Blitz Kids (34 page)
Authors: Sean Longden
The first few days at sea were a shock to all new boys. Many were without the months of training that characterized service in the Army, Royal Navy or RAF, or the careful training for sea as taught in sea schools. Instead they had to learn everything from scratch. One galley boy found himself unable to light the stove to prepare breakfast for the ship’s crew. As he struggled to get a fire going, he was approached by two old hands who made him an offer: they would come up from the engine room to light his fire if he would find them some extra food. It
was a deal. At 5 a.m. each morning they came to the galley with a shovel full of hot cinders. Both parties were satisfied: the stokers got their extra food and the galley boy got a few extra minutes in his bunk.
Joining his first ship, the
Rochester Castle
, in January 1940, Bernard Ashton soon adapted to life at sea. In his final weeks at sea school he had been one of the senior boys; days later he was the most junior member of a ship’s crew working under the watchful eye of the bosun:
At quarter to seven in the morning I collected dry stores for the breakfast. I had to have the coffee ready for the crew. I learned to make coffee by putting the grounds in and boiling them. Then I threw cold water on top and that made the grounds fall to the bottom of the pot. I could make a tin of milk last for ten days.
His days were spent making coffee and tea for the watches as they changed, washing down the showers, cleaning the toilets and scrubbing the alleyways. He was introduced to eating curries and rice, foods that were not exactly common in the Kent mining communities. He was also learning to look after himself, not letting the older men take advantage of his inexperience. As the product of a socialist miner’s household, Bernard could hold his own in discussions on politics and risked fights with sailors who made excessive demands for food. Although able to stand up for himself, he was still a boy and, following gun drill, he was only allowed a bottle of shandy when the other sailors received a tot of rum.
Like most boys he was watched over by the captain, who was concerned with his welfare: ‘The “Old Man” was like God.’ Each Sunday, Bernard had to parade before the captain, who inspected his hands and feet to make sure he was looking after himself. And he watched in amazement as the captain ran white-gloved hands over the tops of cupboards to check for dust: it was something he had seen at the training school, but had never expected to see it at sea. Mindful of the temptations of a port, whenever the
Rochester Castle
docked, the captain forbade him from going ashore unless he had a suitable chaperone.
There was little room for privacy onboard ships and the boys had to get used to the sights, sounds and smells of living in crowded conditions. With washing often limited to stripping off and using a
bucket of water, there was no time for modesty. For fourteen-year-old Tony Sprigings, life was basic and sometimes unpleasant. If he wanted a wash, he took a bucket of cold water and heated it with steam. The bucket was wedged into the rim of the toilet seat, allowing him to strip off and wash. Three apprentices shared a cabin, sleeping in bunks. There was no running water, just a washbasin with a bucket underneath to catch the water. One night, someone was sick into the basin. Rather than emptying the sink and washing it down, he left the vomit. Later that night, the senior apprentice rose for his shift on watch. Seeing that the basin was full, he reached in and bathed his face in vomit. He went mad, shouting for Tony and blaming him for what had happened. As he later recalled, that was the way of life at sea: Tony was the most junior, so he took the blame and had to clean up someone else’s mess.
Like all first-timers, Tony found himself given the most menial tasks. Long hours were spent on watch; the rest of his time was spent polishing brass, painting and sweeping up. Whilst undertaking a twenty-one-day journey from Liverpool to Port Said, he made a serious error that might have undermined his career as a potential officer:
I was in charge of sweeping up the wheelhouse and chartroom. Swinging in front of me was a barometer. Only a young fool would have done what I did. At the bottom was a screw-cap. So I turned it and thirty-two inches of mercury poured out on to the chartroom floor. I nearly died of fright. I tried to get it back in with a dustpan and brush, but it was useless. I thought this was the end of my career. The captain went mad and screamed at me and chased me out of the chart room.
For most boys, there were far greater concerns than the wrath of an irate captain. Life at sea in wartime offered a swift, and often vicious, introduction to the horrors of modern warfare. One seventeen year old joined his first ship in June 1940 and his first voyage took him through the English Channel. Passing through the Dover Straits he was shocked to see corpses floating in the water, victims of the desperate evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. As Raymond Hopkins recalled of going to sea after just two weeks at a training school: ‘We were on the front line as soon as we left port.’
