Earlier this year I stumbled across a booklet I hadn't seen in over fifty-years. Royal blue with gold embossed lettering and a vaguely recognisable crest, it had lain there in Mum's drawer, unopened, since late 1961. It was the passport to a new life; my final end-of-term report. I stood a while flicking through the pages, reading the comments, viewing with a smile the same boring comments from the same bored teachers, written at the end of every boring school-term since the mid 1950s. But it was the final comment, written in the headmaster's almost indecipherable scrawl, that transported me back over the years to the early 1960s:

"It has been a pleasure to have Roger in our school and we wish him well as he leaves us to begin his chosen career in the Royal Navy . . . ."

This bland ramble went on to hope that I would, one-day, also manage to swim the Channel and of course become 'more tuneful'. The last comment being a whimsical reference to an oft repeated report by the music teacher, Mrs. Butts, that I was: "not yet tuneful". Dear Mrs. Butts, she cared. A keen and competitive schoolboy swimmer, I had, at that time, every intention of swimming the English Channel at the first available opportunity.

And there I was, transported back over the years to 1962; to a dismal Tuesday in February, about to embark on the big adventure, alone on Shenfield Station gripping tightly to my London-bound naval travel warrant, and my empty suitcase. I wondered excitedly if any of my disinterested fellow travellers, most absorbed in their own private world, could imagine how exciting this day was becoming for me. Did it show, I mused?

There never was a time when I had the slightest doubt about my 'chosen career'. I had long ago chosen to enter as a boy in the Royal Navy. I was off to the boys' training establishment, HMS St Vincent, at Gosport in Hampshire. For months I had eagerly read, re-read and re re-read every shiny brochure available on the subject until they were dog-eared. It was never a conscious attempt to leave home and Mum, Dad and my brother, but now, today, the promises spun by those glossy leaflets were to become a reality.

Never having been outside of the sleepy village of Hutton for more than a weekend, this really was the start of the long awaited "big adventure"!

At last, in London, the final 'medical' was passed and a crocodile line of healthy, 15-year old ex-schoolboys, each holding fast to their suitcase, was escorted across London's Waterloo Bridge to the Portsmouth train. HMS St Vincent, was in Gosport. Gosport, they said, was on the other-side of Portsmouth Harbour. I wasn't quite sure where Portsmouth was! In fact I wasn't too sure where Waterloo Station was! For the first time in my sheltered village life I was exposed to many strange accents from the four-corners of Britain. There were boys from Scotland, boys from Wales, strange sounding boys from Newcastle and even three boys who had been travelling for two-days, from Northern Ireland!

As boys began chatting, a shy boy at the time, I remember thinking that if I didn't make a friend soon, I never would! Our day was organised to the minute: at the station we were marshalled down the noisy, busy platform in single file to our own special carriage, a carriage with large navy-blue 'HMS St Vincent' stickers proudly displayed in its windows. We were each allocated to a compartment on board, each compartment with a uniformed sailor to keep an eye on us. Additionally, the Navy had thoughtfully provided us with our own 'bag-meal'. A brown-paper bag with rolls, an apple and a hard-boiled egg. I have discovered over the years that all bag-meals must contain the obligatory hard-boiled egg! Which reminds me of "Frank Weaver and the early-morning egg" in the hotel in Rothesay . . . but, I digress!

It was soon obvious as our train left London behind that many of the boys in our group were more worldly than others; conversation alternated between girlfriends, motorbikes, jobs left behind and families. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Wow, did I have a lot of life to catch up on!

So absorbing was the conversation that none of us noticed that it had become dark, pitch-black dark, outside as the lights of exciting, unknown and romantic sounding stations: Woking, Guildford, Rowlands Castle, flashed, rocked and rattled by.

Finally, with the shout of, "Everyone stay where you are," ringing along the carriage, the train juddered and wheezed into the Portsmouth and Southsea station; this was the Portsmouth town station, we were bound for the Portsmouth Harbour station- "that's where the dockyard is," someone knowingly announced. Wow, the dockyard! We were almost in the Navy now. Waiting at the town station we were mesmerised by the sight of streams of uniforms -some with girls on their arms- quickly moving past our carriage windows. These, we were informed by our knowledgable escort, were "nipping into town for a last whet," and many were rushing through the turnstiles quickly enough to prevent the harassed ticket collector from identifying out-of-date and otherwise invalid train tickets. A whet, we discovered, was the navy term for a drink. My goodness, we were becoming more navy-fied every minute!

