by Jon Pertwee
It came again, ‘Hey John, sing us a song!’
By this time we were almost under the seats with embarrassment for the courageous but foolhardy star, who, nothing daunted, pressed on with his soliloquy. Suddenly with frightening clarity for one at least five sheets to the wind, the barracker conceded his request for a song, with yet another entreaty: ‘Okaaay John! Show us your prick instead.’
The hall erupted.
‘Oh Christ,’ said Bobby, ‘I can’t take any more of this, let’s go and have a drink’, and with the use of one of his many watch cards that’s exactly what we did.
Any chance of Bobby being put up for a commission went to the wall when, at a party he was giving in his suite for Officers and friends, he told a teetotal Paymaster-Captain drinking orange juice, that if he didn’t like the drink that Bobby had provided, he had better ‘piss-off’ to some other party where ‘old poofters’ would be better catered for. The ‘old poofter’ did just that, and returned a few minutes later with the Naval Patrol, who before us all, promptly arrested Bobby on a charge of gross insolence to a Senior Officer.
As Bobby was being marched ignominiously out of his own party, he turned to the assembled Officers and guests, and said, ‘If I can’t stay at my own bleeding party, I don’t see why you should, so you can all piss-off.’
To save the embarrassment of a court martial and the subsequent explanations that would’ve been asked as to the reason for so many Senior Officers being present at a lower deck sailor’s shindig, Bobby was sent to sea in a trawler. ‘That’ll show him,’ some thought, ‘that’ll teach him to respect a Naval Officer.’
They could’ve saved their breath, for within minutes of meeting the tough ex-fishing-boat skipper from Hull, Bobby was away at full mouth.
‘Righto me old mate, I’ll go and get us some decent booze, a hamper of choice foods, and we’ll be off into limbo on a great old cruise.’
The bemused skipper, like so many before him, was unable to say him nay, and (as Navy chroniclers have it) was last seen standing on the bridge with Bobby, holding a bottle of VAT 69 in one hand and a smoked salmon sandwich (purchased from God knows where!) in the other, heading out over the horizon with the sound of a fine song echoing melodiously down the wind.
Chapter Eight
And so to sea. There was no point in cramming a six foot two and a half inch Ordinary Seaman into a small C Craft submarine with low-beamed Tudor cottage headroom. Looking at the plaster and lint dressing stuck on my forehead, the Captain said, ‘That wound’s taking a long time to heal up, lad.’
‘I haven’t got a wound, sir.’
‘Then why are you wearing that dressing?’
‘So I won’t get one, sir.’
So on 29th November 1940, the Navy, with perfect logic, put me into one of the biggest battle cruisers in the world, HMS Hood. Laid down in 1918 at the end of the First World War, with a normal complement of 1,341 men, rising to 1,768, she weighed some 42,100 tons and could cruise at speeds of up to thirty-two knots. So fast could she go, that when running the North Sea on Russian convoys, if the weather was too heavy for the accompanying destroyers, they would lie in line astern of us so that we could break a passage through the towering waves for them. But even then they had a considerable job keeping up with us.
The Hood was stationed at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. This necessitated a miserable two-day, two-night train journey to get there. It was on this mortifying trip that I discovered for the first time the possibility of sleeping stretched out sideways on the net luggage-rack overhead. With two of us similarly perched ‘up top’, there was that much more room for the lads below, who, placing all their kit-bags and hammocks between the seats, were able to lie full length, head to toe, like a pile of snoozing puppies.
We eventually de-trained at Thurso, a small port some fifteen miles from John O’Groats where the climate was colder than a witch’s besom. There we were given our first hot meal for 48 hours, served by some kind Scottish ladies of the WVS who chatted continuously to us without the courtesy of any reply, for, so strong was the dialect, there was hardly a soul amongst us that could understand a single word they said. Refreshed, we boarded a horrid little inter-island steamer and set off for Lyness passing Flotta and the protective waters of Scapa Flow where the Hood lay moored. What a magnificent looking ship she was, lying there so low in the water. Her lines were nothing else but beautiful; a strange simile to apply to a weapon of war, but nonetheless true.