Throughout the war, the U-boat menace was ever-present and there
was always the danger of the sudden, unheralded arrival of a torpedo. Setting off on his first voyage, sixteen-year-old Ron Singleton experienced the emotions shared by so many: ‘I thought I’d never see home again. Especially when I heard the first depth-charge explode. The escort was dropping them about three miles away but you could feel it. That unnerves you. You know there are U-boats about.’ Later on that first trip across the Atlantic he spent his nights on the deck, sheltering beneath a lifeboat: ‘I was so frightened, I couldn’t sleep. It’s difficult, especially if you are a youngster like I was.’
Tony Sprigings, on his first voyage and already unpopular with the ship’s captain, found a chance to redeem himself when his ship faced danger. Whilst on lookout, he spotted a mine ahead, caught on a wave coming towards them on the starboard bow. He rushed into the saloon to see the captain as he was eating breakfast. In a moment that seemed straight out of a farce, the captain simply looked up and said, ‘Take your hat off when you are in the saloon.’ Despite the captain’s indifference, he soon arrived on deck to watch the mine. The situation descended further into farce as a gunner on another ship opened fire on the mine. He couldn’t depress the guns far enough and sent high-calibre anti-aircraft rounds over the heads of Tony and his captain, piercing the ship’s funnel. Calm was restored when one of the Royal Navy escort ships safely detonated the mine. As Tony later recalled, it was the most exciting moment of his life.
Of course, war did not interrupt the normal routines of life at sea. Instead, it just added to the burden endured by the crews. For much of the time the young sailors were too preoccupied with work to worry about the realities of mines and enemy submarines. ‘The war wasn’t something constantly on my mind, there was always plenty of work to keep me busy,’ recalled Christian Immelman.
It was work, with the crew on ship maintenance, chipping, scraping and washing paintwork; sewing canvas awnings, splicing ropes and wires, learning to steer. On the bridge, keeping lookout in freezing rain, envying the mate on watch – cosy in the wheelhouse with the doors shut.
As apprentice Alan Shard recalled of his first voyage: ‘The first day we hit heavy weather in the Atlantic we were on our hands and knees
scraping the poop-deck planks smooth with an iron. Normally this would already have been done by the shipyard, but in wartime they were in a hurry to get the ships out.’ Nor was there any time for queasy first-time sailors to be indulged:
The ship was prancing about like a racehorse and we were feeling the results. Hancock, the other apprentice, threw in the sponge and took to his bunk followed minutes later by an irate bosun. After threatening to make him eat some greasy bacon on a string (a favourite tactic for first trippers feeling seasick), the bosun gave him an hour to get back to work. Strangely enough, on practically every trip I made until I quit, I was slightly seasick for a couple of hours. I tried my first cigarette and immediately got queasy and could not turn up for work. The bosun was irate and gave me a severe bollocking that put me off smoking forever, for which I am truthfully thankful.
One similarly seasick apprentice recalled carrying a bucket around his neck on a rope, ready to collect his vomit. As many found, cleaning up their own mess helped them control their sickness.
Whilst most boys were thrown straight into the ‘front line’ of the war at sea, fifteen-year-old Arthur Harvey spent his first four months on a tanker, refuelling ships in the waters around Portsmouth. One month before his sixteenth birthday he was paid off and joined one of the more glamorous ships in the merchant fleet. In October 1941 he joined the
Highland Princess
, a ship belonging to the Royal Mail line, whose pre-war run had taken passengers between England and Buenos Aries, carrying Argentinian meat on the return journey. Arthur joined the ship as a pantry boy, one of six lads on the ship. On the first morning they reported to the saloon where the steward gave them six buckets, six cloths and six scrubbing brushes so they could scrub the whole of the saloon until the floors and all the furniture were gleaming.
