Dad's Navy Days

Looking back over my time as a Boy Seaman at HMS St. Vincent I've recently remembered something that happened which, I think now, is an interesting insight into life in the old Navy. [At the time, HMS St. Vincent at Gosport was a boy's training establishment.]

We were allowed one short weekend leave at what could be described as half term in the normal school year. I had just left the train at Temple Meads station and had decided to take a taxi to my home in Kingswood. What a Boy Seaman was doing with a taxi I don't know but perhaps it was one of my mother's weekend postal orders that made it possible. Our weekly three shillings and sixpence wouldn't have been enough I'm sure.

The taxi driver told me to sit up front with him and en route told me that he had served in the prewar Navy. He described how, when he was serving in the Mediterranean in a large cruiser of the time, HMS Tiger, they had called into Gibraltar to coal ship. I have looked up Tigers history and she did indeed use coal and some fuel oil. This would have been somewhere around 1923.

The battlecruiser HMS Tiger in May 1917, Imperial War Museums, Q 74030

During 'coal ship' it was customary to call both watches and all the people who would normally be working below decks, so no one was excused. A gangway was put out at the bows and another one at the stern. On the jetty there was a line of trucks, perhaps they were dockyard railway wagons, all laden with coal. Each sailor was issued with a large pannier type basket made of some straw material. Then everyone filed down the forward gangway, trotted past the wagons, and I do mean trotted. Men in the wagons shovelled the basket on the shoulder of the sailor full of coal and the sailor doubled away to the after gangway and up into the ship. The ship's company being divided into two watches, that is port and starboard, the port watch went to the open coal hatches on the port side of the ship and the starboard watch to the other side. The basket was tipped into the hatch and stokers down below spread the coal evenly. The sailor then doubled away down the forward gangway to repeat the whole process again. So, several hundred men were employed in this task which had to be completed as quickly as possible.

Every ship carries an inclinometer which is a brass pendulum, highly polished of course, suspended over an arc marked in degrees. An officer, probably a midshipman, was posted to stand in front of this inclinometer and wait for the ships angle to change. The first watch, port or starboard, to effect a change of 1° would have won. Their reward was an extra days shore leave at the expense of the losing watch.

The sailors wore the Mediterranean working suit of the time, which was white! Coupled with coal dust in the hair and on the skin it must have been a nightmare to get everything clean again and of course the priority would have been the upper deck being restored to its customary pristine condition.

Am I glad that by the time I joined all ships used oil fired machinery.

"Reasons for my interest are that in the case of Breconshire, my father who passed away in August 1997, was the electrical engineer on RFA Sea Salvor which was assigned to take part in the salvage of the Breconshire. I am positive that the photo attached to your page in fact shows RFA Sea Salvor (top of picture) during that assignment. It is very evocative for me to think that my father was in fact in that photo when it was taken!

I think one of the other two ships is the Barhill which was as far as I know, also assigned to the task. Interestingly, both these ships were also assigned to salvage the remains of FOG-ALYP - the COMET JET airliner which crashed off the coast of Elba and the salvage of which resulted in the solving of the mystery surrounding the numerous earlier Comet crashes. My father was also involved in that project for which with other crew members of RFA Sea Salvor, he received a commendation from Lord Mountbatten then Admiral of the British Fleet in the Mediterranean.

In the case of HMS Gambia, I recall as a young child in Senglea, Malta where I was born, admiring the many Royal Naval ships that were buoyed in the Grand Harbour in full view right in front of our house. The Gambia was a frequent visitor and with the many other British and international ships, was much admired. Given the visits to that port during the times you mentioned, I theoretically would have "seen" your father as I was certainly there during that period."