Chapter Six
SURREY
The time came for my Mother and her two sons to find a home of their own. We travelled south on an unremembered journey to find our home in the Surrey countryside just beginning to be ‘developed’ into that gigantic web of Greater London. But in my time there were fields of corn within easy walking distance of No. 11, Charlotte Road, Wallington.
No. 11 was a solid, square house of that yellow brick so beloved of our Victorian builders. It had a slate roof and yellow chimney-pots and a bow window to the front dining room. The front door was reached by steps and recessed in a porch with a round-headed arch in the best Wren tradition. Two bay bushes which were my Mother’s pride and joy grew in front of the dining room window.
I began school when I was seven at Wallington. My first school was for girls and very little boys just off Stafford Road towards what was then very little more than the village of Wallington.
The school was, of course, private and essentially respectable. It was housed in what had been a typical Victorian villa, complete with wrought iron balconies and a conservatory. I felt my position keenly at that worthy establishment, being either completely ignored by the Headmistress or treated with positive condescension by some of the girls. It was quite obvious that the school looked upon the ‘little boys’ department as little more than a day nursery.
This however, was not the idea of my parents and I was presently transferred to the Wallington Modern School for the Sons of Gentlemen, so proclaimed by a black board with gold lettering at the gate of this academy. This seat of learning was located at the crossroads of the Stafford Road and the road leading to Wallington village. Diagonally opposite was the red brick mass of the Grammar School whose boys – rough characters I was lead to believe – looked on the Modern School lads as a prize bunch of ‘Cissies’. We in turn considered the Grammar School crowd a collection of louts with things in their hair and no “h’s”.
Wallington Modern School (strictly for the sons of Gentlemen) was owned and operated by a German of solid, moustached and tubby form named Herman Dax. Here it was that I began to get a glimmering of education. I think Herman must have been pretty hot on literature for it was at Wallington that I blossomed into an omnivorous reader. I can see the fat form of Mr. Dax with his collection of chins, looming over the class reading us excerpts from Dickens. I well remember “A Tale of Two Cities” which held us spellbound as we listened with awful anticipation to the story of the “resurrection man” and with sheer excitement at the story of the Dover Mail and Mr. Jarvis Lorry toiling up Shooter’s Hill, with the sound of an unknown horseman coming to them through the murk and fog. And Herman Dax’s German lessons were sheer delight. He showed us how to make those guttural noises by shaping his fat, mobile mouth to the tone. He turned out his pockets (which I think he must have stocked with oddments for the occasion) talking fluent German the whole time and without warning, shooting a question at this or that boy. Personally I think he was an excellent teacher – but he was before all things German.
One of those funny little scenes which seem to stick in the memory year after year concerns this side of Herman Dax. It was playtime one summer morning. We, the boys, were careering about, yelling like a bunch of maniacs as children do at playtime and Herman Dax’s rotund figure rose above the swirling tide of small English boys like a German Schloss. Then a tall man with a square, grim jaw strode through the turmoil towards Herman Dax. His overcoat clung to his lean figure with the precision I was to recall when, in later years I came face to face with the German Military Officer type.
Herman Dax nearly fell over backwards as he sprang to heel-clicking attention. When he was graciously permitted to relax, Dax took the stranger into his house and an undermaster herded us back into the classrooms.
It was just a little scene enacted in less than thirty seconds on that sunlit school playground in Surrey away back in 1908. I have often wondered since then how much Herman Dax had to do with Kaiser Wilhelm’s Intelligence Service and whether I had been witness to one of those dark affairs so ably dealt with by Phillipa Oppenheim.
It was in Croydon that I first saw the bioscope. There were two pictures on the programme, one a greyish monotone of a grey destroyer plunging through a grey sea. It was obviously a belt of bad film and so long as the operator kept turning so long did the destroyer keep plunging.
The other film was strangely advanced for its age, being a “talkie’ of sorts. It was an excerpt from Gounoud’s “Faust” and was obviously made from a straight stage production where the Devil kept appearing in a puff of smoke through a trapdoor. But the showman had somehow contrived to synchronise the songs with gramophone records. The audience was amazed. So was I, but it was a lovely summer’s day and I would sooner have gone for a row on the boating lake at Wadden, which was reserved for when my Father came home from sea.
Chapter Seven
ESSEX
The Borough chosen by my parents for our next station in life was East Ham in Essex. Actually we lived in South Wanstead on an ‘Estate’ known as the Wanstead Park Estate. As housing estates went it was good but its boundaries on the east matched those of the City of London Cemetery, one of the largest areas in the world I suppose, given over to the burial of the dead.
As its clients came from the multitudes of London’s East End and the growing eastern suburbs it was realised that the mournful tolling of the cemetery bell became constant and incongruous background to the shouts of our youthful games; It meant nothing to us but I think it got on my Mother’s nerves a bit although she used to take an awed delight in watching the grand corteges; the black horses with their great plumes and purple trappings and the masses of flowers piled high on the hearses and carriages.
We lived at No. 71 Wanstead Park Avenue. No. 71 was one of the large number of desirable semi-detached residences all built in straight rows and of incredible ‘fussiness’. The general run of houses were about 20 years old and some of the ‘fussiness’ was wearing off – or dropping off. But in my estimation at the time, No. 71 was vastly superior to the solid unpretentiousness of No. 11 Charlotte Road because (a) it had a gable over the front bay window, a sure sign of up-to-dateness in domestic architecture, (b) it had coloured glass leaded lights in the front door panels (another witness to progress – No. 11 only had a good solid door with a large brass knob in the middle) and (c) the lantern in the front hall, although illuminated by a gas jet instead of the magic electricity, was a four-sided, box affair with leaded stained glass sides of incomparable beauty when the gas was lit, and made utterly fascinating by bulls eye lenses into the centre of each panel.
Chapter Eight
“RADOCKS”
It was not for years that I was to discover that it stood for “Royal Albert Docks” and that in fact the tram lines from Wanstead Park Avenue to RADOCKS were the clues to our living in that locality.
When Ellen tired of the garish, noisy scene of Manor Park Broadway she would take me into a side street to a little shop with steamy windows where the greenish tinge light from upright gas mantles shone on the polished metal of a fish fryer. And there, unashamed, we stood on the pavement and ate fish and chips (seasoned with pepper and vinegar ad lib) out of a newspaper. I loved it and told my Mother so in sheer joy. I was utterly astonished when she nearly fell over backwards in horror. However, she had a sense of proportion and the British gift of skilful compromise and subtle diplomacy. She agreed to permit fish and chips when I was out with Ellen so long as we conducted these orgies in the decent obscurity of a side street and refrained from parading our shame under the sizzling arc lamps of the Broadway.
But I soon evolved a life of my own and circle of boy friends which left me no time for Ellen’s evening strolls. And, of course, I went to school.
Wanstead Park Estate packed no select academies for the sons of gentlemen within its democratic bounds. The presence of a large and modern school with Infants, Girls and Boys departments and run by the Essex Education Committee drastically reduced the chances of any such private establishment making a profit.
The name of my school was Aldersbrook Elementary school, a group of large, spacious buildings surrounded by tarmacadam playgrounds, including a woodwork centre and later a school garden. Its scholars nearly all came from the Wanstead park Estate which was largely populated by seafaring men and their families, with a sprinkling of office workers, so boys and girls had many things in common which made for easy relationships at school.
The ‘Head’ of Aldersbrook was a Mr. Burrows whose Master of Arts degree was taken with honours in history. I mention that specifically because almost from the first day at school “Old Burrows”, thick set, bullet-headed and with the walrus moustache of the age cast his spell over me with history lessons such as I had never dreamed possible in the days of Herman Dax. “Old burrows” made ‘long ago’ come alive by drawing incredibly good pictures and plans on the blackboard, of medieval houses and the medieval countryside. He peopled this England with real people and with a conjurer’s art, plucked a medieval manor out of Wanstead Flats and turned Wanstead Park and estate into part of a King’s deer forest. It was a short step to Robin Hood and his merry men; to English longbows in Wanstead Park on Saturday mornings, handled by the tousled scholars of “Old Burrows”, and many an outraged park keeper must have heard an arrow plonk in the ground near him little knowing that he was probably the Sheriff of Nottingham and that the gaggle of scurrying young varmints darting off through the trees was likely enough the outlaw Locksley himself with his band of brothers.
Such an interest inevitably meant reading and reading as much I could find on those legendary heroes. My Mother’s standard greeting as she came upon me, tucked away with ‘Robinson Crusoe’ or ‘Ivanhoe’ became “So there you are – with your head in a book!”