With the ship cleaned and ready for service, nearly 3,000 troops were loaded on, including 500 officers who were housed in cabins. Arthur was shocked to discover that, even in wartime, the officers received the same standards in the dining room as pre-war passengers. Each day they sat down to breakfast, lunch and dinner, sometimes
receiving a seven-course meal. While the officers relished their good fortune, the ship’s boys were less enamoured with the situation: ‘My job was to wash up all the pots and pans. We were down there from seven in the morning till eight at night just washing up.’
The drudgery of kitchen work soon gave Arthur Harvey an incentive to seek alternative employment: ‘I soon realized what I wanted to do – and it wasn’t kitchen work. So I got to know the bosun. He was a good lad. I went before the first mate and I was able to switch over to the deck crew. That was the start of my career.’ The change in employment also meant he moved from the overcrowded boys’ cabin, complete with straw mattresses, into a deck with more space to relax. Not that he had much opportunity to relax: working four hours on and four hours off, he never got more than three-and-a-half hours sleep at a time. There was no time to do anything apart from work, eat and sleep.
Once, returning from South Africa, Arthur was given an unexpected duty:
We took 100 high-ranking German officers – including some generals – who’d been captured in North Africa. We took them to New York. They were guarded by sailors from the Royal Navy. There was one guard on deck with me. I was a seventeen-year-old seaman and I had four or five of these German officers with buckets. I showed them what to do and then watched as they scrubbed the decks. That was a good job.
The experience of war soon changed the boys and, as most later admitted, it turned them into men. Onboard the
Highland Princess
, Arthur Harvey found that his duties took him to the most exposed positions, undertaking tasks that would have been unthinkable a few months earlier:
She had a permanent lookout post on the mast, halfway up. Further up was an apple barrel and we had to go up a rope ladder to the top one. We did two-hour shifts up there, lashed to the mast. There was no telephone so we had to shout and wave. It was nice in the tropics, but not so nice in winter. The rolling of the ship didn’t bother me, although I was 80 to 100 feet above the water. You could certainly see a long way.
On one trip to South Africa, Arthur was given an introduction to the bitter realities of life onboard a troopship. Carrying thousands of troops, it was almost inevitable there would be a number of casualties during the journey, with accident or sickness taking their toll on the passengers. One day, Arthur received a call from the bosun:
The bosun said to me, ‘Come on, you’ve got to learn your trade.’ I went to do my first one. He was an RAF officer who had committed suicide. It wasn’t a very pleasant job, but it had to be done. I had to sew him into canvas with a few fire-bars to weigh him down.
The youngster helped place the corpse into the canvas sack, then listened to the bosun’s instructions, sewing the sack shut. The officer was then taken to the deck, covered in a Union Jack and, after a short service, was buried at sea.
However, Arthur’s worst job came on his return to the UK from Argentina. Unbeknown to the crew, during the Atlantic crossing the refrigerators had failed:
We went into Swansea and, when the dockers opened the hatch, they refused to discharge it. So we had to sail out into the Bristol Channel. We were out there for about two days unloading all this rotten meat and throwing it into the water. The stench was unbelievable. We had to go down and open the hatches for them. 1,000 tons of meat went into water. Afterwards we had to clear up, and scrub down the hold – there was no one else to do it!
Whilst most of the youngsters who signed up for service at sea started at the bottom of the ladder as cabin boys or deck boys, others started at the bottom of the ship. When Raymond Hopkins signed on he gave his age as eighteen, rather than his real age of sixteen. It meant he got a man’s wage – with the additional £10 a month ‘War Risk Payment’, rather than the £5 paid to boys. He was also given a man’s work. He started service below the decks. It was a hot and dirty introduction to work: ‘I didn’t know anything about firing boilers, so I started off feeding coal down a shaft to the stokers. I had to make sure the lumps weren’t too big. Then I moved on to the boilers. I was looking after three of them, making sure they were all burning.’
The sixteen-year-old stoker – part of what was known onboard as ‘the black gang’ because of the coal dust that encrusted them – soon got used to the routine of throwing shovelful after shovelful into the boilers, dripping with sweat but all the time building up his strength: