The fishermen tell the newspapers about financial ruin, bailiffs in the house, fishermen’s wives and helpless infants turned out into the snow and a slow death in the gutter amongst the herring heads for all concerned. It’s a very poignant story and to protect themselves from its poignancy Their Lordships give us all a little book so that They can produce it in court and say: “Look, you so-and-so’s, we weren’t anywhere near you.” So when you get to the stage of being an officer of the watch you want to keep this book up to date. It may save you a lot of nausea if you do. Does that explain it? Now push off and don’t let me hear you making another report like that again or I’ll have your clappers for a necktie.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Michael, conscious that he had received what were, from a Gunnery Officer, kindly words.

  The new cadets settled in to their life in Barsetshire very rapidly. After three days they found it hard to visualise any other way of life than their present one and after a week they felt as though they had been in Barsetshire all their lives. In a short time the junior cadets learned ways of making their lives easier. Certain animals and insects employ camouflage, armour or speed for survival, each species evolving a certain means of protection upon which it gambles its life. So the junior cadets in Barsetshire rapidly accumulated a store of self-protective knowledge which acted as a hard shell against the climate of existence in the Cadet Training Cruiser. This knowledge was useless in any other society and became useless as soon as the cadets left Barsetshire but while they were in Barsetshire it was vital. They learnt exactly how long it took to lash up a hammock, stow it away and be up on the quarterdeck for Both Watches. They learnt which lecturers were normally late, which part of a table was generally served first, which of the Petty Officer Instructors were more easy-going, and which end of a squad of cadets was more likely to be detailed for the most unpleasant work. It was beyond the power of even the most zealous Cadet Instructor to check up on all the cadets all the time; the cadets’ problem then became one of estimating the mathematical probability of being discovered.

  Some cadets developed a sixth sense which warned them of danger. Paul, in particular, was one of those who became hypersensitive to the approach of a petty officer. In the matter of Guard and Steerage he was almost superhumanly clairvoyant.

  Guard and Steerage was the most bitterly fought and most closely contested struggle of all between the cadets and their superior officers in Barsetshire. Any cadet who kept a watch or who had been detained on duty after midnight was entitled to a Guard and Steerage and was at liberty to stay in his hammock for half an hour after the rest of the cadets had gone to Both Watches. It was the most highly prized privilege of all and most cadets would willingly have worked all night so that they could stay in their hammock between six and half past in the morning while the rest scrubbed decks. The aim of the cadets was to take a Guard and Steerage at every opportunity; the aim of their superior officers was to ensure that only the cadets entitled had the privilege.

  Paul’s professed object in the training cruiser was to take a Guard and Steerage every morning; the sweetest music in his ears was the sound of decks being scrubbed by others. He would miss Both Watches every morning with impunity and then, for no logical reason, get up, lash up his hammock and scrub decks; that morning the Chief G.I. did rounds of Cadets’ Messdeck and Gunrooms.

  Maconochie, on the other hand, seemed incapable of avoiding fate. He would attend Both Watches scrupulously until one morning he tired and stayed in his hammock; that morning the Chief G.I. did rounds of the Cadets’ Messdeck and Gunrooms. Maconochie effected a temporary solution by shifting his hammock to a billet near Paul. Maconochie scrubbed decks when Paul scrubbed decks and when Paul stayed in his hammock Maconochie did the same. Maconochie congratulated himself on his system until the morning the Chief G.I. found them both in their hammocks when it was discovered that Paul had been in the sea-boats’ crew from 0400-0600 and was entitled to a Guard and Steerage while Maconochie, who had had no watch, was not. Thereafter Maconochie attended Both Watches so regularly that Petty Officer Moody grew accustomed to his face and enquired after its absence on every occasion; it was then impossible for Maconochie to take an illicit Guard and Steerage.

  One further solution was employed by Raymond Ball who never scrubbed decks but sat in the cadets’ heads and read a book instead. His face had never been seen at Both Watches and consequently its absence was never remarked. Even this solution was finally defeated by the Chief G.I. who, needing some hands one morning to get up spare bedding, went along to the cadets’ heads and shouted ‘Fire! Fire!’ Raymond Ball and a handful of others tumbled headlong into the Chief G.I.’s arms.

  On the evening before Barsetshire reached Gibraltar, her first foreign port of the cruise, the P.M.O. gave a lecture and film show to the junior cadets. The P.M.O’s lecture and film-show was famous in the training cruiser. Some of the officers on the staff attended it every cruise; they looked forward to it, as concert-goers look forward to the Promenade Concerts every year.

  The P.M.O. was six feet tall, with iron grey hair and blue eyes. He was an Irishman from County Cork, a gentle and unsuspicious man by nature. Twenty years in the Navy, listening to sailors describe their complaints, had made him cynical, but had not erased the last traces of his native brogue. The P.M.O. still spoke with a slight lisp and occasionally introduced an aspirate into his dental consonants.

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll be getting to Gibraltar’ said the P.M.O. to the junior cadets, ‘and I’ve no doubt at all that some of you’ll be putting your private parts where I wouldn’t be putting my walking-stick. So let me be saying at the start that I’m not meaning to give you any advice. Nobody takes the least bit of notice of advice, and nor they should. You’ll not be the first to go ashore in Gib and you’ll not be the last. I’m telling ye now some of the things I’ve noticed in the past and which migh
t be of use to you to know. Whether you take any notice of them at all is up to you entirely.’

  The P.M.O. opened a sheaf of notes and spread them out on a table.

  ‘There’s a very awkward and unpleasant disease which people catch in the Mediterranean. It’s a form of dysentery and it’s known as the Malta Dog. Some people catch it because they’re not used to the water, or because they’ve eaten something which doesn’t agree with them. You can catch it from shellfish or from meat that’s a bit too old. So when you go ashore to have a meal, watch out for things like prawns or lobsters or greens that have not been washed. If you do get it, come along to the Sick Bay and we’ll give you some cement. Everybody has their own remedies. I always take a glass of equal parts of port and brandy.

  ‘It’ll be a bit hotter from now on than most of ye’re used to. Whenever you’re in a hot climate you have to take extra care to keep yourself clean. You’ll have to wash yourself more often or you’ll get rashes and toe rot.

  ‘I’ll not be telling ye never to sleep with strange women. That’s a thing that every man has to decide for himself and the sooner the better. But if you do decide to have a little bit of excitement, don’t be thinkin’ ye’re giving the poor frustrated girl the one night of delirious joy in her drab and dreary existence. Not at all. Ye’re a part of the rent, or just a little bit on the groceries bill, or something to keep the butcher happy for a while. There’ll be two types. Either she’ll tell you the price straight away or she’ll stay quiet and look at ye. If it’s the first, then you’re clear where you stand. It’s the second you have to be careful of. She’ll be wondering how much you’re good for and she’ll likely overestimate a little and you’ll have to beat her down and there’s no more degrading sight than a naval officer haggling with a woman over the price of a little bit of copulation.’

  The Bodger sat in the front row, restraining his laughter. As a newcomer to the ship, he had never before heard the P.M.O.’s lecture and he now realised that he had been missing the performance of a natural showman. The P.M.O.’s droll delivery and perfect timing might have made him famous on the stage.