Eventually I melted the mini mountain down and the foreman started sending me scrap from the machine shop. This was covered in muck and oil. I pointed out that it was dangerous to put any foreign body into molten metal. The whole lot is liable to go up with a bang.

  This had nearly happened once or twice at the Slough foundry, when cold metal had accidentally been put into a hot pot. However, they insisted I melt this stuff down.

  I used to put a tray full into the pot and quickly slam the doors shut. The oil would hiss and vaporize, then ignite with a tremendous "Whumph”. I often expected the flue pipe to take off like a rocket, and the first aid man would come rushing out of his room, very agitated. I would have to skim large amounts of dross off the pot and it really wasn’t worth melting this muck down for the amount of metal retrieved and the danger involved.

  I applied for my release from this job and got one in the open air, labouring for a small building firm. I had had an almost permanent headache melting metal down and felt much better after a couple of weeks in the open air.

  I worked with Nobby Clarke; he was a painter by trade but could turn his hand to most building jobs. He was barely five-foot tall, yet had been a Company Sergeant Major in the Artillery and had served twenty-one years in the regular army. He had ridden in an army team at International horse shows and had many interesting stories to tell.

  He said that many regiments were in a mutinous state near the end of the First World War. His commanding officer had come to him saying that the men were getting out of control, so he called them on parade. He then picked out the biggest man and told him to step forward, as the man stepped forward he hit him, knocking him out cold. He then told the rest of the men there would be no more mutinous talk. There was no further trouble and the C.O. thanked him.

  He was hidden one day watching a German troop of horsemen fording a river. He was intrigued to see that they stood on their saddles as their horses swam across and he taught his men to do the same, and so keep nice and dry. We worked for some time on a beautiful farm that had to go when they built Heathrow Airport. I was sorry to part company with Nobby, but took the job at Captain King’s stables when I heard of it.

  Then I became a milkman.

  At last I received notification of acceptance from the Gravesend Sea School and I was agog with excitement. First I had to get a release from my job. The yard foreman, Mr. Rodin, said I was crazy. “You’ve got a good job and could work your way up as you’ve started so young, very quickly”. This was a hitch I hadn’t foreseen but the company were very nice about it, gave me my release and wished me luck.

  There was or had been a school at Gravesend, but I was sent to the school at Sharpness, Gloucestershire. Sharpness is a sleepy village and small port on the River Severn. Only coasters of a few hundred tons could dock there. The camp was sprawled alongside the river and the Vindicatrix, a black, ugly hulk, was firmly anchored in about ten feet of mud in a small creek. She was a German ship and very old.

  We were to live three weeks in the camp and three weeks on the ship. The deck boys received far more comprehensive training and did six weeks in the camp and six weeks on the ship. Sometime during the War it had become law that every boy had to pass the Board of Trade lifeboat test before he could leave the school. It was good basic grounding but unfortunately for us there was very little practical training except for the deck boys. I suppose it wasn’t considered so necessary for cabin and galley boys.

  Captain Angel was Captain of the ship and the camp. A big man getting on in years, but we rarely saw him. He had one iron rule, no whistling was allowed, especially on board ship, and woe betide any boy who forgot. I think this is an old superstition going back to the days of sail.

  The first day was taken up with being kitted out with some gear that gave us a sort of nondescript uniformity. Everything had to be signed for, to be docked out of our pay when we eventually joined a ship. The prices they charged must have made a handsome profit for someone.

  The first morning three boys had disappeared and a few more were to go in the first week. “Don’t worry”, said an instructor, “This always happens, if you can’t stand a few weeks here then it’s no good thinking about going to sea. You are free to go as there are plenty more waiting to come here”.

  I had waited too long to get into the Merchant Navy to even think of chickening out. I was just turned seventeen and to my annoyance there were much younger boys there who hadn’t waited as long as I had. There was even a boy who had falsified his age. They found out, of course, but let him stay.

  The instructors were all merchant seamen who had had some very hard times, except for the camp doctor, who should never have been allowed within ten feet of a patient. One instructor walked with a slight limp. He had been slowly freezing to death alone in a lifeboat after being torpedoed. His toes on one foot had turned gangrenous from frostbite, so he chopped them off with an axe to save the rest of his foot.

  Mr. Galloway was a kindly soul who had also been in the Royal Navy. He liked to yarn to us sometimes in the afternoons. He said he was the black sheep of the family and had never benefited from the family fortunes derived from the famous Galloway’s cough syrup. “The only college I ever went to was the college of hard knocks, and it wasn’t Galloway’s cough syrup that sent my boy to college but the crown and anchor board”.

  In the first week we shook down and got used to the routine, especially of being brutally woken up at six in the morning and having to get straight under a cold shower. Although the food was adequate we were always ravenous by meal times and every boy put on weight by the time he had finished the course.

  Our lessons in stewardship were dull, how to make a seabed, set a table, serve at table and so on, but we sweated at our lifeboat lessons, memorising the points of the compass, how to tack, turn about and sail close hauled to the wind. The difference between a standing lug and a jib and a dipping lug rig, for every boy was in deadly fear of failing the test and having to stay on until he passed.

  Only once did we take a lifeboat out. We made a terrible mess of rowing it, but the instructor finally got some semblance of order and we got a little better, though lifeboat oars are heavy and clumsy to handle. We never did any sailing and envied the deck boys going out and getting some practical experience.

Previous Page     Next Page