A Boy Seaman’s Account of His Time at HMS St George (Cunninghams)
By Len Chivers
I was born in Hampshire in 1924. I came from a large family. There were seven of us in the family.
My stepfather – we saw very little of him during our childhood because he was in submarines and during the thirties, he spent two commissions in China in submarines – almost three years each time.
My mother had a very hard life, in that she was bringing up seven children with her husband away most of the time and an invalid grandmother. We had no electricity in the house, no gas and no inside toilet. We had lots of fruit trees. We enjoyed ourselves when we weren’t working on the farms.
My Stepfather had always earmarked me for the navy. He was in the navy himself. He was a pensioner in submarines. I suppose he thought it was a good thing for boys – it was a longterm career. I was quite happy with it. Once a year we would come down on an outing with the church or the school. I did get interested in the navy and on one occasion I remember going on board the Victory and also on board the Hood.
The joining age for a seaman boy was fifteen and a quarter – five feet and half an inch height. You signed on for twelve years, but your twelve years did not start until you were 18, so in effect, if you joined on at the minimum age, you were effectively signing for fifteen years. There was no way of getting out of the navy except by death, invaliding or very bad character. And that was a very painful process before the navy gave up if you that bad before you were discharged. Those were the circumstances of joining.
We were living in Rugby at the time and the nearest recruiting station for the navy was in Birmingham so in August 1939, a ticket had turned up for me to attend. So away I go to Birmingham and I think there could have been about 10 or a dozen boys and there was a Royal Marine Sergeant and a Doctor. We were then given an idea of the complete lack of privacy we were going to get in the future because we were all lined up with not a stitch on in a long line. We were all invited to jump up and down I suppose to see that everything was intact. This appealed to my sense of humour – I was splitting my sides with laughing while this was going on – which did not amuse the sergeant at all. It’s a wonder I didn’t get shown the door.
The other thing was, just as if we were you horses, great attention was paid to our teeth. I don’t sure know if that was to tackle ships biscuits or not, but I am fairly sure that if the state of mouth state of your mouth was too bad, you were shown the door.
I went back home. Before the War the boys were going to be the backbone of the future navy. They were spread around the country in boys training establishments like Gosport, Ganges, impregnable and Caledonia in Scotland. When the war started , probably why there was a delay for me being called up, all the boys that were in those training establishments were all sent to the Isle of Man where a very large holiday camp, Cunningham’s Holiday Camp that was at Douglas was set up to be the only boys training establishment for the rest of the war.
I think there were two reasons for that. One is the fact that they could train you in virtually in complete safety for a whole year because we’d had no bombing. The other thing was that the establishments that they released were able to house all the people who were called up. They were adults who had a very short training.
Just before Christmas a railway ticket turned up for me to go down to Liverpool and then get across to the Isle of Man in Isle of Man Steam Packet that was running.
I left home on 2nd January 1940. Being only 15, you didn’t think too much about it. I was looking forward to joining the navy.
We had to embark on one of the Isle of Man steam packets. All the time we went backwards and forwards it was always by night – always.
As I was saying, a very large holiday camp, Cunningham’s Camp was set up, but it was all summer accommodation. Now for the first six weeks we went to a smaller camp called Howstrake that was right up on the cliff edge, just two or three miles north of Douglas that were summertime chalets. We were there in what is recorded as one of the coldest winters in history with unheated chalets to live in. So, of course we spent all our time – we were there for six weeks – we wore overcoats all the time. The purpose of the six weeks was to kit you out. Our plain clothes was all parcelled up and sent home – we were not to see that again. We were issued with our kit. We had to sew our names. We were given a ‘housewife’, which is like which is like a small thing containing cotton, wool and needles and we had to sew in our name on everything , whatever it was , which included our hammock, a belt, socks. Every single thing – you were pleased if you had a very short name.
We were issued a sailor’s uniform and caps, boots, no shoes. You had a comforter which was a scarf. You had a blue service jersey which you were in wintertime, and of course your collars, your lanyards, your metal cap box, in which you kept either your navy blue cap or your white cap , whichever was relevant. And you had a small attachee case for keeping your private effects in. As I said You were issued with a hammock, one small horsehair mattress, very narrow, and one blanket.