Arithmetic, on the other hand, was to me a thing of horror, a disgusting, mind-freezing, soul-destroying Thing which stunned me with a sort of hypnosis. Particularly was this the case with mental arithmetic a form of mental gymnastics wherein a massed phalanx of figures was held up before the class to add up without recourse to bits of paper or pencil. Such hellish rites froze all thought processes in my brain and left my mind a sterile waste. I never could get any answer and to this day the sight of figures appals me.
With the above in mind it may not be readily understood why I should have been cast into a means of livelihood which requires a not inconsiderable handling of figures and in which history and literature have no part whatever.
Chapter Nine
H.M.S. WORCESTER
H.M.S. Worcester
In early September, 1914 I found myself alone on the deck of H.M.S. WORCESTER moored in the Thames off Greenhilthe. Anyway, I seemed to be alone, although the deck was swarming with Cadets, some brand new like myself, others obviously old hands by their jaunty air and by the way they mixed with their particular pals as they discovered them, back from the summer holidays. Boatloads of new arrivals constantly clattered up the gangway, saluted smartly and rattled away with their suitcases into the lower decks.
In my brass-buttoned uniform, my peaked cap with its white cover and shiny new badge I felt horribly conspicuous especially after the drab school clothes more common to my days at Aldersbrook Elementary School. I drifted around, was summarily evicted from the quarter deck, and finally gravitated towards a short, square shouldered youngster. His broad forehead, strangely lined for one of such tender years, narrowed down to a sharp, dimpled chin, his thin lipped but rather mobile mouth seemed ready to break into a grin and the greeny-grey eyes held a twinkle of malicious humour. I found that his name was McNickle – Andrew John Stanley. He lived in Harleyford Road, Vauxhall. His father was a Doctor. He also had a sister who he called “The Worm” but secretly idolised. We decided, without so much as saying so, to stick together believing that two heads are better than one in dealing with the mysterious rites if the strange new world. We also felt that it were better for both to suffer indignity for some breach of behaviour rather than for one to face such humiliation alone. Sub-consciously too, we seemed to be attracted to one another by the fact that he was Irish and I was Scots in this heaving mass of Sassenachs. As a matter of interest, arising out of this pact, both of us were solemnly binned every night of that first term for some misdemeanour – usually with justification.
Amongst schools the “WORCESTER” was probably unique, its nearest counterpart being the “CONWAY” in the Mersey and later Pangbourne Nautical School. The “WORCESTER” was an old established institution dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. The actual vessel on which I served was the second of the line of “WORCESTERS”, the original being a 50-gun frigate of that name. My “WORCESTER” was a 75-gun ship whose original name had been “FREDERICK WILLIAM” and when in Her majesty’s Navy had been fitted with a steam engine driving a propeller. She belonged to a curious type wherein the funnel could be lowered into the hull and the propeller hoisted into an aperture in the counter when it was decided to use only the sails for propulsion. She was built of oak with cast iron beam knees. Although fully ship rigged up to the t’gallant yards, when I was on her the spars were not the original massive things which ships of her time were built with.
Sanitation was somewhat primitive, the ‘heads’ being best described as short galleries overhanging the water at the base of the bowsprit on each bow. We slept in canvas hammocks on the lower deck, being divided into ‘tops’, usually in accordance with seniority but sometimes according to physical size. This latter reason was simply to provide a squad of hefty youngsters, not novices, who could be called on suddenly simply by piping ‘foc’slemen muster on the upper deck’.
First termers (known by an opprobrious and unprintable name) formed the afterguard. Second and third termers probably graduated to the mizzen top. The fourth term lifted you from the social slough of a new cadet into the intoxicating delights of the ‘old hand’. No longer could you be fagged; you could with impunity answer back another ‘old hand’ without incurring a cut from a ‘bimster’, and – oh scrumptious bliss! You could ‘fag’ a new boy to carry your football boots to the field or to some such menial task. Moreover you were lifted from physical contact with the kids in the mizzen top or afterguard by being promoted to sling your hammock with the main or foretopmen or even (if you were hefty) with the Olympian gods in the foc’sle.
There were no solid bulkheads separating the ‘tops’ on the lower deck. You could stand aft, and looking along the hammocks cranes on either side, could see the river out of the bow ports if the for’ard wash house doors were open. The main deck was similarly undivided between the after bulkhead (behind which the Officers and Masters had their cabins) to the forward bulkhead beyond which lay the Mess room in the bows. School was ‘rigged’ on the main deck by the simple method of dragging heavy desks from along the ship’s side and arranging them in serried ranks to form the various classes. The Duty Instructor’s pipe to ‘rig school’ was the signal for the most appalling scene of confusion and uproar as the cadets dragged the heavy desks into position. But it worked, and I don’t remember ever being seriously inconvenienced by hearing a senior Master over the other side of the deck holding forth on some such mysterious things as right Ascension and Declination while I was struggling with a quadratic equation.
The upper deck was a clear space between the poop and forecastle bulkheads if we exclude a large skylight just forward of the mainmast and the massive-brass bound main bits. On these were belayed a fascinating maze of ropes when sails were ‘bent’ in the summer term. The favourite form of recreational exercise for “WORCESTER” cadets was known as ‘slewing’ round the upper deck. Sometimes on pleasant evenings the deck was crowded with cadets, arm in arm, striding round to the tune of a sea-scanty, with words not usually printed in the best song books but probably hallowed by time. If, by too much attention to tempo the whole crowd got into step, Instructors and Cadet Captains would stride into the mass and break the step before the step broke up the ship.
Aloft, the “WORCESTER” of my day (1914-1916) crossed t’gallant, topsail and lower yards on all masts, the main mast having double topsail yards. In the summer term, t’gallant and double topsail were bent on the mainmast with all necessary gear; rove off in the orthodox manner. The only exception was that our sails clewed up to the bunt, navy fashion, and not to the yardarm as the merchant sailormen did in those days. But our sail drill was a thin ghost of the real thing for the simple reason that with a fresh breeze the old ship would either have sailed her anchors out of the mud or brought her sticks down in a hurry. So sail drill always coincided with light airs, and, being in the summer term, glorious sunshine.
However the mere fact that you were on a ship and afloat was psychologically satisfying. You couldn’t get ashore without rowing with a crew in a good, solid boat – power boats were taboo in my day. Your everyday life was conditioned by being on a real ship which had sailed the seas. You didn’t go upstairs to bed, you went below to turn in. You didn’t climb the rigging, you ‘laid aloft’. Manly honour forbade that you went through the ‘lubber’s hole’ into the maintop; you clambered out over the futtock shrouds. Your quarterdeck was a real one, not the terrace of a converted country house. The planking of your quarterdeck was scrubbed white and from it the captain’s gangway, with its scrubbed rail and dolphin carvings, led down to the water where the gig bobbed to the bubbling tide. When you were ‘Mate of the Deck’ pacing the quarterdeck you could see at every turn forward the carved belfry abaft the mainmast, and when you ‘made eight bells’ the bronze carved features of lieutenant Bowers of the Antarctic looked down at you from his plaque in the belfry. He had once been ‘Mate of the Deck’ like you. When you were ‘Mate of the Deck’ in your white waistcoat and ‘bumfreezer’ (probably with a borrowed telescope under your arm) you were somebody. Only by reaching the First Nautical Class could you take ‘Mate of the Deck’. Its great attraction was being free for a glorious twenty-four hours from school and all routines; it’s terrors (for most boys anyway) was luncheon with the captain and his wife in their quarters.
Like most public schools the “WORCESTER” was a little world of its own with its grades of society, its queer but basically sound laws (unwritten) and a host of taboos which no boy would dare to break for fear of social ostracism. However, the amount of responsibility vested in the “WORCESTER” senior Cadets was rather heavier and more real than that which their public school brothers were called upon to bear. To take charge of a heavy boat rowed by four other lads, lugging at the heavy fifteen foot ash oars on a dirty winter’s night against a swirling ebb tide tends to awaken a sense of responsibility in lads of fifteen and sixteen was due in a large measure to the fact that the ship was run by sailors. Such men know from experience how far a young apprentice, faced with the violence of sea storms with only his own strength and mother-wit to help him, can rise to the occasion and arm himself with the initiative and decision of more mature years.
The senior Cadets of the “WORCESTER” were trusted with the power of inflicting physical punishments for offences against the rules and order of the ship. They could, without question, inflict a stroke with a rope’s end, scientifically wrought in such a way as to cause the maximum of discomfort. Yet I do not know of many instances when such responsibility was abused by senior cadets, or such punishments resented by the victims as lowering the dignity of Man. There was an institution which could deal with bullies.
