Well, after my discussion about my future with my father, and he's saying, "Well, the best thing you can do young man is join one of the Forces because I'm not going to have anything more to do with you."
"OK, I guess I will."
"What are you going to join?"
I said "Oh, I'd like to join the Navy."
So we agreed on the Navy and we did all the things, like we went to the recruiting office in Bristol, I think that's where it was. We caught the train to Bristol...checked the recruiting things - checked out the books (still got one actually).
I didn't want to join the Army. I wanted to go to sea, I don't know what it was, something in the back of my subconscious made me want to go to sea. So we did the book thing and finally got accepted and then the big day came...I'm going to be shipped off from the bosom of my family and I'm off to be a sailor. And I guess I was a bit nervous about it all because I'm leaving home - well, for who know how long, really - I didn't know how long before I could come home again, right, for leave and things like that. I didn't know what the Navy was going to decide for. I guess I had some idea it was going to be every three months or so. I wasn't quite sure if it was going to be weekends or what they would or wouldn't allow me.
So, I think there was a bunch of us on the train out of Bristol headed for Portsmouth with our suitcases - fifteen and a half - we all looked the same, I suppose. Not all from Newport - from all over the countryside. But that's the jumping off point to go to Portsmouth. So then we got to St Vincent - which is in Gosport, just across the river, or sound, whatever it is. St Vincent wasn't the only boys school - there was also Ganges. Chas was a swede, right - he came from Suffolk - a swede, as in head. They used to call country people from that part of the world swedes. Suffolk born, Suffolk bred, strong in the arm, weak in the head.
So eventually we got to Gosport and the Navy bus came and picked us up with our suitcases, and took us to St Vincent (which isn't there anymore), and you go through these very impressive gates, and then you see the parade ground and all these blocks in the background - with all their windows open to just the right height, all the way along...and I thought "Oh Christ".
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I was in Blake division (the other guys were in some other division, I can't remember which), and that was pretty close to the mast. I think there was about six blocks and it's the big mast that everybody had to climb at one time or another - just at the edge of the parade ground.
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So, the first thing we got to do is get kitted out. Get rid of your civilian clothes, pack them up and put them in the suitcase. They put them in storage - you couldn't keep them with you. They say "take them home on leave and don't bring them back". Because you're a boy seaman...you're not allowed to go ashore in civvies. There was all kinds of gear you had to get, and they got a stamp made up for you, and then you had to stamp all your clothing - put your name on it at a certain point - and then you had to chain-stitch your name into all these clothes. There were a couple of guys, they were fortunate, there names were Fox and Cox, but I felt sorry for the poor sod whose name was Satterthwaite. I thought I was bad enough with seven letters, I think he had thirteen, so poor bugger, but we all trudged on, and some of the sewing was okay and some was a bit mediocre. You tried to cut corners, but you had to be neat with it.
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So the next thing was the haircut, and I remember the barber saying "I hate to cut off a haircut like this - you got a really nice haircut - but I gotta spoil it for you." And he buzzed it right off. That was the shortest I ever had it. After school they weren't quite so fussy about how long - I mean you couldn't have it hanging down the back of your neck - but it could be a bit thicker on the top and sides, but not scalped like we were when we joined up.
And then we got our beds and bedding and lockers and put everything away. There was about 30 of us in this dormitory, I think. You had to strip the bed every morning - fold the sheets, the blanket and put it on the bed - you didn't have footlockers. You couldn't just put the sheets back. They're teaching you to be neat and tidy.
That's where I first got teased about my nose...where this kid was folding his sheets (his name was Bailey) and making his bed, and he turned around to me, held up his sheet and yelled "Hey Hancock...blow!" Well, you might say I was a tad upset, and he could see that, because he was heading down the stairs away from me, and I picked up the neared thing I could, which was a shoe brush and threw it at him with some accuracy and venom (I might say) and hit him right between the shoulder blades, and it hit him that hard it drove him into the wall, and he banged his head. I called him a little shit or something, and that was the end of that. He never said it again. I thought "this is life in the Navy, I suppose."