It was extremely cold. We had lots and lots of squad drill, to teach us which was our right hand and left hand, and marching, that sort of thing. It was lots of wholesome food. Manx Kippers, that sort of thing. because the Manx are renowned for their kippers, lots of sheeps’ hearts
Discipline was quite strict. If you got caught with, to be caught with any smoking material you would get cuts with the cane.
They were mainly naval pensioners in charge that had been brought back into the Navy . In our case they were seamanship men so that later on we we could specialise in seamanship and gunnery.
It was not really harsh, but it was very strict. There was only one instance of harshness. At suppertime we kept the deck all scrubbed up and someone upset the cocoa on the deck. And of course, no one had done it, so the instructor said ‘Right, out you come.’ We were already on the cliff face. He took us a bit farther up and we stood there in two lines and he said, ‘Right, you are here now until such time as someone owns up who spilt the cocoa.’ It was very dark and windy. Then after half an hour, he said the front rank can change round with the rear rank as they were in the lea of the front rank. Then eventually, as far as I believe, someone did own up.
The two instructors who told you how to put your uniform on, how wear your cap and how to march, how to wash your clothes, those sort of things. The joining wage was 5/3d, which in today’s money is about 26 pence in a week but you were only given one shilling a week, which is about 5 pence in today’s money, because although you’d been issued new kit, you had to replace it with your own money if anything was lost or worn out.
We got very little pay. We were all required to write home once a week. A stamp was three halfpence of your shilling, you see, and of course you also had to buy your soap and toothpaste. Soap was a pound bar – a very crude soap that did both for your washing and for your clothes, but you could get that out of your credit. You didn’t have to buy that our of your shilling.
Your privacy – there wasn’t any. We had had a shower and you had to shower yourself and soap yourself, and clean yourself up very regularly. You also had to stand in front of the instructor so that there were no tidemarks.
You were turned out with your uniform properly rigged at all times.
I was not shaving at that stage, so it didn’t apply to me, but for anybody that had started shaving. They had to be clean shaven.
We got a very hearty breakfast. We had our wash and brush up before breakfast. Soon after breakfast we then had PT, physical training, and we also had some marching to do and how to salute and all those things. We did spend a lot of time sewing. We were shown how to sew our names, what stitch to use. We did go to bed early. We scrubbed the deck and we had to keep our chalets tidy.
Because of the weather conditions. We still did our squad drill but quite a bit of the time was spent running to keep warm. That drill we were not using rifles. It was all to do with marching, we were in fours. In fact, for the next year, the whole of my time as a boy, we were all in fours.
At the end of the six weeks we went to the main camp this was called HMS St George which had been a big holiday camp. Whereby we were still in chalets, long lines of chalets. A lot of boys there, probably 500 boys all together. We were all spit up into different companies, all named after admirals: Anson, Benbow, Collingwood, Drake. Frobisher, Grenville, Hawke. We had 24 in a class. We were all in four birth chalets, all in a long line. Our instructor would come along in the morning and shout “Clear the blocks”. We then all had to turn out.
In the winter we wore a blue suit with belt and gaiters, boots and then in the summer we had shorts and a canvas top.
And then in the summertime.
The emphasis was on seamanship and gunnery.
In seamanship we started off with bends and hitches, tying knots. We did every single one. We were taught all about the different types of rope, where the rope was made and where it came from. We had signals. When we finished, we knew every flag that there was in the naval code and international code. We were required to receive and send semaphore.
We had to know every part of a ship’s boats, what the wood was and what it was for and also with the sails. We did a lot of boat pulling. You might call it rowing but we called it boat pulling. It was done down in the harbour at Douglas. The naval cutter was mainly in use where you had 12 oars in the boat. The boats were quite hefty. They were our sea boats in the navy. They weighed about two tons. These ash oars were fifteen feet long. They were quite a handful for someone of fifteen or sixteen to handle. Obviously now and again you caught a crab which the instructor was not amused with at all. Our instructor behind his back we called him Bunny Williams. He had been a pensioner from the navy for years and years. In fact, he showed us a picture of himself in his straw had when he had been in the navy before the turn of the century. He was only a seaman gunner but he was a specialist i in seaman ship. He was very rotund. He absolutely growled when we were skylarking, but at no time did he strike us, although he threatened to many times. We did quite a lot of boat pulling.