Any tendency to use the bimster in a bullying way brought prompt retribution from ‘The cabin’ and probably confiscation of the offending weapon.
The cabin was, in its physical sense, a small, ill-lit cubicle in the forward end of the main deck. It was the sanctum sanatorium of the Cadet Captains (otherwise ‘Petty Officers’). The cadet Captains represented the highest social strata and at their head stood the god-like figure of the Chief Cadet Captain. Below the cadet Captains came the Badge cadets. These Badges (small golden anchors worn on the left cuff) were awards of merit, scholastic and moral, given to diligent cadets at or after their first year. Promotion to Cadet Captaincy came usually during a cadet’s fifth term and of course could only alight on a few of the brightest and best amongst us. There was a Cadet Captain responsible for each ‘top’ from the afterguard to the forcastle and in addition there was the Captain’s Cox’n who also held Cadet Captain’s rank.
The Cabin had a significance somewhat analogous to what would be a combination of the Star Chamber and the Holy Inquisition. Up to a point it could legislate for the ship and it meted out official justice. Instructors could punish a cadet if they wished but more often than not a persistent delinquent or known bad character was sent by them to the cabin for punishment. Such punishment was noted by the Cabin and the culprit became an object of interest until a marked improvement in behaviour convinced the cadet Captains that the wrong-doer was a reformed character.
Another body with power of summary jurisdiction was the focs’lemen. There are such misdeeds common to places where boys live together in a community which are difficult to punish through official channels without the victims of such misdeeds becoming a social outcast for sneaking. I refer in particular to the practice of bullying, a form of brutality which some types of growing lads develop when vested with a little imagined authority. Any cadet with bullying propensities could be dragged before the foc’slemen and dealt with. Bullies were rarely reported by their victims, the universal school code is against such practices, but more often the story came from some senior cadet who may have stumbled on such goings-on. Then one evening, after a tactful word had been dropped to the Lower Deck Instructor of the Watch, and when the cadets were all reading on the main deck or slewing on the upper deck, two of the heftiest of the foc’slemen would quietly seek out the offender.
I remember one case – we’ll call him Jackson. Jackson was slewing round the upper deck in the darkness of an October evening with some cronies. He was a fourth termer, very brash and free with his bimster. A nasty type. Two figures, almost unseen in the dark, slipped up behind him, gripped his arms and skilfully cut him out of the line of march. One of the figures spoke quietly in the victim’s ear.
“Jackson, you're wanted below!”
“Who by?” The voice was braggart, the youth felt that his seniority should cover him from such abuse. “Dammit, I’m a fourth termer!”
"Keep moving Jackson!” The quiet order supplemented almost unnecessarily the purposeful pressure forward by the two stalwarts from the foc’sle. The group rattled down the ladder to the main deck. A few cadets looked up; some got up from their forms and hurried to the forward lower deck ladder to which Jackson to which Jackson and his guards were making their way. The Main Deck Instructor of the Watch growled an order. The cadets melted away back to their forms. Jackson, now passing forward in the gloom of the lower deck, probably felt a little sick in the stomach. Outside the circle of the Foc'slemen no one quite knew what happened at foc’sle licking. There were nasty stories one had heard and laughed at - should one have laughed? Jackson found himself facing a party of hefty cadets drawn up in two lines with a space of deck between them stretching into the gloom up forward. They each caressed a wicked looking bimster upon which they had obviously lavished much loving care and attention. The guards let go of Jackson's arm and stepped back a pace. A figure stood before him in the half darkness .
“Jackson, you've been bullying a new hand". The remark was not a question, it was a statement of fact.
“I didn’t. Who says so?”
“Never mind. It's been reported to us that you twisted his arm. Also that you have been using a bimster with wire strands laid in the rope. Where is it?”
Jackson by now was completely demoralised. The horrible accuracy of things which he had been hugging to his nasty little self appalled him. The threatening, silent figures in the gloom frightened him. He slipped a sweating hand into his jumper and brought out the offending bimster. The Foc’ale Cadet Captain took it, and examined it under an electric bulb.
"You lout!" He whispered. "You dirty tyke! See here, Jackson, if you don't mend your ways and behave like a decent Old Hand I'll have you sent in to the "Old Man". You know what that means?”
Jackson did. It might mean expulsion; the end of the world. The Cadet Captain spoke again. “Bend over that sea chest. Let's see how you like what you gave that new hand."
Jackson bent over. The Cadet Captain raised the bimster which had lately been Jackson's pride, and out the bully across the taut seat of his trousers. Jackson yelped with pain as the needle ends of wire cut his flesh. The two guards strode up from behind, caught Jackson's shoulders and forced him down on his knees, facing the twin lines of cadets, now kneeling on the bare deck planks. The Cadet Captain cried “Go”. Jackson crawled laboriously forward, thrashed at by the foc’slemen, until he reached the forward bulkhead where he lay still, blubbering. Two cadets yanked him to his feet. The cadet captain spoke again.
“Jackson, you’ve had your whack. It’s no good bleating about it ‘cos no one will take any notice. So watch your step for the future and don’t be such a darn fool. It’s not clever to throw your weight about and it’ll get you nowhere. Now go and clean up before supper. Carry on!”
The boy stumbled away sniffling, a sadder youngster but doubtless a wiser one. At least, the new hand was saved from further evil for which, in many schools, he would have no redress.
His confiscated bimster found its way to the Cabin to be added to the black museum, and round the hammocks that night went the whisper that there had been a foc’sle licking. Who was it? Don’t know, some say Jackson, he's mighty quiet.
Whilst on the subject of disciplinary action there was one further form of punishment - an - official one - reserved for the worst cases of rebellion against the laws of God and man. It was called a Game Room Licking. I only knew of one case of such punishment being given. The Cadet had been detected thieving from his fellows’ sea chests. The scene was enacted in the gymnasium - once the engine room of the ship - deep down below water level. The vaulting horse was placed in the middle of the gym and the prisoner laid across it. The Captain and Officers and the Surgeon were present. The Chief Instructor waited the order to commence punishment. The Captain gave the order. The cane swished. through the air. One ...
All this dwelling on punishment may lead you to believe that the "WORCESTER" was a particularly brutal ‘house of correction’. Such was far from the case. I have dealt with that aspect in some detail in an attempt to illustrate the form of Government practiced in the school – and used successfully – to build up a form of discipline which could be relied on not to break under the stress of earthquake, hurricane, fire or global war. That much of that governance was entrusted to the cadets themselves served well as an example to encourage the young fry and to teach the seniors the attitude of responsibility and forbearance to juniors.
The form of education provided by the ‘WORCESTER’ in my day was aimed at producing an Officers capable of understanding the basic principles of navigation and nautical astronomy, coupled with a background of world geography. On the seamanship side it strove to instil into us a working knowledge of the modern sea-going vessel, both sail and steam, together with such elementary necessities as boat work, knots and lines, sail making, heaving the lead and signalling.
Under the headmaster, Mr. David Beatty, the team of masters changed very little. Indeed it can be no easy matter to find men who could adept their mathematics to the problems of navigation and nautical astronomy, of which in practice they had no experience whatever. That they produced from the average boy of sixteen a person who, on paper at any rate, could navigate his way round the world, speaks well enough of their curriculum and methods. I remember David Beatty as a stocky man who wore an eternal grey suit. He had a pointed grey beard, thick grey hair and eyes that twinkled from deep crows feet at their corners. He could be stern - and we dreaded a wigging from Beatty worse than a bimming - but generally speaking Beatty was a charming personality. Whatever a cadet may have learnt in the lower forms. Once translated to that celestial sphere of Beatty's First Nautical Class, he began at once to unconsciously to imbibe a fine philosophy intermingled imperceptibly with the mysteries of nautical Astronomy. No cadet could go through that experience without an enormous moral and spiritual regeneration. Those compelling but kindly eyes of David Beatty dug down and brought out the best in a youngster, seemed to dust off and hand it back with the implied admonition – “this is yours; go out and use it as I have shown you how.” Beatty was a great teacher and a great gentleman. The greatest influence for good to many generations of “WORCESTER” cadets sprung from that soft voiced, grey little man.
Seamanship instruction was the responsibility of the ex-professional mariners. There were two certificated Officers. Mr. May, elderly, white haired, thin faced, with a clipped white moustache was Chief Officer and as such acted as chief executive officer for running the ship. He was a widower, lived aboard and, in fact, rarely went ashore. Brusque and taciturn, he kept himself very much to himself and had a trick of appearing silently from his quarters, would glance round the decks and then disappear again with his characteristic little cough. He does not sound like the typical old salt who had braved Cape Horn weather but nevertheless he had been at least Mate in sail and seen it all long before we cadets were born. The second Officer in my time was a burly, round faced chap who sported a dark, bushy moustache. His name was Skelt. He was a neat worker with his hands and the Model Room, his particular sphere of responsibility, benefited considerably by his skill in modelling.