I think you had a head boy, or class boy, that they picked as a senior boy, but otherwise you're all the same - all terrified out of your skulls. Some would be a little stronger than others - took challenges more easily. Some would be a bit reluctant, but there was no pecking order in the dormitory. There was a block Petty Officer, and a block Chief Petty Officer, I think, that were in charge of Blake division. Blake being the entire building. And then there was Anson, Howe...I can't remember the rest...they were all named after Admirals.
So now we're into our #8s, our working clothes. It's like a long sleeve pale blue shirt, with two pockets and dark blue pants. You got two black hats and one was for best and one was for everyday. And then you had a cap tally that said HMS St Vincent on it. You weren't allowed to fiddle with it - like twist it around toward the front a bit. The bow is supposed to be over your left ear, but you sort of bring them around a bit so it would be over your temple - though the name of the ship still had to be centered at the front of the cap. I could make a bow out of what was left over - I got more sips of rum for making cap tally bows than I could shake a stick at. That was my party piece, making cap tally bows - tying them for guys who seemed absolutely incapable of tying a decent bow.
Food. So we go down to the mess hall. Now the mess hall is right on the bottom floor. There was a kitchen for each block (180 boys - 60 per floor). There were long tables the width of the building, and the table would fit the 30 of us. I can't remember if we went up to the gallery or we got plates. I think we got plates...like a buffet. Now when you're a junior entry you start closest to the kitchen. There's a reason for this, because the floor has a slight slope on it. So when everybody's finished, they all put the benches up on the tables. Then you have to scrub out. You get the soap and water, and all the shit...it's concrete and painted a muddy red...and all the mud and crap got swept down to your end. And as time went on - about once a month - you'd move up a table, and by the time you got to leave Vincent you were at the top. Just about 16 and we're the old farts now. And a new entry was a nozzer.
So we got three meals a day. We were woken up about 6 o'clock, somewhere around there. Breakfast was probably about 6:30 to 7:30. Then you had to scrub out and if you were low people on the totem pole you had to scrub out after every meal. And if you had to be somewhere, you had to make time for that. Classes started at 8:30 or 9. At mealtimes it could sound like an Irish Parliament in there! You were allowed to talk, but there was no skylarking. And at the end of the table there was a big fanny and everyone had to wash their plates up to get the crud off, then they went through a dishwasher.
Then, to make you really feel at home, you had early morning laundry. And that means getting up once a week or so, probably 5:15, with your sheets, underwear...everything. You got a big block of Pusser's Hard (looks like the old bars of Sunlight) and you went down to the laundry with your laundry hamper, and you had a big laundry tub, you stripped off near naked and did your laundry. And then you had to go have a shower. Any inhibitions of privacy went out the window pretty quick. You didn't have any. The only time you had any privacy was under the covers if you wanted to play with yourself. The showers were a cold, barren place. And after your shower, you had to come out and there was a duty Petty Officer would have his little stick, and you had to peel back the foreskin so he could have a look to see if you'd washed behind it properly. He'd get the stick, and go "Let's have a look. Right, you're clean - go get dried off." That would happen every time you had a shower, if there was a Petty Officer there. I found it embarrassing. But it's to teach you that you can't have inhibitions in the Navy. When you get on board a ship, it's too close. You can't be shy or coy about your body. Every so often there'd be inspection and if your clothes or your bedding wasn't clean, you'd be sent down to the laundry room until they were clean.
I never got punishment for anything, I thought it's not worth it, the Navy's going to win every time. I learned pretty quick the Navy is bigger and stronger than me. I think I regretted joining up almost every night - I think most of them were the same. You could probably hear a few snuffles during the night.