As our train now moved slowly from the 'Town station across Portsmouth to the Harbour, masses of lights, flashing, bright, white and coloured, came into view. These lights, we discovered, were ships' lights: warships, tugs and ferries, all reflecting in the dark waters of the harbour. We had arrived at Portsmouth Harbour, the heart of the British Navy; and we were to be part of all this.

In the dimly-lit windswept station we disembarked the train, and once again escorted, were led single-file again down the ramps, the noisy, slippery ramps that still remain in position to this day, to the Gosport Ferry, the busy local ferry service that would take us on the penultimate stage of the long day that was the 13th of February 1962. The day we joined the Navy.
Here, exposed and shivering in the darkness of the ferry jetty, Gosport seemed a long way away across the constantly moving mirror-black water of the harbour, splashing and flashing with the reflected lights of the busy dockyard. From out of the darkness, chugging, wheezing, spluttering and spitting sparks, appeared our transport, the coal-burning Gosport Ferry: Vesta. Excitedly we all boarded her -all ships are referred to as 'her' we were informed- one of our number had lost his suitcase. A disaster was soon averted as one of our escorts quickly retrieved the errant item.

Wrapped in the cosy up-drafted warmth emitting from the ferry's engine room, the journey across the chilly, dark windswept harbour went all too quickly and it was a weary group of nearly-sailors that queued once more to climb into the canvas-covered back of one of two big blue lorries, each adorned with 'RN' in large white letters just visible in the windy dimness of the Gosport jetty lights. This was it. We must be in the Navy now!

The rest of that evening and the following days went by in a blur as our civilian clothes, 'civvies' as we now called them, were all crammed haphazardly into the empty suitcase to be sent home to mum and dad, and we all became Junior Electrical Mechanics, 2nd Class. Our address at last was: HMS St Vincent!
We were issued with our uniforms. Uniform for work, uniform for parade, uniform for Sunday's and even a uniform for bed: naval issue pyjamas: sleeping-for-the-use-of. In fact we were issued with everything we would need to survive the next 12 months of our training. Nothing was left out and, although very few of us were old enough, we even received razors and blades complete with instructions on .how to use them!

The learning-curve was terrifying: we learned how to wash our bodies, our clothing, our bedding, and of course the floors -or decks as we called them in the Navy.
Each item of clothing had to be marked with our name and in some cases, names embroidered with red silk -I still remember how to do that and can still darn!
All this was accompanied of course by the obligatory service haircut. I don't know if you remember the nineteen-sixties, if you do you can imagine the anguish as many a stylish coiffure was reduced to the regulation short-back-and-sides!
Everything was to be folded and maintained in regulation shapes, each item of kit -we now called everything kit- had its own position in our locker. Kit, bodies and dormitories were inspected at regular intervals; any mis-demeanour would result in an immediate extra kit inspection. But still I enjoyed every single minute.

We marched everywhere, played sport, swum and in all respects became sailors.
The Bishop of Portsmouth taught us how to pray with a series of lessons that confirmed those of us who wanted to into the Church of England. But being a sailor wasn't the same as being a Junior Electrical Mechanic 2 Class. To achieve that we marched every day to the school-rooms to be educated to Naval standards by a 'Schoolie', a special un-naval officer trained to teach us. We may have left schooldays behind but I still consider that I got the best education possible courtesy of Her Majesty's Royal Navy.

I fondly recall that year at 'St Vincent with great pride; my 'chosen career' in the Royal Navy spanned twenty-four years during which time I was involved in several international 'confrontations', travelled the world, had the honour of crewing the first British Polaris submarine to the USA and, in my later years, instructed in the Royal Naval Submarine School.

But sadly, I am still 'not yet tuneful!'.

[THE END]

© scrapyardsummer 2016