The Model Room was not a museum. A low beamed room in the after end of the Orlop deck, it was probably the cook-pit in earlier days. The models it contained were purely for instructional purposes. A large model of a steamer’s forecastle to teach anchor work occupied the centre of the room, flanked by a large ship model cut open to show the construction and surrounded by steering gear models, models of full rigged ships, lug sailed lifeboats and a dozen more things in diminishing size. When ‘the second’ had got this magical room squared up to his liking so that the anchor gear really worked (he turned a new windlass gypsy out of brass), so that the corrected compass on the steering machine held to magnetic north, and so that the sails of the little ‘rule of the road’ models really set as a square rigger’s should, he turned his hands to kites.
Mr. Skelt’s kites were not intended merely to afford cadets a few hours childish fun; they were box kites, about six feet high and were designed to provide an alternative means of propelling the ships lifeboats. He fitted the jolly boat, a heavy cutter, with a fairlead on the stem and a hand winch on the after thwart; it sometimes took two lads heaving round hard on the winch handles, to haul in a kite in a stiff breeze. With a few other lucky ones when I was in the senior section, I had many an hour breasting the tide with the great kite high above and ahead of us, towing before a fair wind. However, the trouble with kite sailing as against the more orthodox ligsails was that you could only run before the wind or at most two points either side of it. So Mr. Skelt stowed his kites away and turned his zeal into other channels.
About fourteen years later I met him in Southampton, as jovial as ever in square, brass buttoned jacket and white yachting cap – the perfect yacht broker.
Below the top stratum of Officers came the instructors. These were four in number, ‘Jacky’ Reid, ‘Paddler’ Pitcher, ‘Dickie’ Strudwick and ‘Taffy’ Evans. Besides these we had the ship’s carpenter whose name I forget. Another taciturn type, he sported a bushy beard of Victorian proportions and spent most of his life in the dim obscurity of the Orlop deck repairing or building boats. Of course the cadets always addressed the Instructors by their proper names prefaced by a respectful ‘mister’ but to generations of “WORCESTERs” it was always, Jacky, Dicky, Paddler, or Taffy. They were all ex-naval petty officers, Mr. Pitcher having added glamour of having been a Warrant Officer in the Chilean Navy. He was one of the few specialists lent by the British Navy to teach the Chilleanos how to run warships. Chile is reported to have the most efficient of South American navies.
The Instructors’ terms of reference covered the normal run of sailorizing; best drill, sail drill, a quad drill, rifle drill, knots, bends and hitches, and lead line work. They took turns for supervisory duty during out of school hours and generally kept an eye on things.
The “WORCESTER” was moored about a quarter of a mile down river from a timber causeway which led down from the narrow Greenhithe Street. In my time this causeway was the one used by “WORCESTER” boats in common with any others which had business in Greenhithe. It follows naturally that the cadets were well drilled in boatwork, having as their only route to the shore about the toughest quarter of a mile of tideway in the London River. I loved boatwork and would gladly swap a Saturday afternoon ashore playing organized games, with any of the lads whose turn it was to make up the liberty boats’ crew.
Being small it is perhaps natural that when the crews came to be picked for the annual Port and Starboard boat races I should have been chosen, in my third term when still technically a New Hand, as coxswain of the junior port boat. The course was over a mile of Long Reach from up near Purfleet down to abeam of the “WORCESTER”. The boats we used were long, low-waisted clincher built racing whalers propelled by six, fifteen foot ash oars in brass crutches; one man to an oar. On the awful day the two crews, clad in vests and shorts, took their places in the boats and were towed by a hired motor launch to the starting line where lay one of our big fourteen oared cutters to act as starter’s launch. We cast off the tow lines and began to jockey into our positions. As I gave the necessary manoeuvring orders to the oarsmen I felt thankful for the brawn of de Keysey, the stroke oar, for the whiplash muscles of Cave at Second stroke, for Cashmore at bow, ‘Singie’ Powell, Lucas and Sandys. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Starboard watch boat squaring up on the inside berth; for we had lost the toss and had to take the mid-river course to our disadvantage.
At last the two boats lay lifting lightly to the slight bobble on the river and the sunlight sparkled on the drops which fell from the poised oar blades. The ‘Second’s’ voice came bawling across the water from the starter’s launch.
Chapter Ten
“Stand by”.
Six oars clumped in the crutches as my crew leaned forward for the ‘off’. The pistol banged; the water churned under the three sharp strokes and I felt the boat lift as the crew settled down to the long, powerful drive of de Keyser. With each stroke I leaned forward and ‘counted’ the rhythm; the water swirled and bubbled away astern; the wind sang in my ears. I glanced away to starboard to find that the other boat had dropped back a little. Then I glanced ahead again. About half a mile ahead of us a black funnelled Carron Liner was pushing up river towards us with a bone in her teeth at about twelve knots. De Keyser must have sensed the alarm I felt for he glanced quickly over his shoulder.
“Can you get across her bows?” he gasped at me.
“Might – just”
“If you don’t we haven’t a chance. But don’t foul that ‘Starboard’ boat!”
I edged the whaler over a little, using the pause between strokes to give her helm as I urged de Keyser and his crew to peak efforts, “Stroke O! you blighters or we’ll either be run down or have to foul starboard boat. Stroke O! One, out! Two, out! Three, out!” I honestly believe I worked as hard as the chaps on the oars; I know I dashed the sweat from my eyes with a quick wipe. Over the head of the bowman I saw the curling, creaming bow wave of the steamer almost on top of us. I edged off to starboard, praying that we were far enough ahead of ‘starboard boat’ to avoid a technical foul. Then I became aware of a great black steel bow like an overhanging cliff perilously near on our port side and a huge mass of water curling over and crashing away from it, sweeping towards our slim whaler. Thirty feet above us the pilot leaned over the bridge wing as the steamer tore past and a stream of invective went unheeded down wind. We wallowed in the steamer’s wake and I bawled to the crew. “Stroke O! you blighters. Watch the swell. Mind your oar’s you crabs! One, out! Two, out! Three, out!”
The ‘starboard boat’ was well astern and going ragged. We ran into smooth water again as the steamer’s wash rolled towards the Kent shore. De Keysey and his crew, now swinging to a lovely, rhythmic stroke, flung us past the finishing line.
It was a crazy thing to have cut under that steamer’s bows. But when you are young you don’t reason when there is a race to be won and when your team mates are looking to you to take risks. No one ever dreamed that we should not ‘get away with it’. It is such sublime recklessness which builds empires. It is the cold light of pure reason which builds bureaucratic democracies.
That night there was much celebrating after lights out in mizzen top, port.
Chapter Eleven
WATCHING THE WAR FROM THE SIDE LINES.
The hammock nettings of the “WORCESTER” made an excellent grandstand from which to view the passing shipping. These ‘nettings’ were the shallow troughs along the tops of the high upper deck bulwarks where, in the old ship’s active days, the sailors’ hammocks were stowed to make an anti-splinter screen for the men manning the upper deck guns. From them we watched the ships of all sizes, shapes and nationalities which used London’s River. In those days there were many russet-sailed barges healing to the fresh breeze or slipping quietly upstream on the first of the flood. Quite a few showed a deckload of hay, looking more like floating haystacks than sailing craft as they staggered along under brailed up mainsail. The horse was by no means extinct in London in those days.
In the early part of the 1914-1918 war shipping companies seemed loath to cover up their house colours with drab, ‘crab-fat’ grey so that I had the privilege of seeing Britain’s merchantmen in all the glory of the peak years of the steamer. We watched the Aberdeen White Star yachts MILTIADES and MARATHON heeling to the helm as they rounded Stoneness point. With their lean, green hulls and clipper bows, white upper-works and twin buff funnels they made a lovely picture. But they must have been shockingly wet running the easting down. Bullard-King’s little East African ships with their grey hulls and chocolate striped ochre funnels pushed a dirty cream bow wave before their bluff bows; my Father’s old ships, loaded down to the scuppers, unmistakable with their white deckwork and black lifeboats, every rope yarn in place, the serang chasing his men around to wash down the filth from his sacred decks at the earliest possible opportunity all slid past our hammock nettings on their way to the hostile seas. The stately rajahs in the P & O ships would smile down on the filthy decks of Black Diamond colliers in from Geordie ports with a gutful of coal; the Shaw Saville Australian boats and the big carriers of the New Zealand Shipping Company passed us by in a never ending procession, altering course off the “WORCESTER” so that we boys got to know the shapes of all the ships of all lines when seen from all angles, day or night.