You had to learn how to use an iron - and it was an old iron. I think I got a quick once over lesson from a Leading Seaman but after that I was on my own. And if you had to press your serge pants, you had to do it from the inside out. They had seven creases - and when you folded them up that's the "seven seas". There was no steam irons - just a regular iron, and you used a damp cloth and you'd steam one fold one way and the next fold the other way. They show you how to do this, right? And you had to have a nice sharp crease in your #8s, too. And then you had your two sweaters, scarves, white fronts. And one white hat, because you might go into the Mediterranean. And what you used to do in the wintertime...your worst black hat got thrown away, and your best black hat became your second best. And you had to buy them. The same thing applied to your white hats. And when you had black hats, you used to have to brush them - one half one way and the other half the other way. Like cutting the lawn - so it looks nice. There was also the sewing - if I had a button come loose I had to know how to sew it back on.
My classes would be something like rowing, seamanship, gunnery, school, sailing (in a cutter, or a whaler). I liked rowing, but I was better with the oar sticking out to my left. So I always tried to get in the boat and get the oar on that side. Some guys it never bothered - they just jumped in and sat down. Some guys if they were really good at sailing, they let them go out with some senior people and used to do dingy sailing, which is a little boat about 12 feet long. Some guys were really good at it - but it never really interested me. There was always lots of sports. They got you to play everything - you played field hockey (which I loathed - I thought it was the most dangerous sport I'd ever played in my life), rugby if you wanted, soccer. I nearly played for St Vincent - I got a try-out anyway, because the Petty Officer we had in charge of our division (P.O. Cutting - always remember him - nice guy) and he used to do footie, and he'd say "Oh, you ever try for Vincent, Hancock?" I'm only a boy seaman, these are old guys! He said "Well, give it a try, you're not bad." I didn't make it but still he was encouraging about it. But at 15, I didn't have enough confidence - that I was as good as them. When I was 15 I was a shy kid. I didn't like a lot of people - I had Keith Wallace as my friend, but I was nervous around them. I didn't know if I said the right thing, or whatever.
When I joined St Vincent, I didn't know how to swim. The navy liked all of its bodies to (at least) float. I was one of a few that got roped into learning how to swim. One of the P.T. instructors had a novel approach to this problem. He made me wear a small inflatable life jacket. Standing in the shallow end of the pool, he told me to swim a length using the breast stroke. Not being a complete twit I managed to get to the deep end. He got me to turn around - saying he wanted to check my life jacket - then told me to swim back to the shallow end. Same thing happened at the other end, and this went on for two more lengths, as I recall. Then finally he said, "That was very good. You swam that last length without any air in the life jacket. Now you can try it without it." So I swam one more length without it and I passed my swimming test.
There were treats during the evening. There were movies. The strongest thing to drink was called Goffa. It's a fruit drink, they used to sell it at NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institute or better known as No Ambition and Fuck All Interest).
We had home leave every three months. For, I think, two calendar weeks. There were also long weekends, but I didn't go home then because it was too far and I didn't have the money anyway. So to go on leave they used to give you a warrant - a ticket warrant - and you'd cash that in and change it for a ticket when you got to the station. A couple of kids went on leave and never came back. If they try, the Navy will bring them back, because now you belong to the Navy. But if you keep trying it, they'll just decide it's a waste of time, and they're not going to expend all this effort to put you on board a ship and have the same thing happen.
There was a thing called Beating The Retreat. And it's from a battle or battles - I can't remember. And when everybody Beats The Retreat, everybody retreats... I think it's more of an Army thing, so I don't know why the Navy comes into it. It's one of those things they used to do at St Vincent every year. It was sort of fun - you dress up in these funny old uniforms they drag up from storage and off you go.
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Marching...oh Christ, there was lots of marching. You have to learn to keep in step. And the Navy marches to a different step than the Army. The Army is so many paces a minute and the Navy is so many paces a minute. We don't get explained things like this - we're just told this is what it is. And you always have to have something - whether it's a drum or some kind of music to keep you in step. I had a real problem swinging the arms and legs at the same time. Everybody did. But after awhile you get the hang of it. It's not that you're walking...it's that you're all trying to walk together. There was some right shambles at the beginning of that. But you just keep counting to yourself...bump, bump, bump, bump... The band was usually a Royal Marine band. Once you got it right, I guess you sort of felt proud of what you'd accomplished. You didn't want to let your division down, you had to do it properly...make sure you were clean, and the stuff you wore was pressed and the boots were shiny and the caps were clean. You had what they called a passing out parade when you're ready to go to sea.