I was to be a Foretopman in the fo’c’sle, port-side. Meaning I was up the front on the left. I was allotted an area to hang my hammock right over the mess-deck table, and a lock-up steel locker for my cap and ‘ditty’ boxes, the latter being a ‘must’ for every sailor to put all his personal ‘goodies’ in. Traditionally the lid held photographs of progeny, wives, mums and dads, and in the case of bachelors, snaps of their ‘parties’. A strange word – meaning, in lower-deck lingo, a girl-friend. As: ‘Would you like to see a snap of my party?’ or ‘Bet you’ve never seen a party like that?’
It was a ‘general-messing’ ship, in that you had to take your turn drawing the stores and doing the cooking. And let me assure you, the standard of cooking was expected to be of a high level. The fare chosen daily by members of the Mess was simple, yet had to be cooked just right – or else. After two weeks of this I had found an amenable ‘Stripey’ who for ‘sippers’ would relieve me of all future mess duties.
The word ‘sippers’ has found itself a favoured place in the Royal Navy, and I had better explain just how and why.
In 1655, a British Admiral by the name of Vernon ingratiated himself to such a degree in the eyes of the West Indian Government that they vowed out of immense gratitude for their country being saved from invasion, that from that moment on every lower deck sailor in the British Navy above the age of eighteen would receive a daily tot of Jamaican rum, free, gratis and for nothing.
Admiral Vernon, who always wore breeches made of a coarse silk and mohair material called grogram, was known affectionately by his men as ‘Old Grog’. Therefore, after his rum deal had been put into operation, a grateful Navy always referred to rum as grog. If you were at sea and you were in a hard-lying ship such as a submarine, destroyer, frigate, MTB etc., you got your tot neat, but if you were in any other kind of ship, you got your grog two and one, that is, two parts water and one of rum. The main purpose of this desecration was to prevent seasoned sailors from saving their daily tot for a few days, decanting it into a bottle and then going on a blinding piss-up with one or more oppos similarly stocked up for the occasion. If you were a teetotaller, however, you could waive your tot and earn yourself an extra threepence a day, but anyone who did so was a fool, for rum was a remarkably valuable bargaining agent. Before I expand on this, let me explain some Royal Navy rum terminology.
grog: As previously explained, was traditionally two parts water, one part pusser’s (Paymaster’s) rum - 95.5 proof 54.5% alcohol.
tot: 1/8 pint rum, the standard daily ration.
neat: Rum without water.
sippers: A small gentlemanly sip from a friend’s rum issue.
gulpers: One, but only one, big swallow from another’s tot.
sandy bottoms: To finish off whatever’s in a mug when offered by a friend.
splice the main brace: A double tot for a job well done, a decision made only by the Captain.
the framework of hospitality: Where three sippers equal one gulp and three gulps equal one tot.
Now to its value:- during my time on the lower deck, for two sippers daily, my hammock was unlashed, hung in a prime position, lashed up the next morning and put away in the hammock nettings by a kindly three-badge disciple of Bacchus. For a further daily gulp, another old rumpot would do all my dhobi-ing (washing). He was a real mother to me, and as I was reliably informed by my hammock lasher, would’ve been a lot more, if I’d given him half a chance. There was nothing really homosexual about him, said my informant. I
t was just that when at sea, having a young ‘oppo’ to ‘care for’ was an old Navy tradition. It was further said that the expression ‘chuff’ [carryings-on] for ‘duff’ [pudding] was not without a certain element of truth. Perhaps food was the only article of barter left to those young men unlucky enough not to have a tot to bargain with, but to me bartering with pudding seemed a bit beyond the pale.
Two more sippers relieved me of many mess-deck chores, like washing-up, drawing stores, and food preparing. So you can see why I called anyone a fool who took threepence a day in lieu. If you were popular with the lads, on your birthday you were asked to visit the various mess-decks and partake of a little rum, the quantity depending on your popularity.