It was the ships which slipped down river in the twilight which held a mystic fascination for me. Their silhouettes, hiding the tawdry details in the fading light, had a charm which the light of noon day seemed to dispel. Their navigation lights, feeble against the evening glow seemed to my boyish imagination like eyes staring into unseen places. A fleeting sight of a cook in his galley silhouetted against the open door seemed like a glimpse into a tale of sea adventure and romance. And as they slipped away into the night, a solitary stern light winking from the taffrail, I longed to be with them.
Model showing Doxford designed turret ship, reducing the deck space thus reducing the Suez Canal charges
One day a queer looking turret ship moored off the “WORCESTER” and parties of cadets went aboard. She was the PALM BRANCH, a tramp steamer with a rusted black smoke stack with four white rings round it. She wasn’t beautiful; she was a queer shaped steel box; steel decks with steel houses, steel masts and trailing greasy steel wire ropes everywhere.
It was very different when we went aboard a great, white hulled French barque. She was deep loaded with grain from Australia and her white bow plates were rust streaked from the Cape Horn gales. She was a four masted graft, ‘bald-headed’, that is with nothing crossed above her double T’ gallant yards. When we walked her wooden decks she somehow felt like a real ship which rode the seas, not like a tin can which rolled from one sea-hill to another. Looking aloft the barque’s white masts and yards looked terribly heavy for a small crew to handle, even with capstans – I don’t remember her having brace winches. Her masts were great steel tubes built in one piece from keelson to topmast crosstresses, with a fidded t’gallant mast above that on the fore, main and mizzen. That tapering steel mainyard must have been about one hundred feet long. Her full poop reached forward of the mainmast, a beautiful clear deck giving a good freeboard and leaving a comparatively small well between it and the forecastle head. She had a donkey boiler and steam windlass and capstans.
The space under that long poop was enormous and accommodated besides the Captain and mates’ cabins, rooms for the petty officers, a fair sized saloon and a number of passengers cabins (stripped of furniture in those last days of sail) besides a large sail room. I only wish I could remember her name but that has gone, as that great white ship has now gone into the almost forgotten past. Only the picture of her beauty remains, all gleaming white against a summer’s sky. Some of us were loath to leave. McNickle, Noakes, Cave and I had to be rounded up from the Mate’s cabin where we were listening to his yarns in Breton-English.
McNickle, Noakes, and Cave went to sea in sail after the “WORCESTER” days. Noakes and Cave lost their lives in sailing ships during the war. McNickle had the privilege of being one of the training ship MEDWAY’S last cadets before she was sold abroad.
Medway
State Lib Tasmania
It occurs to me that I have barely mentioned the Captain of the “WORCESTER”. This is itself evidence of the very slight impact our Commanding Officer made upon us – at least upon me – and I don’t think I was alone in this. Captain David Wilson-Barker R.D., R.N.R., was not possessed of the sort of personality which impacted on those with whom he came in contact. Short and slight, he had a short, pointed beard and had frequently been mistaken for King George V. He was, I should say, more of the scholar than of the man of action which one expects to find in a sailor. He seemed almost shy and had a quiet way of speaking which seemed at variance with the captain’s stripes on his jacket. He wore his uniform cap with a certain primness, which to we lads compared unfavourably with say the swashbuckling angle at which our hero Admiral Beatty wore his. A younger Brother of Trinity House, David Wilson-Barker had commanded cable laying steamers, was an authority on marine meteorology and I believe, compiled the “WORCESTER” official seamanship text book. But to the cadets he was a stranger and rarely mixed with us except on the dreadful occasion of the periodic lunch when we were Mate of the Deck. After the War he became Sir David, probably on account of the number of cadets the ship had provided for the Royal navy and Naval Reserve. Photo of Captain Sir David Wilson-Barker R.D., R.N.R.
Captain Sir David Wilson-Barker R.D., R.N.R.
Curtesy of the Old Worcester Association.
The need for a flow of midshipmen who obvious to maturer minds than ours, but as far as we were concerned we had joined the “WORCESTER” for preliminary training before entering one of the big steamship lines or, in a few cases, one of the still surviving sailing ship fleets. Most of the best companies demanded a fairly high standard of passing out certificate from the cadet training establishments. There were three grades of certificate, both for scholastic work and seamanship. The highest in each category was the First Class Extra certificate, next came the First Class and then the Ordinary certificate. With the training given by the “WORCESTER” few individuals could fail to pass the Ordinary.
Many of the best shipping companies recruited their Officers only from the ranks of men who had served their time with them, and insisted that any cadet who wished to serve their time on Indentures with them should be able to produce a First Class Extra certificate in both seamanship and scholastic subjects. Compared with this ‘choosiness’ on the part of the Liner companies, Her Majesty’s Navy (during the First World War) was pleased to accept “WORCESTER” cadets as Reserve midshipmen if they had but scraped through with a pair of Ordinary certificates. The somewhat natural outcome of this peculiar arrangement was that in many cases cadets who had worked for and gained the higher grades of certificate scorned to ‘waste’ them on the Royal Navy Reserve and indentured themselves straight away to one of the Merchant Lines.
My second year ended with the end of the summer term in 1916. For some reason, which I have never been able to quite fathom, but probably because I was not yet quite sixteen, it was decreed by my parents that I should stay on one more term. The end of the summer term was always a time of gaiety and excitement. There was Prize Giving when, on the main deck a galaxy of beauty and talent sat almost hidden behind piles of expensive prizes while before them sat the cadets in their very best and most faultless attire. In times of peace sometimes the then Prince of Wales (later to be King Edward VIII and then Duke of Windsor) presented the prizes. In my time, during wartime some lesser dignity did the duty, but never less than some shipowner Lord. He came alongside in state in the Captain’s gig, even more than usually immaculate for the occasion, while the cadets manned yards in white waistcoats, white gloves and bumfreezers. As the gig came alongside we turned for’ard or turned aft at piped commands from the deck so as to face the boat at all times. I was on the starboard t’gallant yard arm and was grateful for the steadying influence of the sire lift in my hand.
Many of the prizes were given by learned societies, shipping companies and prominent people connected with the sea. Sextants, telescopes and binoculars abounded besides well bound volumes with a suitable nautical flavour. I had to be content with a well bound volume.
This summer term prize giving was the occasion on which the King’s Gold Medal was presented to the best cadet of the year. This superman was supposed to embody all the finest qualities of the race, having brains, brawn and virtue, being in fact the ‘perfect gentile knyght’. A number of suitable cadets were nominated by the senior Staff and on the great day of prize giving the cadets had to cast their votes. The King’s Gold Medallist of my time was one, Noakes.
After that prize giving nearly all my term left. They clattered down the gangway into the waiting cutters and rowed away into life singing lusty sea songs whose bawdiness is hallowed by time and whose revised versions titillate the sensibilities of modern radio audiences. McNickle joined the big sailing ship MEDWAY, Noakes also went into sail, so did Cashmore. ‘Singie’ Powell and Sandys went into the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. So I lost them, some for ever, for many never came back from their first voyage; some for a few years, others I have heard of at rare intervals from all over the world – a pilot in Singapore, a harbour Master in East Africa, a high ranking officer in the Pakistan navy, a commercial traveller in a London suburb. They left in the high summer of 1916 – and I went for a holiday to a farm in the heart of Kent.
Chapter Twelve
LAND OF OAST-HOUSES
There is a long stretch of railroad which runs through the weald of Kent. It is the straightest bit of railway engineering you will find in England. In the summer of 1916 little shimmering heat waves danced over its metals and occasionally one of the non-corridor trains of the South Eastern Railway hauled by one of their green liveried 4-4-0 tender engines (with a gleaming brass steam dome) ambled over the horizon in one direction and disappeared, in due course, in the other. One of the trains deposited my Mother, brothers Roderick and Kenneth and myself on the long, open air platform of Headoorn station. We tumbled out of the hot compartment on to the sun baked platform, through which little tufts of grass were sprouting as an indication that we really were in the country, lugging with us a collection of bags and suitcases. Out of the guard’s van came our small trunk scientifically lashed by my Mother’s sailor son. Apart from us, and a few empty milk churns and a couple of calves, nothing else was off loaded and the ‘4-4-0’ solemnly trundled the little train down that dead straight permanent way in the general direction of Dover.