Unfortunately, because the war was on and the facilities weren’t quite so good we had to do land sailing, so we hoisted sails on land and we had to know all the parts of the sail and what the canvas was.
The 24 of us were in a classroom with rails and we all had a length of rope and he showed us all the different bends and hitches and we had to know what the purpose of them was for. The test did not come until the end of the year. You had to be proficient as you went along. We did practice, to make sure we knew and of course a lot of the time were using them practically – clove hitches and sheep bends.
There was a yeoman of signals. Some of the boys, the brighter boys were creamed off to be signalmen. This division took place very early. They also had to know how to march and things like that, but the emphasis for the signal boys was on signals and the yeoman of signals. And in fact, the yeoman of signals, when he took them around, he moved his body of men around by using the signals that they would use if they were in a flotilla of ships.
Seaman boys were taught semaphore . We were not taught the morse code. They had a yeoman of signals. We had two sticks with the flag Oscar on which was half yellow and half red. With arms outstretched we went right through the alphabet. We had to be able to send and when the flags were the opposite way round and we would have to receive.
The instructor taught us the semaphore code. He would then do messages and we then would have to write down. Then we would have to also send messages ourselves. Every letter of the alphabet had its own semaphore.
On a very simple test on joining up decided whether you did nine months or twelve months. So we in fact did twelve months. We also had to know the rule of the road off by heart. It was done in rhyme form, the rule of the road – ships meeting each other at sea, it was done in rhyme form. For instance, ‘If to starboard red appear, it is your duty to keep clear.”
We had to know all about anchors and cables. Every part of an anchor – the shank and the ring, all those pieces. And about cable. We had to know all the complicated seamanship evolutions with anchors and cables and mooring ship. Because there were still one or two ships around that had had to strike their topmast to go through the Forth Bridge we even had the theoretical knowledge to strike topmast
We had to know all the different types of canvas that was in use and what the uses were for. We had lead line. Later on in life, I became a leadsman on a ship. I remembered the markings on the lead line with no problem, you know, the swinging of the lead, what size rope it was what were all the markings on the lead line, and how it was a fourteen-pound lead. All those things. A very thorough grounding.
At the end of that, we had an enormous advantage over the men (hostilities only)
who were brought in and were given a few weeks training.
The day was split up. During the week, you had to go to school for half a day. In actual fact, in the summer it was in the evenings. But it was a school with a difference. They requisitioned a large school (Ballakermeen School) and the teachers that came were all put into naval uniform. It was schooling in three main subjects: navigation, mathematics, mechanics and geometry. Those were the things that we were taught.
We had to march in all weathers about a mile and a half. At no time were we given transport. We went marching in fours with our boots and gaiters with three boys and the head of the column with drums, who gave the beat. In the wintertime we wore our oilskins. We would go either in the forenoon or in the afternoon and in the Summer we would go in the evenings.
That took up quite a bit of the day. It was strict discipline. It was very good training for anyone that wanted to advance themselves. We had to box the compass. We had to know the 32 points of the compass off by heart. We had to know about variation, deviation and a little bit about chart work. It wasn’t in great depth, but it was the rudiments of navigation.
Mechanics was all about breaking stains on ropes derricks and to do with the stresses on ships’ derricks. That was mechanics.
The other part was the gunnery aspect. We had Lee Enfield rifles with the long bayonets. We were taught every single movement in the army drill book – fixing bayonets at the halt, fixing bayonets on the march, porting arms, trailing arms, drill for funeral firing parties drill for on board ship, and we had to all the different squad drills, like when you see trouping of the colour, how they change formation. We had to do all those movements. We had quite long sessions at doing this. Because it was 1940, because of the threat of the invasion, we were also taught land fighting. Which the boys in the peacetime would not have got which we got. In fact, we were probably going to be as boys more effective against the enemy than my future father-in-law that only had broomsticks up in Yorkshire. Short point at the throat and long point and lunging in with our bayonets. It was very basic trench fighting. We did not fire rifles.