In my case, on one birthday I was in luck, or in retrospect, perhaps out of luck, for ‘Old Marmy’ was sufficiently liked to be invited to ‘sippers, all round’ by two or more mess-decks of a dozen or so ratings. My rum intake therefore was around 36 sippers, which plus my own tot, nine sippers, equalled 45 sippers in all. Within ten minutes I was falling down drunk, and remained so for two days and two nights. Endearingly, I was joshed, picked up, picked up again and finally hidden away to sleep it off; my mates performing my duties and keeping my watch for me. Everything would’ve been just fine, if on waking several hours later with a mouth like a shark’s overcoat, I had not asked a passing Samaritan for a gallon of water to slake my raging thirst. This proved to be a fatal request, as unbeknown to me, a quantity of water thrown on top of a quantity of alcohol starts the whole process off again, and within minutes of drinking it, you are once more a roaring screaming drunk. Then and there I decided that what I needed most was to go for a nice run in the recreation area, and to shouts of encouragement from the assembled, tried to impersonate a wall of death rider. The only trouble was that some inconsiderate bastard had left a bench lying across the track, causing me, on every lap, to strike it halfway up my shin, and pitch me forward on to my face. Once or twice was good for a laugh, but after witnessing six of these classic ‘arsers’, some well-meaning spectators took compassion on this bloody, battered and bruised rubber-ball of a pissed sailor and put him gently back to bed.
‘Happy Birthday, Marmaduke,’ they cried.
‘Cheers,’ I replied, hiccupping through two split and bloody lips.
When I finally came out of my stupor and with a blinding hangover, I became aware of a very sore forearm. Squinting, I observed, wrapped neatly around it, a sheet of Izal-impregnated lavatory paper held in place by two elastic bands. I tried to think what purpose this flimsy cover was achieving and lay back to give the enigma my fullest consideration. It was a useless exercise and quickly abandoned. There was only one thing left to do, remove it and look. The bands were off in a jiffy but the toilet paper was more tenacious, and took a few painful moments before revealing all.
‘Oh God, no! I can’t be!’
But I was, I’d been tattooed. A green and scarlet cobra was squirming itself into a question mark on my forearm. In the middle was a small letter C, which I could only assume stood for Carlotta. On the other hand perhaps the choice of subject had been taken from a child’s spelling-book and the C stood for cobra. God knows where or by whom this work of art was done, but whoever it was had executed quite a fair job and it doesn’t seem to have upset too many people over the years, except maybe a few young female ophidiaphobiacs, and that was a pity.
*
We had gone to sea within hours of arriving on board and from that moment on, we were hardly ever at anchor. Our flagship HMS Rodney (a battleship with its stern cut off to conform with the Geneva Convention) lay, on the other hand, almost permanently at anchor. It was said by nautical wags that she couldn’t move, due to being hard aground on the millions of her own milk tins that she had ditched over the side.
My battle station was down in the bowels of the ship winding a small wheel. Somehow with the aid of other wheel-winders our mutual endeavour enabled Hood’s gunnery to reach a greater state of accuracy.
Normal watch duties ranged from looking after ropes, cleaning the heads [lavatories], scrubbing and stoning decks and generally looking out for enemy ships or planes.
The deck-scrubbing I could tolerate, by allowing my mind to wander to more pleasurable things, like Carlotta in her sarong with a flower behind her ear. At other times I behaved much as earlier seamen before the mast had done, by singing sea-shanties while scrubbing. The rousing rhythmic songs were soon taken up by my fellow scrubbers and although looked upon with suspicion by the Petty Officer in charge, were allowed to continue, as the work seemed to be getting done with greater speed and efficiency.
To go to the ‘heads’ for duty or relief when at sea in rough weather was the cause, on one’s first few visits, of not a little laughter. The pitch of the ship was remarkable. Doing twenty-five knots in mountainous seas, she would slowly rise some thirty feet into the air, shaking, vibrating and shuddering at the effort of forcing her bows through the middle of the gigantic greenbacks before her. Once through, she would shoot forward like a greyhound off its leash, to a point where there was no sea immediately beneath her bottom. This caused the 42,000 ton man-o’-war to drop like an elevator out of control and land smack on the surface of the sea far, far below. The amount of water thrown up by the massive ship’s impact was past belief and indelibly imprinted on the minds of all those from other ships who had ever witnessed it.