Then we met Daisy. I don’t know that her name was Daisy; my Mother addresses her as ‘Miss Chapman’. She had brought her pony and dog cart to take us home. We piled in and wheeled out of the station yard at a brisk trot for Ulcombe. All around us as we went lay the corn fields and hop gardens, shimmering under the heat of noon-day, while away ahead on a range of hills and backed by a dark forest of trees stood the grey tower of an ancient church.
“Ulcombe church,” explained Miss Chapman. “Our farm is next door – Church Farm. You can just see the white cowls of the oastkilns against the trees.”
Church Farm 1915
Oast kilns? They must be those queer, conical towers that we would see sprouting from every farm in sight. They reminded us of old women in cloaks with white bonnets going to market. Why they should be going to market wasn’t quite clear but one always, in those remote days, associated old country women with going to market. And the way those oast kiln cowls all pointed the same way (as naturally they should, being designed to do so), gave them a purposeful look usually associated with market business.
Presently the pony drew our dog cart over the crunching gravel of a narrow lane almost under the shadow of the church and stopped at a little white gate in a wall of holly hedge. Miss Chapman hopped down from the driving seat and a tall, angular woman in severe black came out to welcome us. Mrs. Chapman was tall and lean in appearance and character. She eschewed frivolity of any sort, being a product of that era which seemed to demand intense earnestness in its women whilst allowing considerable moral latitude to its men. Mrs. Chapman had worked hard all her life, she would have felt morally untouchable had she not done so. She had no delusions however, that the time had now come for her bevy of grown up daughters to take the bulk of that off her hands so as to give her more leisure to complain of the work she had had to do when she was a girl.
We climbed down from the dog cart and passed through the gate, walked under a tunnel of holly and yew up a little incline to the rose embowered front door. The farm house itself was typical of many such Kentish houses, very old in parts and aggressively new in others. Partly brick built and partly of the grey Kentish ragstone, its floor levels were a constant trap for the casual walker, its lichen tinted tiled roof blended with the rainbow colours of the borders fringing the green lawn. Unlike many Kent farms of much later dates, Church Farm, Ulcombe had its own spring water laid on with modern plumbing and sanitation.
The farm, in those days included about 300 acres of arable land, fruit orchards and hop gardens. A few cows were kept for domestic purposes only and no milk, or very little, was sold. Mr. Chapman, the farmer and father of the place was a patriarchal gentleman who looked every inch a farmer of the John Bull type but who had apparently been a successful master builder before turning to farming. His second son, Ernest assisted on the farm besides whom there were Walter, ‘Sham’ – a ‘simple’ and deformed lad – and a cowman who lived a solitary bachelor life in a cottage by the ruins of a watermill. I forget his name. He was of the type known to a more scientific age as the introvert; a quiet, retiring man who went about his job as if he were a disembodied spirit with no sphere of communication with the human species. He has left behind an image for memory to strain after, a ghostly transparent image. He had been a captain in the army but had been invalided out. For a few extra pence he pumped the church organ for services.
The house of Church Farm seemed full of women. In fact there were three resident Chapman women, Mrs. Chapman (mere) Miss May and Miss Daisy. Occasionally at week ends a very beautiful and sophisticated young lady used to descend on the household (frequently unexpectedly) for lunch and tea and disappear again on her bicycle in the direction of Maidstone where she lodged and worked. This was Miss Gladys Chapman who, having profited by a commercial education, had escaped to a position as shorthand typist in the big city and resultant economic independence. Her elder sisters, still occupied the traditional position of farmers’ daughters, improved their lot by taking in paying guests. As if slightly ashamed of the practice of making people pay for hospitality they justified their modest fees by feeding their guests to the uttermost of their capacities on beautifully roasted sirloins, delicate lamb with its indispensable mint sauce, and fragrant bread, home baked in an ancient brick oven. I would sooner have a hunk of that bread with a dab of farm butter, than all your fancy cakes. I believe that in Church Farm I was perhaps privileged to see one of the last examples of the old style of family life on a big farm.
No form of public transport yet linked Ulcombe with the County town of Maidstone about nine miles away, consequently the urbanisation of the country folk had yet to begin. Their work occupied their minds almost wholly and their leisure was often enough dedicated to work for the parish church or, as in the case of Miss Daisy, to V.A.D. work at East Sutton Park. Voluntary as any sinecure with the added glamour of a smart uniform, but was work undertaken after their own work was done and following a three mile walk across field paths. And it was not always summer time. Conditions such as that would appear to the average industrialised mind as sheer slavery and not to be tolerated, but I never heard the people of those days and that place utter the mere suggestion that they were in any way slaves. They had not the canned pleasure of radio, television and the cinema, nor the wild delights of football pools. To them the alternative to doing something active and constructive for the betterment of themselves or their community was boredom and spiritual degradation. So it is to-day but television and films and wireless have a habit of stunning the senses with sheer noise, producing a moral unconsciousness like enough to the physical unconscious produced by a medieval surgeon’s mallet.
The men had their hobbies too. Ernest and Walter both excelled at bell ringing, and Gran’sire and Bob crashed out on the six bell ring of Ulcombe Church. Once a week and again twice on Sundays Ernest and Walter and brother Bert, who had taken over the old man’s building business, teamed up with fellow stalwarts to send the echoing bell tunes pealing over the Weald in a cascade of tumbling sound. The bells were not dedicated in that war, to be the alarm bells heralding invasion from the skies. Civilisation had not advanced that far.
Miss May, too, was fully occupied during her leisure. She was courting.
Of our fellow guests during my first stay at the farm I remember chiefly a Mr. Bolton, a school master I was told, and his son who was reputed by my elders to be a bit of a shocker. Personally I failed to endorse that view probably because my own level of awfulness was pretty well akin to his. There were one or two other guests, ladies who I can dimly remember as figures appear on a foggy evening. Strange ladies they were, of indeterminate ages, with large flowery hats, high necked blouses and bell shaped skirts reaching their ankles. They were ‘ladies’ to their finger tips and one gets the impression that their attitude towards work was that they had been so well brought up that, thank God, they didn’t have to work. There was something not quite respectable about work in those days. It was reserved for that large section of society which, even as recently as my youth, was looked upon by the lower middle class as those whom God had placed on this Earth to work out their destiny in the service of their more fortunate fellows. It may have been a shocking outlook on the face of it. One did not, for instance, paint ones own house or repair the garden fence – there were poor but honest folk who did that for a few shillings. Degrading as they may be for the poor but honest folk, at least it gave the craftsmen a living and the employer a little more of his time to himself. Nowadays we are nearly all poor and most of us by reason of a tangle of laws have to be reasonably honest, which means that we have to do such jobs with doubtful skill ourselves, the honest craftsman loses his shilling and we lose our leisure.
At the farm there was also Margery. She was a girl of about fourteen with straw coloured hair, bleached around the temples where it met the sunbeam on her face. She had that peculiar golden fairness as common in mid-Kent as in Jutland, a legacy from Hengist’s Jutish invaders showing through the polyglot English breed after thirty generations. Margery was the daughter of another Chapman, elder sister of May, Daisy and Gladys who came to the farm for the summer from her home in the village of Handcross in East Sussex. Margery had the broad accents of the weald like her Uncle Ernest and I thought her the most beautiful thing in the world. We were always together and while I told her dashing stories of my ‘sea’ life on the “WORCESTER” she would, next moment, make me feel incredibly ignorant by exposing some point of rustic lore or treating me to a demonstration of how to saddle and bridle a horse. I have always had a sneaking distrust of the horse; he has a distorted sense of humour, which made Margery’s nonchalance in handling the beast appear to me as boarding on necromancy.
Those were the days of horse drawn harvesters, when, after the scythemen had cleared reaper and binder round the ever decreasing square of standing corn. Ernest was usually the driver while Walter and Shem made the stooks, aided by as many of the guests as could be lured into the field. Margery and I were there, of course. Who, in their moral senses, would miss the sunshine which seemed always to be there, turning the fields to bronze? We lugged the sheaves into place, locking the heavy headed ears of corn into each other in the stook for mutual support.
Then dinner. No going home, but a massive picnic of cold beef and pickles with slabs of new bread, generously buttered, all taken with the men under the leg of a hedge. The horses were loosened and stood under the shade of a tree flicking at the droning flies with their tails and snuffling in their nose bags. The men washed their victuals down with large draughts of home brewed cider from a gallon stone jar. They poured the golden liquor into open mouths as I have often since seen Spanish peasants do and wondered at their artistry. From what I later learnt of Kentish cider I also wonder now at their capacity for strong drink. Margery and I drank lemonade.
Then we would all get creaking to our feet with slightly stiffened limbs; the horses would be backed along the draw pole of the harvester and off we would go again until the field was cut and stooked or the shadows of evening called a halt to our labours.