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Before you leave St Vincent's they issue you with a hammock. And you had to do fancy - what they call clews and lashings on the hammock. And there was a neat way of doing it, but nobody bothered after you got to sea. You took your hammock with you on every ship you went to - and your mat and bedding. But after awhile the Navy stopped doing that and you got issued one when you got to the ship. You can always tell a Matelot that's going on draft because he's got a great, bloody kit bag and a hammock right along side him. So you were taught how to lash up a hammock, and all your kit went in your kit bag. After awhile they took away things like the little brown suitcase, and hat-boxes, because it was all white hats - there were no black hats anymore.
You had leave. They had some kind of duty roster for you - like cleaning the barracks. Most weekends you could go out Saturdays and Sundays. We'd go to Gosport and go to the movies, and go to Aggie Weston's (which is a sailor's home) a place for sailors to go rather than going to taverns and whoring around.
So now we're just about the end of our time at Vincent, and all that remains now is to get all our jabs, and get fitted for our sea-suit - which were a little bit tighter and more fitting than the things we'd been wearing for the past year. And by now it's all naval lingo - there's no such thing as walls, floors or ceilings, it's all bulkheads, deckheads and decks. So we're encouraged to talk like this, because you can't go on board a ship - walls, floors and ceilings will get sort of laughed at and no one will pay any attention anyway.
I was at St Vincent one year. I started November 10, 1953 and finished November 16, 1954. I could have gone in at 15 - when I finished school - so I was not the youngest guy there. I was probably middle of the range. You have to be 17 to be an Ordinary Seaman - and if you joined the Navy at that age you wouldn't go to boy's training, you would go somewhere else as Junior Entrants and would go to Ganges. For a lot of young kids it's their first time away from home, in any way, shape, or form. I mean, a lot of them didn't come from homes at all. A lot of them came from orphanages and institutions and things like that. Unless somebody volunteered information about their family, you never asked. If they came from somewhere they didn't like to talk about, they wouldn't talk about it, and you never asked. After awhile you just learned to respect that. Not everybody came from a loving family. There was a seaman's training school called the Arathusa - Michael Baker came from there, and he was one of my buddies on the Bermuda. It's a Naval school, and then they join the Navy as Junior Entrants. The cap tally they used to wear was TS Arathusa (TS for training ship).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_St_Vincent_(Gosport_shore_establishment)
"OK, I guess I will."
"What are you going to join?"
I said "Oh, I'd like to join the Navy."
So we agreed on the Navy and we did all the things, like we went to the recruiting office in Bristol, I think that's where it was. We caught the train to Bristol...checked the recruiting things - checked out the books (still got one actually).
I didn't want to join the Army. I wanted to go to sea, I don't know what it was, something in the back of my subconscious made me want to go to sea. So we did the book thing and finally got accepted and then the big day came...I'm going to be shipped off from the bosom of my family and I'm off to be a sailor. And I guess I was a bit nervous about it all because I'm leaving home - well, for who know how long, really - I didn't know how long before I could come home again, right, for leave and things like that. I didn't know what the Navy was going to decide for. I guess I had some idea it was going to be every three months or so. I wasn't quite sure if it was going to be weekends or what they would or wouldn't allow me.
So, I think there was a bunch of us on the train out of Bristol headed for Portsmouth with our suitcases - fifteen and a half - we all looked the same, I suppose. Not all from Newport - from all over the countryside. But that's the jumping off point to go to Portsmouth. So then we got to St Vincent - which is in Gosport, just across the river, or sound, whatever it is. St Vincent wasn't the only boys school - there was also Ganges. Chas was a swede, right - he came from Suffolk - a swede, as in head. They used to call country people from that part of the world swedes. Suffolk born, Suffolk bred, strong in the arm, weak in the head.
So eventually we got to Gosport and the Navy bus came and picked us up with our suitcases, and took us to St Vincent (which isn't there anymore), and you go through these very impressive gates, and then you see the parade ground and all these blocks in the background - with all their windows open to just the right height, all the way along...and I thought "Oh Christ".
.jpg)
.jpg)
I was in Blake division (the other guys were in some other division, I can't remember which), and that was pretty close to the mast. I think there was about six blocks and it's the big mast that everybody had to climb at one time or another - just at the edge of the parade ground.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
And then we got our beds and bedding and lockers and put everything away. There was about 30 of us in this dormitory, I think. You had to strip the bed every morning - fold the sheets, the blanket and put it on the bed - you didn't have footlockers. You couldn't just put the sheets back. They're teaching you to be neat and tidy.
That's where I first got teased about my nose...where this kid was folding his sheets (his name was Bailey) and making his bed, and he turned around to me, held up his sheet and yelled "Hey Hancock...blow!" Well, you might say I was a tad upset, and he could see that, because he was heading down the stairs away from me, and I picked up the neared thing I could, which was a shoe brush and threw it at him with some accuracy and venom (I might say) and hit him right between the shoulder blades, and it hit him that hard it drove him into the wall, and he banged his head. I called him a little shit or something, and that was the end of that. He never said it again. I thought "this is life in the Navy, I suppose."
I think you had a head boy, or class boy, that they picked as a senior boy, but otherwise you're all the same - all terrified out of your skulls. Some would be a little stronger than others - took challenges more easily. Some would be a bit reluctant, but there was no pecking order in the dormitory. There was a block Petty Officer, and a block Chief Petty Officer, I think, that were in charge of Blake division. Blake being the entire building. And then there was Anson, Howe...I can't remember the rest...they were all named after Admirals.
So now we're into our #8s, our working clothes. It's like a long sleeve pale blue shirt, with two pockets and dark blue pants. You got two black hats and one was for best and one was for everyday. And then you had a cap tally that said HMS St Vincent on it. You weren't allowed to fiddle with it - like twist it around toward the front a bit. The bow is supposed to be over your left ear, but you sort of bring them around a bit so it would be over your temple - though the name of the ship still had to be centered at the front of the cap. I could make a bow out of what was left over - I got more sips of rum for making cap tally bows than I could shake a stick at. That was my party piece, making cap tally bows - tying them for guys who seemed absolutely incapable of tying a decent bow.
Food. So we go down to the mess hall. Now the mess hall is right on the bottom floor. There was a kitchen for each block (180 boys - 60 per floor). There were long tables the width of the building, and the table would fit the 30 of us. I can't remember if we went up to the gallery or we got plates. I think we got plates...like a buffet. Now when you're a junior entry you start closest to the kitchen. There's a reason for this, because the floor has a slight slope on it. So when everybody's finished, they all put the benches up on the tables. Then you have to scrub out. You get the soap and water, and all the shit...it's concrete and painted a muddy red...and all the mud and crap got swept down to your end. And as time went on - about once a month - you'd move up a table, and by the time you got to leave Vincent you were at the top. Just about 16 and we're the old farts now. And a new entry was a nozzer.
So we got three meals a day. We were woken up about 6 o'clock, somewhere around there. Breakfast was probably about 6:30 to 7:30. Then you had to scrub out and if you were low people on the totem pole you had to scrub out after every meal. And if you had to be somewhere, you had to make time for that. Classes started at 8:30 or 9. At mealtimes it could sound like an Irish Parliament in there! You were allowed to talk, but there was no skylarking. And at the end of the table there was a big fanny and everyone had to wash their plates up to get the crud off, then they went through a dishwasher.