But to return to the matter and manner of going to the ‘heads’. Leaving the mess it was necessary to make one’s way right forward to the bows, for that is where the lavatories were situated. If the ship was on its shuddering and shaking way upwards, this journey was well nigh impossible, the force of gravity being so strong as to make any forward progress practically non-existent. Feet seemed to be encased in divers’ leaden boots and refused to move more than two inches up and three inches forward. Once the apex of the rise had been reached, however, the whole situation was reversed and as the ship dropped into her coalminer’s lift routine, the caught-short sailors would metaphorically swop their divers’ boots for ballet pumps and tippy-toe downhill with tiny steps at tremendous speed, under absolutely no control whatsoever. This combination of mountain climbing and on-points ballet dancing, finally brought the now bursting sailors to their ultimate goal, the ‘heads’.
In these lavatories, to prevent the sea flowing back up the soil pipes when she dipped her bow down deep, non-return flaps were fitted under the water-line. Unfortunately, in North Sea waters, we dipped so deep, and so rapidly, that the flaps were lifted instead of closed, allowing the water to surge back up the pipes. So if you were one of the uninitiated, the following would happen. You entered the doorless loo, sat upon the seat, and with trousers around the ankles, did your business. The ship would then commence its downward plunge, causing the sea to by-pass the retaining flap and surge up into the bowl. The water level would then rise, until before you knew it, your offering had been deposited into the unsuspecting trouser below. This calamity caused riotous laughter from the cognoscenti, who would then instruct you in the ancient art of ‘dodging’. For this method, you advanced trouserless and under-pantless to the bowl, hovered over its port or starboard side, until the water level had begun to subside, swung your buttocks quickly over the porcelain to make your deposit, then whipped the bottom back again out of immediate danger. This procedure could be continued as required and when all was done, the defecator would dart for safety.
Strange to relate, there were always volunteers to be ‘Captain of the heads’. I suppose the Captains valued the independence of the position; at least they were in charge of something, unsalubrious as it was.
My one regret on joining the Navy was the curse of seasickness. To give you an idea of how afflicted I was, a messmate, Leading Seaman Bob Tilburn, one of only three survivors of the later disastrous explosion, has told the following story when being interviewed on radio or TV. On one occasion when we were lying at anchor in Scapa Flow, one of his mates came up and s
aid in jest that a force ten gale was coming up and that we were really in for a blow. Evidently the more he fabricated, the greener I became, and within a very short space of time I was up on deck heaving my guts out – the only seaman on record to have been sick in harbour, except, as history would have us believe, for Lord Nelson.
On the bulkhead where my hammock was slung, there was a mess cupboard for the crockery, and to make the endless journeys to the ‘heads’ and ‘A’ Deck less frequent, I obtained a medium-sized jam tin to be sick in. This I partly filled with water and disinfectant and left on the top of the cupboard where it would be handy during the night. A creature of habit, I removed, emptied and recharged it with disinfectant daily, but the best laid plans sometimes go awry. For one stormy night after using the tin to good effect I was called out on an emergency watch and inadvertently left the offending article on the top of the cupboard. An ill-tempered leading-hand of the mess, looking for the jam, found my tin, and on seeing its contents was not very well disposed towards me for sometime. My hammock position was promptly given to another more deserving sailor, and I was relegated for the rest of my time in Hood to sleeping on a hard wooden bench in the mess-deck. Arms folded across my chest, and with my head resting on my cap for a pillow, I slept like a baby and after a few nights’ practice nothing short of a hurricane would have pitched me off.
The most heartfelt want of any sailor at sea was privacy and a man would go to any lengths to find it. Behind a cupboard, on top of a cupboard, or in a cupboard, he would lay out his hammock mattress and make himself a little home-from-home. I was luckier than most on three counts. First, I was in charge of a rope-locker on deck. This was about seven foot long, four feet high and with the ropes coiled and piled up at one end, left sufficient room for my mattress, ditty box and ‘things’. With a pusser’s torch suspended from the deckhead I spent many a happy hour reading, writing letters and generally revelling in the privacy this minuscule iron cell afforded me. With the locker catches down, I was unassailable. Photos of my dear ones were stuck on the bulkhead allowing me to dream undisturbed of peace and tender loving arms enfolding me. These ‘cabouches’, as such havens were traditionally known, were quite accepted by the Officers and Petty Officers and could be occupied during daylight hours without fear or hindrance, although two men in a ‘cabouche’ with the door closed and locked off; was likely to be frowned upon. You wouldn’t believe how many of my mates were able to get themselves into that ridiculously confined space for a smoke and a crack (chat).