HMS Bermuda - November 17, 1954 to September 13, 1955

 

displacement: 8000 tons

length: 555 ft

beam: 62 ft

draught: 16 ft

speed: 31 knots

complement: 650

My first draft chit was to HMS Bermuda - a Colony Class cruiser with 6-inch guns - out of Plymouth. So if I'm going to Plymouth it means that for the rest of my time in the Navy I'm a Devonport rating, and I have now an offical number so the Navy recognizes me, and I've never forgotten it (it is one of those numbers you never forget) and mine was D/J928425 - and that was my number for the time I was in the Navy. I was a Devonport rating because of the part of the country I came from. There was also Chatham, and Pompey. They know where you come from, so you're going to be a Devonport rating.

So, big draft chit day. We took the train to Plymouth - it's a couple of hours away. There was only about 4 or 5 of us that went to the Bermadoo. The rest scattered to the four corners, I don't know where they went. What they did was send you to ships that were big enough to have boys mess decks - whether it was an aircraft carrier, or a cruiser. Not the small ships like frigates or destroyers. You were still under training when you went on board these ships, because you still had school everyday.

There was about 600 men aboard. They jammed you in there some way. It was pretty awesome - I'm going to live aboard this thing. We were down in the bowels of the ship - I don't remember any portholes in the boy's mess deck. You were given an action station - you're part of running the ship, even though you're a boy seaman - you have to do your thing. And my action station was the shell room of A-turret and I remember the guy that was in charge was a leading stoker. For action stations everybody has to have somewhere to go, and if he's not in the engine room, this is where he would be. Of course, in wartime, the compliment goes up by maybe 50 to 70 bodies. Don't ask me where they put them. Everybody had a space for their hammock, there were no bunks at all. Some guys used to have it hang over the mess deck tables - they were scattered all over the place. There were probably about 20 in my mess deck - all about the same age. We were all from St Vincent, but from all the blocks (not just Blake).

Everybody got a nickname - I was Taffy. Hank came later. If you came from Liverpool, you were a scouser. If you came from Scotland you were Jock. My dad was Hank in the Army and so was my older brother, David.

One of my jobs was midshipman's hammock boy. They are non-qualified officers. I had to get up at quarter to six and go down to where these guys slung their hammocks and wait until Reveille went, and then wait for these twits to get up out of their hammocks so I could lash them up and put them away. Waiting for them to get up was like waiting for the dead to arise.

Some mornings I was the boy's duty watch - used to get up with the regular guys (the seaman's duty watch) and go and scrub the quarterdeck. And when the weather was reasonably good that meant bare feet, long-handled scrubbers and buckets of soapy water. Then wash it down with hoses - using salt water - and that makes the deck go a white colour. You still do it in the winter time, but you put wellies on your feet.

Not every ship had a wooden quarterdeck - most of the big ones did - like battleships or like the Adamant and the Triumph. It's where the officers used to live at the stern, right? Drinking their Pink Gins. On smaller ships - like the Diana, the officers accomodation was in the bridge superstructure. But on the older, smaller ships - like the Crane - the officer's quarters were aft. The reason for that was that they were far away from the great masses and if there was a mutiny there would be marines between them and the officers.

We went to the Mediterranean a couple of times for exercises. The Bermuda's definition was "Home-Med". It was considered a decent draft for the older guys, especially if they were married, because they were only away from home 3 months at a go. Most guys if they were married would try to get a married-accompanied draft somewhere. We spent a lot of time at Gib and Malta.

While we're tied up, we're plugged in ashore - the boiler room and the engine room are shut down because they don't need the generators to run anything. It takes a few hours to start up again, because you have to get pressure in the boilers. Sometimes we'd fuel up at the dock, or sometimes as an exercise at sea. They used to get a ship come out - one of the RFAs (Royal Fleet Auxilliary) and they're merchant ships attached to the Royal Navy. They're painted the same colour, though they have a different set of rules. They have tankers, and store ships.

So now I'm finally at sea - on a real ship. It's the same, but different. You know, getting up early in the morning, having to do this and being at a certain place at a certain time. There was about 20 of us boy seamen, and we probably had a divisional P.O. - and a leading seaman (likely a 2 badgeman with a hook) who slept in the same mess deck as us.

Our first port of call was going to be at Gibraltar. But getting there we had to go through the Bay of Biscay, which at times can be notoriously rough. The next most enjoyable thing was being seasick. Bill and Huey weather and stuff like that. The Bermuda could probably do 20 knots as an economical cruising speed - though it could do 35 at a push...with a following wind and the galley range flashed up. The bay could be rough or it could be a calm as the top of a table. So this time though it was fucking terrible. It was roughers you fuckers. I was in some locker down by the boy's mess deck and all I wanted to do was die. "Death where is thy sting?" It was pretty bad. Some of the older hands that we've got on watch would say all you gotta do is get some hard tack (which is biscuits - like chewing concrete) and eat it; then put your coat on and go up by the funnel where it's warm and look at the stern. It's a lot easier to look at when you're seasick. So I took this advice and things got better.