Then, to make you really feel at home, you had early morning laundry. And that means getting up once a week or so, probably 5:15, with your sheets, underwear...everything. You got a big block of Pusser's Hard (looks like the old bars of Sunlight) and you went down to the laundry with your laundry hamper, and you had a big laundry tub, you stripped off near naked and did your laundry. And then you had to go have a shower. Any inhibitions of privacy went out the window pretty quick. You didn't have any. The only time you had any privacy was under the covers if you wanted to play with yourself. The showers were a cold, barren place. And after your shower, you had to come out and there was a duty Petty Officer would have his little stick, and you had to peel back the foreskin so he could have a look to see if you'd washed behind it properly. He'd get the stick, and go "Let's have a look. Right, you're clean - go get dried off." That would happen every time you had a shower, if there was a Petty Officer there. I found it embarrassing. But it's to teach you that you can't have inhibitions in the Navy. When you get on board a ship, it's too close. You can't be shy or coy about your body. Every so often there'd be inspection and if your clothes or your bedding wasn't clean, you'd be sent down to the laundry room until they were clean.
I never got punishment for anything, I thought it's not worth it, the Navy's going to win every time. I learned pretty quick the Navy is bigger and stronger than me. I think I regretted joining up almost every night - I think most of them were the same. You could probably hear a few snuffles during the night.
You had to learn how to use an iron - and it was an old iron. I think I got a quick once over lesson from a Leading Seaman but after that I was on my own. And if you had to press your serge pants, you had to do it from the inside out. They had seven creases - and when you folded them up that's the "seven seas". There was no steam irons - just a regular iron, and you used a damp cloth and you'd steam one fold one way and the next fold the other way. They show you how to do this, right? And you had to have a nice sharp crease in your #8s, too. And then you had your two sweaters, scarves, white fronts. And one white hat, because you might go into the Mediterranean. And what you used to do in the wintertime...your worst black hat got thrown away, and your best black hat became your second best. And you had to buy them. The same thing applied to your white hats. And when you had black hats, you used to have to brush them - one half one way and the other half the other way. Like cutting the lawn - so it looks nice. There was also the sewing - if I had a button come loose I had to know how to sew it back on.
My classes would be something like rowing, seamanship, gunnery, school, sailing (in a cutter, or a whaler). I liked rowing, but I was better with the oar sticking out to my left. So I always tried to get in the boat and get the oar on that side. Some guys it never bothered - they just jumped in and sat down. Some guys if they were really good at sailing, they let them go out with some senior people and used to do dingy sailing, which is a little boat about 12 feet long. Some guys were really good at it - but it never really interested me. There was always lots of sports. They got you to play everything - you played field hockey (which I loathed - I thought it was the most dangerous sport I'd ever played in my life), rugby if you wanted, soccer. I nearly played for St Vincent - I got a try-out anyway, because the Petty Officer we had in charge of our division (P.O. Cutting - always remember him - nice guy) and he used to do footie, and he'd say "Oh, you ever try for Vincent, Hancock?" I'm only a boy seaman, these are old guys! He said "Well, give it a try, you're not bad." I didn't make it but still he was encouraging about it. But at 15, I didn't have enough confidence - that I was as good as them. When I was 15 I was a shy kid. I didn't like a lot of people - I had Keith Wallace as my friend, but I was nervous around them. I didn't know if I said the right thing, or whatever.
When I joined St Vincent, I didn't know how to swim. The navy liked all of its bodies to (at least) float. I was one of a few that got roped into learning how to swim. One of the P.T. instructors had a novel approach to this problem. He made me wear a small inflatable life jacket. Standing in the shallow end of the pool, he told me to swim a length using the breast stroke. Not being a complete twit I managed to get to the deep end. He got me to turn around - saying he wanted to check my life jacket - then told me to swim back to the shallow end. Same thing happened at the other end, and this went on for two more lengths, as I recall. Then finally he said, "That was very good. You swam that last length without any air in the life jacket. Now you can try it without it." So I swam one more length without it and I passed my swimming test.
There were treats during the evening. There were movies. The strongest thing to drink was called Goffa. It's a fruit drink, they used to sell it at NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institute or better known as No Ambition and Fuck All Interest).
