Fifty-two years ago today, I joined the Royal Navy.
I was seventeen-and-a-half and had been working in Newcastle Upon Tyne
as a Junior Clerk (an office boy) for a shipping and transport firm; handling
bills of lading, calculating charges, traipsing from dockside offices to the
bank to the airport. The managing director, whose office was down the corridor,
lived in my home town of Whitley Bay; I remember my mum saying, “Why don’t you
ask him if he’ll give you a lift to work?” I didn’t, of course. I did ask for a
pay rise when everyone else received one, but I was told I hadn’t been there
long enough. The job was “dead man’s shoes”, so I looked around for an alternative
place of employment.
I applied for a creative artist job with a Newcastle firm,
but although my samples of artwork were highly praised in the interview, I didn’t
have appropriate qualifications or experience. At the time I left school with
two GCE O levels, the University changed the admission requirements for their
course in Art & Design; I didn’t have enough GCEs, even though one of them
was Art (distinction). The other GCE was Geography. Yes, I failed English!*
(Perhaps I spent too much time writing a novel instead of studying or learning
to pass exams…)
One lunch time, I walked past the Naval Recruiting Office
near the main rail station, and then popped in on the off-chance, out of
curiosity. Two of my cousins were in the RN, and my uncle had been in the
Merchant Navy during the war. I lived close to the sea. Maybe some of that
brine was in my blood.
My parents were naturally ambivalent about my joining the
navy. It meant leaving home. But it offered what was then considered a secure
career. And all the adverts said I’d ‘see the world’. I applied, sat the fairly
basic exams in the Newcastle recruitment office and within a short while was accepted and
given notice when to join.
I joined HMS Raleigh (Torpoint, Cornwall) on 19 October,
along with several other raw recruits. I was a Junior Writer. Thus began my six
weeks’ basic training – Part I training. Part II training entailed going to HMS
Pembroke in Chatham, Kent . Here, I trained in secretarial (my score: 96%) and
Pay (96.5%) disciplines; I also learning to touch-type (96.5%, 25wpm). I passed
out from there to join HMS St Vincent in Gosport, Hampshire as ship’s company
and on my birthday became a Writer. The latter establishment is now a college. The touch typing has certainly
been useful! Incidentally, part III training is reserved for submarine
recruits.
As the adverts predicted, I was fortunate to see quite a bit
of the world in my time. I believe that is no longer the case for RN recruits
these days. They get to see the sea, mostly. There aren’t enough ships…
Here's a picture of me with a couple of Arab horses in Bahrain in the late 1960s, just before a race. Camel racing followed...
Fifty-two years. Blimey. Where’d the time go?
* I subsequently passed several GCE O and A levels and
obtained an OU degree.
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