So we finally get to Gibraltar, and it's a nice sunny day. Looking at Gib for the first time is very impressive. The first thing you see is the water catchment they have on one side to catch rainwater. It's huge. There's no water there other than from desalination. They're not going to get any from Spain, obviously. And we got to see the Barbary Apes...they're not monkeys! It's a common misconception that they're monkeys. And the saying is that if the apes die, Britain will leave Gibraltar. Apparently, it's honeycombed with things from the war. Tunnels and things like that, but you're only allowed to see certain parts of that. And, being a boy seaman, I couldn't visit the dens of iniquity.

One of my watches was in the wheelhouse - well, the wheelhouse is not on the bridge. It's down in the depths. So you go down there, and the Quartermaster is there and a couple of the regular sailors (ABs that have been in the Navy a little bit). And they say, okay you're going to steer the ship now. I'm thinking about this huge chunk of steel that floating around me. So the guy that's on the wheel now is going to call the bridge to get permission for you to take the wheel, and when you get on the wheel, you will say "Bridge...wheelhouse. Boy Seaman Hancock, permission to take the wheel, Sir." "Permission granted. Course to steer, and such and such...both engines half ahead, revolutions 120. Very good, carry on." And I would be on the wheel for half an hour. Any more than that and you almost get hypnotized watching the tape. I guess the reason the wheelhouse is not on the bridge is that if the bridge gets knackered, who's going to steer the ship? We'd had some kind of training in boy's school about ticker-tapes. Basically what it is - you have a little monitor in front of you that goes from 0 to 360...and there's a little line in the middle which is the bow of the ship for all intents and purposes. So this ticker-tape will keep going past you, if you keep the wheel still - as the tides and the winds move the ship, this ticker-tape starts going tictictic. So what you have to do - you have to turn the line to follow whichever way that's going. The most common mistake most people make is chasing the lubber's line. So if the tape starts to tic to the left, most people start to turn the wheel to the right to bring the tape back, but all you're doing is making the ship go farther away from it. If the numbers start to go right, you have to turn the wheel right to get to the proper course. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it's easy. I probably had the wheel several times on the Bermuda.

My action station was working in the shell room, and taking shells off this circular rack that surrounded the compartment, lift them up and put them into a hoist that took them up to the turret. These shells weighed 112 pounds. And I don't have much meat and muscle on my bones to lug these bloody things, and drop them in the shute. It put some muscle on me, I suppose. Nobody's going to help you. It was enough to make you feel tired just thinking about it. The guns were 3 barrels, and so they had 3 hoists, so there'd be one body per hoist. Usually boy seamen or lower ranks. Somebody else would bring the shells from the magazine and somebody else would put the cordite into another hoist.

While we were in Malta - they have a big lagoon called Selima Creek (or as it's known affectionately to the guys in the Navy as Slimy Creek) we'd have regattas in the bay. The Mediterranean fleet would be there in full force. There was always ship rivalry, and we'd have rowing regattas. While in Malta - now that I'm a sailor, I should go and get tattooed. I got 2 done - one on each forearm. A dragon on my left and a snake wrapped around a sword on my right.

We'd usually go out to sea for five or six days and then head for port - Malta or Gibraltar. They were a big part of "the Empire". Usually just to 'fly the flag".

There were some strange characters on Bermuda. There was one Petty Officer that used to run the laundry...he liked young boys. And he was always trying to get them to come and work in the laundry with him, because it was considered a quiet number - you could sleep there without hammocks or bunks. But I didn't like him - I'm 16 and I'd never experienced anyone like him before. Today, in this day and age, he would not be allowed to act the way he did. He made overtures to the boys...touching and standing very close to you...and you didn't know what to do. You didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what he was trying to do. He rubbed against me one day when I was on the upper deck leaning against the guardrail looking at something on shore (I think his name was P.O. Ahearn and he'd been in the Navy forever). I didn't want to go and work in the laundry because he scared the shit out of me and I tried to stay clear of him. I couldn't say anything because it was my word as a 16-year-old seaman, against someone who's been in the Navy for 22 years. You just stayed away from him. Nobody ever said anything.

Then one day one of the RPOs (Regulating Petty Officer) said there's draft chits for some of you guys. I said "oh, where am I going?". He said you have to go to the Regulating Office to pick up your draft chit up, and they give you a printed piece of paper - it comes in on a Telex or something - and I'm going to HMS Triumph. I guess I had about a week or two warning. It wasn't a pierhead jump - meaning no notice at all...the RPO says "oh, you're going over there" - where virtually you'd walk from one ship to another.