We had home leave every three months. For, I think, two calendar weeks. There were also long weekends, but I didn't go home then because it was too far and I didn't have the money anyway. So to go on leave they used to give you a warrant - a ticket warrant - and you'd cash that in and change it for a ticket when you got to the station. A couple of kids went on leave and never came back. If they try, the Navy will bring them back, because now you belong to the Navy. But if you keep trying it, they'll just decide it's a waste of time, and they're not going to expend all this effort to put you on board a ship and have the same thing happen.
There was a thing called Beating The Retreat. And it's from a battle or battles - I can't remember. And when everybody Beats The Retreat, everybody retreats... I think it's more of an Army thing, so I don't know why the Navy comes into it. It's one of those things they used to do at St Vincent every year. It was sort of fun - you dress up in these funny old uniforms they drag up from storage and off you go.
.jpg)
Marching...oh Christ, there was lots of marching. You have to learn to keep in step. And the Navy marches to a different step than the Army. The Army is so many paces a minute and the Navy is so many paces a minute. We don't get explained things like this - we're just told this is what it is. And you always have to have something - whether it's a drum or some kind of music to keep you in step. I had a real problem swinging the arms and legs at the same time. Everybody did. But after awhile you get the hang of it. It's not that you're walking...it's that you're all trying to walk together. There was some right shambles at the beginning of that. But you just keep counting to yourself...bump, bump, bump, bump... The band was usually a Royal Marine band. Once you got it right, I guess you sort of felt proud of what you'd accomplished. You didn't want to let your division down, you had to do it properly...make sure you were clean, and the stuff you wore was pressed and the boots were shiny and the caps were clean. You had what they called a passing out parade when you're ready to go to sea.
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Before you leave St Vincent's they issue you with a hammock. And you had to do fancy - what they call clews and lashings on the hammock. And there was a neat way of doing it, but nobody bothered after you got to sea. You took your hammock with you on every ship you went to - and your mat and bedding. But after awhile the Navy stopped doing that and you got issued one when you got to the ship. You can always tell a Matelot that's going on draft because he's got a great, bloody kit bag and a hammock right along side him. So you were taught how to lash up a hammock, and all your kit went in your kit bag. After awhile they took away things like the little brown suitcase, and hat-boxes, because it was all white hats - there were no black hats anymore.
You had leave. They had some kind of duty roster for you - like cleaning the barracks. Most weekends you could go out Saturdays and Sundays. We'd go to Gosport and go to the movies, and go to Aggie Weston's (which is a sailor's home) a place for sailors to go rather than going to taverns and whoring around.
So now we're just about the end of our time at Vincent, and all that remains now is to get all our jabs, and get fitted for our sea-suit - which were a little bit tighter and more fitting than the things we'd been wearing for the past year. And by now it's all naval lingo - there's no such thing as walls, floors or ceilings, it's all bulkheads, deckheads and decks. So we're encouraged to talk like this, because you can't go on board a ship - walls, floors and ceilings will get sort of laughed at and no one will pay any attention anyway.
I was at St Vincent one year. I started November 10, 1953 and finished November 16, 1954. I could have gone in at 15 - when I finished school - so I was not the youngest guy there. I was probably middle of the range. You have to be 17 to be an Ordinary Seaman - and if you joined the Navy at that age you wouldn't go to boy's training, you would go somewhere else as Junior Entrants and would go to Ganges. For a lot of young kids it's their first time away from home, in any way, shape, or form. I mean, a lot of them didn't come from homes at all. A lot of them came from orphanages and institutions and things like that. Unless somebody volunteered information about their family, you never asked. If they came from somewhere they didn't like to talk about, they wouldn't talk about it, and you never asked. After awhile you just learned to respect that. Not everybody came from a loving family. There was a seaman's training school called the Arathusa - Michael Baker came from there, and he was one of my buddies on the Bermuda. It's a Naval school, and then they join the Navy as Junior Entrants. The cap tally they used to wear was TS Arathusa (TS for training ship).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_St_Vincent_(Gosport_shore_establishment)
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