After supper one evening, when the field was nearly harvested and only a small square of unreaped corn stood in it to shelter the rabbits, I went with farmer Chapman back there to see what we could shoot for the pot. It was a proud. moment for me when old man Chapman handed me a loaded shot gun. It was an ancient, single barrelled affair and weighed about as much as an Elizabethan arquebus. Mr. Chapman had his double barrelled gun tucked under his arm as he strolled up the lane to the field. We settled down under the cover of a suitable corn stook and I was sworn to silence. In the distant trees the rooks cawed busily as they made ready for the night; the air began to cool and the stooked corn behind our backs radiated a pleasant warmth which it had stored from the noon day heat. On that high field above the Weald the air was so still that the whistle of a train came fluting thinly over from Headcorn, four miles away.
Swiftly but silently the farmer by my side raised his gun to his shoulder and two ear splitting bangs nearly frightened the life out of me. Mr. Chapman got up stiffly and I followed as he walked towards the square of standing corn. He stooped down and picked up first one, then a second rabbit, shot dead in their tracks, with not a mark to show what hit them.
"Ar! That’ll doe fur t 'night,” said the old man with the magic gun. “Won't be no use waitin' fur more arter that rookus ar rackon. We’d best be gettin' whoam now. Ar! And best let me unload that thur gun o’ yourn too.”
Which he did. And I carried it home full of mortification that an old chap like that had been able to bag two rabbits at one go - and I hadn't even seen them.
I went back to the “WORCESTER” after that holiday for my last term. There were few of my term left as I settled down to earn those two first class extra certificates which were for me the key to the golden gates of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. As I worked I thought of their lovely ships waiting for their new apprentice; the graceful MAGDALENA immortalised by Kipling, the yacht ARCADIAN, the lovely AVON, ARAGUAYA, ARLANZA and ANDES. The war seemed far away in another planet. Even the nightly spectacle of weaving searchlight beams and the occasional futile bark of guns firing at zeppelins they couldn’t see and certainly couldn’t hit, hardly aroused more than passing interest.
When, from the dock of the “WORCESTER” one starlit night I saw a small spark of flame away over the Essex shore grow in intensity and flutter earthwards I felt only physical revolt. The thought of an enemy brought down by one of our aeroplanes failed to arouse in me the paroxysms of delight, which possessed my colleagues. I merely felt a disgust at human kind who indulged in such brutal antics and went back to my hammock with an acute attack of unreasoning depression.
I went home for Christmas, in 1916, having said good bye to the old ship, one of the last of the wooden walls, and to those men who had moulded the years of' my adolescence.
Chapter Thirteen
“I GO DOWN THE WAYS”
Robert Forbes was a half brother of my grandfather Alexander. In him the flair for business had obviously not been warped by any tendency toward wild-oat schemes such as brought ultimate disaster to Alexander, for Robert, in 1917, was Managing Director of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. From their old office at 18, Moorgate Street he controlled a considerable part of the destinies of that proud old steam navigation company. It was early in January that I met him and it was my Mother who introduced me to her half uncle.
I have a vague picture of a benevolent gentleman, dressed in the proper uniform of the City Man of that day, a fresh complexioned face with twinkling eyes, a short white moustache and an air which I can only describe as comfortable expansiveness. He sat behind a massive mahogany table in that not too well lit office on that grey January afternoon and addressed my Mother as ‘Edith’.
"Well, so this is Donald!” he extended a massive hand as my Mother introduced me. The usual formalities over we resumed our seats and my Uncle the conversation. "So, you've got your certificate. Well. now that's good. But I see our Marine Department have posted you to the PEMBROKESHIRE.” Mr. Robert Forbes waved a hand and shrugged his shoulders in a deprecating gesture, strangely un-English. "Good enough I suppose, but I’ve got something better." He leaned forward like a benevolent conjurer about to produce a brace of rabbits and a bevy of coloured handkerchief's out of thin air. "We’ve got a new ship - the BRECKNOCKSHIRE - just new out of Harland and Wolff's Yards at Belfast and now loading at Liverpool. How w’d ye like it, eh?” The Managing Director gave me no time to voice an opinion, and in any case who was I to cavil at having new Harland built ships thrown at me? One could hardly laugh it off by replying that really any old thing would do, and that the Royal Mail mustn’t put itself out on my account, the Managing Director had already insisted on upsetting the well laid plans of the Marine Department for especial delight. "So that's that,” he concluded in the breezy tones of & generous uncle. "I'll get them to appoint you to the BRECKNOCKSHIRE - she is an improvement on the PEMBROKESHIRE.
So, in a brief moment, in a casual sort of way the little spinning wheel of fate wobbled ever so slightly. It is amazing how often great decis1ons are taken in such completely casual ways without the remotest possibilities of those concerned having the slightest inkling of their devastasting consequences.
I joined the " BRECKNOCKSHIRE in Canada Dock, Liverpool. My Mother saw me off at Euston station. In case you should be wondering where my Father was during these days I can easily clear any unworthy suspicions by explaining that he was holding down a ticklish job as Naval Transport Officer at Dunkirk, France with the rank of Lieut-Commander R.N.R., learning to enjoy French cooking while coping with French sewage systems, Big Bertha (a German gun which periodically planted large shells in Dunkirk) and the unpredictable requirements of senior Naval Officers.
Brecknockshire
Drawing by Duncan Haws
When I reached Liverpool it was dark. The new ship loomed huge and grey in the mist which covered Canada Coal Tips. Clouds of black dust dimmed the arc lamps as wagonloads of north country coal thundered down the chutes into the ship’s holds. As I climbed aboard everything I touched was covered with coal dust, but the Cadets’ cabin was spotless and had the pleasant, clean smell of new paint. I met Delap, the senior cadet. He was an ‘Old Worcester’ whom I remembered as a badge cadet when I was a new hand.
Delap was an Ulsterman, son of a Church of Ireland parson. His long, straggly form seemed as if it was loosely held together by wire, his thin features were dominated by a pointed, aquiline nose. His hands were red and large, with long, tapered fingers which suggested manipulative skills.
He was a nice enough chap, with none of the overbearing nonsense frequently displayed by senior apprentices towards first trippers. His greeting, though having a touch of aloofness in it, was cordial. He recognized that we both spoke the same language and I could be expected to understand the finer points of ship board etiquette, which saved him the job of teaching me.
I found however, that there was another cadet who was like me. A first tripper and when I was introduced I recognized that this fair haired lad with the loud but somewhat effeminate voice, had neither the benefit of Worcester, Conway nor Pangbourne training. When I thought of my hard won ‘First Class Extras’ I felt as if I had been most effectively tricked and my faith in the inviolability of the Royal Mail Citadel received its first serious set back. The fair haired ones name was Giller, Eric Giller, and he had a stepfather, a Captain Fletcher, who was Head Master of the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar. I was to meet Captain Fletcher often enough later in life. To me he became the successor to the beloved Beatty.
Giller, of course, started at an immense disadvantage. He had come straight from the Masonic School for Boys and knew not one end of a slip from t'other. So he automatically became the junior cadet although a year or so my senior in age. But Giller was no fool. neither did he hide his light under a bushel - and could talk the hind leg off a donkey.
Until we sailed there was little that Giller or I could do, although I noticed that Delap was busy enough at the beck and call of the red-headed Second Officer. This man was named Hollands and was one of those people who seem fated to bear the heat and burden of the day. He was the only Officer living aboard, as far as I could see. He was quite obviously one of the sons of Martha who spend their forces in keeping things going for the benefit of other people. ‘Conscientiousness’ it is commonly called, a characteristic thrown into prominence when there is a background of clever people who are happy to stand and watch.
The BRECKNOCKSHIRE loaded down to her marks with coal, slipped out of Liverpool Docks in the cold darkness of the early morning of January 22nd, 1917. I was aft with the ginger-headed Hollands, working the docking telegraph and navy-phone on the exposed after bridge. As the heavy steamer churned out of the lock into the Mersey a wire hawser jambed round the poop bitts as it was being paid out. With a nasty crunch and a metallic ‘ping’ the hawser snapped and the ragged end sailed over my head in the darkness, ripping the solid steel handrails of the bridge into twisted metal as it whipped away overboard with a whine like a busted violin string. It missed me by inches. It was the first mishap in a crescendo of mishaps on that eventful voyage.
Carmania
The Irish Sea was as grey as the paint on our ship's sides as we rounded Anglesey and headed south. By next evening we had turned away westwards round the south of Ireland and the whisper went round that the CARMANIA had stopped a U boat’s torpedo and gone down. It brought us up against the facts of life with a bang. Not many hours before, the big, two funnelled Cunarder had slashed past us as we were passing the Bar lightship, her sharp stem cutting the cold waves and sending a feather of water along her sleek sides. Now she lay on the sea bed off the Irish coast - and lots of good men with her - with a hundred fathoms of' cold Atlantic over her shapely hull.
I was placed on the Middle Watch with Second Officer Hollands. While he certainly was the most energetic and efficient of any of the officers he had some harebrained ideas. One of the most disconcerting of them was to steam with navigation lights full on instead of dimmed. under the queer assumption that we were more likely to be run down by another ship than torpedoed by a U-boat, a view to which I could hardly subscribe after CARMANIA episode. but dared not counter.
The Captain of the BRECKNOCKSHIRE was a fine looking man named McKenzie. By birth a Scot, he has been educated in Germany in the old university town of Heidelberg. Whether he was a student of the University I cannot say But I should doubt it. He was a charming gentleman and spoke German fluently. A gift which was to be of considerable importance. Our Chief Officer was a thin faced man named Hunter. He had haggard features which spoke of ill-health. His walk was listless and he stooped a little with round shoulders, bringing his head forward in such a way as to give his staring blue eyes a look of haunting fear. I found out later that he had been a navigating officer in one of our military cruisers of the tenth cruiser squadron whose duties lay in guarding the northern seas between the north of Scotland and Iceland. He had been invalided out.
The ‘Third’ was a young Welshman named Evans, lately recruited into the Royal Mail from some ‘tramping’ company – on discovering which another of my Royal Mail bastions collapsed. He had a brand new Second mate’s ticket, no experience of watchkeeping and no knowledge of navigation other than that crammed at a navigation school. Delap held the unfortunate man in the greatest contempt as well he might. Evans had spent his apprenticeship chipping steel decks, paint1ng ship sides and sewing canvas, in the intervals of even more menial jobs. Delap had two years WORCESTER training behind him followed by a year as a junior watchkeeper. He would, without doubt, have been more of an asset than the unfortunate product of a system which permitted boys to be exploited by shipowners and set to the most menial jobs for the privilege of being on indentures.
That does not mean that I hold it wrong for boys to do dirty manual work, nor that I think the excellent training ships run by certain shipping companies are merely forms of cheap labour (a favourite attitude taken by the lower Deck). But there were notorious ‘tramp’ firms who deliberately took on indentured apprentices for the purpose of cutting crews on the one hand and so that the boys could be set to jobs for which the men could claim overtime. During slump periods the apprentices were kept by the ship, swinging at buoys. to act as unpaid watchmen and to chip and paint as necessary. Evans had escaped from that by the fortunes of war.
As our nine thousand ton steamer fought her way south in filthy North Atlantic weather more of her crew swam into my orbit. At first, keeping watch on the Bridge every afternoon and middle watch, I saw little but the Quartermasters who stood their two hours trick at the wheel. Then, as the weather improved a litt1e we cadets were set to work during the forenoon. First we "shot the sun" for longitude at eight 0’cloak. I had my father’s old sextant and envied Giller his beautiful new instrument. However Delap’s was nearly as old as mine so I took comfort. After working out the longitude - which results. at first wildly inaccurate, soon became near enough to reality to make the daily ‘sights’ competition - we would change into dungarees and go to work on some sailorising. This might be cleaning out the accident boat - bit of' a thrill as they were swung outboard over the rush1ng water overside - or overhauling patent log gear, sounding gear or flags. We never worked with the crew, probably for the very good reason that the crew never worked.
The BRECKNOCKSHIRE’s Petty Officers were a pretty assorted lot too. The Bos’un was a ‘dugout’, a bearded gentleman who had retired after a lifetime in Royal Mail passenger ships but had struggled back under the urge of war. After a few gruelling days of bad weather and trying to work a crew who had no intention of working he took to his bed and stayed there. The Carpenter was a taciturn individual with pronounced and unsympathetic views on the subject of the Bos'un’s health. The Lamptrimmer was about the best of the bunch, a hardworking young chap and a good seaman. The four quarter- masters were also sailormen; typical Liverpool Merchant seamen with discharge books full of ‘V.G's’ from half the big ships sailing out of the Mersey.
Most of the Able Seamen were not ‘able’, nor in some cases even seamen. There were dark rumours that Dale Street Gaol had been emptied to make up a crew for the BRECKNOCKSHIRE. Whether this was so or not I cannot state with any degree of certainty. I only know that once clear of home waters, none of them turned out to keep watch or work. the ship being worked. by ‘Lamps’, ‘Chippy’, the four quartermasters and the three apprentices. The special lookout men kept their watch but that was all.
The remainder of the A.B.'s told the Captain that they hadn’t come to sea to work and had no intention of working. Short of going in with two guns blazing in the best tradition of adventure stories nothing could be done about it. So nothing was.
Drawing of BRECKNOCKSHIRE. The ship herself was a fine piece of design and construction. A big fourmaster, she sported a single robust funnel. Of the traditional ‘three island’ type with a raised forecastle, bridge deck and poop, she had six hatches with four derricks to each hatch, for quick cargo working. The crew were housed in forecastle while the Officers, Engineers and Petty Officers were in deck cabins on the bridge deck above which was a ‘laid’ teak boat deck on steel beams. The BRECKNOCKSHIRE was a single screw ship driven by a set of quadruple expansion reciprocating steam engines working off Scotch boilers fired by coal. Her radio was the latest installed in merchant ships of that time, a rotary gap spark transmitter and a crystal receiver. Unfortunately the urgency of war meant that she had been turned out into the winter, North Atlantic without being properly "'gone over'" and it wasn’t very long before bits began to drop off.
One night in the middle watch the "Second" came over to my side of the Bridge and, stood by my side looking up at the main lowermast head. The main mast sprung from the forward break of the bridge deck, which was about fifty feet forward of the navigating bridge. It was a dark and dirty night with a watery moon showing at times through driving low cloud. The ship was plunging and corkscrewing into a heavy swell and every time her bows brought up into a sea a heavy ‘bump’ came from the mainmast.
"Something adrift up there". said the "Second". "I'm going to call the Old Man ". he went over to the voice pipe and I heard the one sided conversation. Presently the muffled up figure of the skipper came on the bridge. The bumping came louder and heavier as the ship broke up the black swells into welters of foam. I heard the Captain give Holland a few curt orders and the "Second" hurried down the bridge ladder into the spray-soaked darkness. The Skipper called over to me “ring stand by engines, cadet!”
I swung the telegraph levers over and the little answering fingers waggled round frantically and came to rest at ‘Stand By’.
"Slow speed", ordered the Skipper. I rang down ‘slow’ and the vibrations of the engines died away, the ship eased her plunging fell to gentle' curtsies as the swells slipped under her forefoot. I saw two dark figures clambering aloft to the main top and recognised Hollands and the lamptrimmer. When they reached their perch, swaying against the watery moon, I heard. their voices during a lull, calling to the lookout man in the crowsnest below them to light up the wire they were struggling to haul aloft. Clinging on with their legs. Hollands and the lamptrimmer passed the wire round and round the head of the massive heavy weight derrick which had pulled out the rivets in its securing clamp. I wondered why the "Second" hadn’t called the watch to do the job instead of going aloft himself - and then I remembered the Dale Street gang and ceased from wondering. By eight bells the job was done and we went below as the engines resumed their full speed revolutions again.
The weather stayed foul as we pushed south. The next thing that happened was concerned with the port bower anchor which somehow came adrift from its securing gear. As the ship bashed into the heavy head swell the anchor began systematically to bash its way through the bow plates. Once again we slowed down and this time had to run off the wind so that men could work with safety on the forecastle head. The faithful few secured the sportive 50 cwts of cast steel while our gaol bird crew looked on - or kept out of the way. I think it was then that I first realized the sterling qualities of the real British seamen as compared with his beachcombing brethren. It must have been magnificent in the peak days of sail to see the clipper crews at work aloft in a gale.
Then we woke up one morning to find the dirty weather blown away, the teak decks dry and white with encrusted salt, and the sun shining. The wind had backed astern and although boisterous, white-headed rollers charged along our flanks, the smoke from our funnel now blew ahead of us and dropped clinkers on the bridge. L1fe became pleasant. Even some of the Dale Street Gang showed some signs of developing human instincts. In the evenings it was pleasant to hear the men lined up at the galley to collect their evening meal, singing in that pungent harmony so beloved by sailors. Their repertoire included most of the conventional sentimental songs which stimulate tears or maudlin happiness round about chucking out time, whether in Commercial Road, London, Scotland Road Liverpool, or Bute Street, Cardiff.
Part Three