We did six inch load up drill. They had a mock-up of a six-inch gun. We had to do loader drill. The six-inch shell was exactly a hundredweight, which was quite heavy for a boy of fifteen or sixteen. You had a six-inch gun screw with the different positions all those movement s. And you had to build up quite a good rate of fire, closing the breach. The one that took us for the gunnery was a GI, a gunnery instructor, a specialist in that. He would shout out ‘Load’ and that sort of thing.
In the afternoons in the summer when we weren’t doing schoolwork or gunnery, the whole of the afternoon we spent doing either sport, football. We also had to wash our clothes and we were shown how to wash our clothes and also get showered. That was how the afternoon was spent. We were able to have leave once or twice a week. That was just to be able to walk outside. We had very, very little money, you see, so we didn’t often do that.
We had lots of inspections. The part that was set aside was called the quarter deck. So we had to know all about saluting. Of course, church was compulsory and stayed compulsory until after well after the war.
Right from the start we forgot about floors. It was decks, it was bulkheads, deckheads, even though we were ashore when we stepped outside the gate we were going ashore. Right from the very start and this stayed with you right throughout your life wherever you were. It was all seamen’s terms. You never had a stair. You had ladders.
We’d got a lot of church prayers, and those of us that we were baptised we had to do confirmation classes, and before we left St George we were confirmed by the Bishop of Man. Tynwald is the government of the Isle of Man. Our class was the Guard of Honour for the opening of their Parliament.
Swimming:
When I joined I could just about do a length of the swimming pool, so I had to go to backwards swimming classes. Once again, a lack of privacy. No one was allowed to wear a bathing strip. That was because most of the boys didn’t own one in the first place, so they said, ’Right, nobody is wearing one.’ The only time that we wore anything for clothes was when we did our test. Before we went to sea, we all had to pass our test, a swimming test. As opposed to the ones that had joined up as men. A lot of them went to sea without being able to swim. The test was so may lengths of the pool, fully clothed and then picking up a brick off the bottom of the swimming pool. I can’t recall going into the pool for leisure. In my case it was always because I was backwards swimming. There was only one stroke they were interested in and that was the breaststroke. They said, ‘The breaststroke is the best stroke.’ I think for endurance because I presume in the sea, they thought that to stay afloat you were probably better with the breaststroke. No other stroke was permitted or allowed.
We had another thing for entertainment to toughen us up. You’ve heard of going through the mill. We had 24 in the class. They would have another class of 24 and they size you off one for one. You put boxing gloves on, and you had to go in the boxing ring and knock seven bells out of each other for three about minutes. That was called milling. That came up now and again. That was about who was the best class. One of the reasons that the instructors were not too severe with us – I was saying that if you were caught with any smoking materials you got cuts. Boys still did it and some of them made quite a bit of money for themselves by selling at inflated prices. They got lights sometimes for their cigarettes by taking wires out of the switch, putting two pencils together and setting it on fire.
One of the reasons the instructors were not strict, was that while we were there we’d already lost the Royal Oak and the Courageous, both with lots of boys on board, and a class was ahead of us – we all looked up to them, they had been in the Navy two or three weeks longer than us. They used to win the competitions. Years later when I heard the Hood was lost – a lot of them went to the Hood. There were not any seaman boys saved from the Hood. The instructors were mindful of that.
Discipline:
It was fair really because they didn’t stand any skylarking. If you were skylarking or not paying attention or whatever you then got extra drill, that would be doubling with a rifle. If it was very bad, for smoking or that sort of thing, you had your canvas trousers and you got the cane well and truly. It went onto your punishment sheet. But at the end of your training, the punishment sheet was ripped up, when you went to sea proper you started off with a clean sheet. Your record didn’t follow you as a boy seaman. But unfortunately, when you did go to sea as a seaman it did follow you all the way around.
We got very friendly. There were four in each cabin. There was never any bullying. We had one lad that was elected to be our leader. He wore one sort of stripe on his arm He got paid a few coppers extra a week, but it wasn’t extra pay. It was taken out of his credit.
I can’t recall anybody fighting or any nastiness. There was one other thing in my case. I because a call boy. The boatswain’s call is still used today and it’s been in existence since the thirteenth century. It was a badge of office for dignitaries way back. There were 22 different calls in the seamanship manual. Some of them are still in use today. For instance, ‘piping the side’ or ‘hands to dinner’ or ‘pipe down’. Certain of us boys were elected to become call boys. We had to become proficient in 22 different calls that were in the seamanship manual. You were then examined, a few at random and you then became a call boy, so you were able to wear a chain as opposed to a lanyard. You got no monetary reward for it. That became very useful for me later on in my career. At different stages in my career I used the boatswain’s call and in fact, piped on board quite a number of VIPs.
In the ships at 10 o’clock for the seaman there was ‘pipe down’. The boys at to turn in at
9 o’clock if you were lucky enough to be off watch.
During the year that we were in the Isle of Man, we went on leave three times. Each time it was by night. presumably because it was safer in the ships by night. We had no accommodation. You just got your head down where you could. We were all issued with a life jacket which was cork, which you used as a pillow, which was not very comfortable. This is how we went on leave three times a year, in our uniform. I believe we got 10 days leave as I remember.
The crossing was always by night and you were given a wallet that you turned into a ticket. In my case it didn’t take long to get to Rugby.
We had three Irish boys in our class, and they were the only ones that were allowed to go on leave in plain clothes. We were not allowed at any time to have in our possession plain clothes. They had been allowed to keep their clothes when our clothes were sent back home at the start of the induction.
We were all issued with a seamanship manual at the outset. The emphasis was on the anchoring and the ropes.
When we were marching to school, we passed a lot of big hotels where in the forecourt it was lots of barbed wire, and behind the barbed wire were lots of internees. They were probably Germans or people that were not very sympathetic. They were all sent over to the Isle of Man. We passed those each time we were going to school.
Rations:
We were getting lots of wholesome food, a very good breakfast, what we called dinner at 12 o’clock, there then was tea, and then there was supper. Being in the Isle of Man there were lots of Manx kippers, lots of sheeps’ hearts, haricot beans and lots of meat, plenty of food and plenty of vegetables. We were very active. We had PT. We had to climb ropes.
There was no mast to climb because it was hurriedly put together as a boys training establishment so there was no mast. The sessions were only about half an hour. It was jumping and going over a vaulting box and climbing bars, gymnasium and climbing up and down ropes. We did a certain amount of cross country running and we also played football, but more for recreation. There was no means of being able to kick a ball around on your own. Everything was organised, what you did.
Free time in the evenings:
We had to write letters. I don’t recall any films. We didn’t really get a lot of entertainment. Lights out was at about 8 o’clock, and of course were called with a bugle in the morning. Some of the boys became quite proficient with the bugle and with drums. I mentioned earlier that we had drummers at the head of the column.
Before we went, of course, we had to pass exams in seamanship and in the gunnery. The next stage was, it was then worked out what was going to be your port division. There were three port divisions: Portsmouth, Chatham and Devonport. The west country boys would be Devonport; the Scots could be Chatham, or they could be Portsmouth. The ones who lived over in London, a lot of them would be Chatham, but Portsmouth was the main Division, so all the Londoners and the people over there couldn’t all be Chatham. In my case it was Portsmouth Division. It meant that the throughout rest of your careers, Chatham or Devonport would be the depot where you would go to when you didn’t have a ship. The ships were manned from the depots. Later it was changed, but in those days Barham or the Hood, they were Portsmouth Ships.
I myself had been allocated Portsmouth Division. We left the Isle of Man and we went down to Portsmouth. We went down there to join HMS Queen Elizabeth, a battleship, except she was not there because this was January 1941, which was the very worst month of bombing for Portsmouth. We went into the Portsmouth barracks, the old barrack rooms where you still used your hammocks. It worked out that we were only going to be there 5 days. Because of the bombing the Queen Elizabeth had just finish her three year rebuild in Portsmouth and become the most modern effective fighting ship. The last thing they wanted was her in Portsmouth when all the bombing was going on, so she in fact, fled north with a skeleton crew. So all of us who arrived, it took a while to organise a train and in the meantime us boys we did fire watching in the dockyard for the air raised. Portsmouth was in a very bad state because of the bombing. The barracks itself had been hit, but it was still 90 per cent functional. There were a lot of men in the barracks at the time because they were coming and going from ships. There were air raid shelters under the parade ground. We were just there for 5 days. 100 boys were going to join the QE and 1000 men were going to join altogether.
Image: Boy Seamen Rope Training, IWM