The Shadow of War (39 page)

Tom Crisp is leaning on the rail and looking over the port side of HMS
Inflexible
, staring at the bleak and rugged landscape of the Falkland Islands. It is midsummer in the South Atlantic, but the cold black sea heaving beneath him and the heavy rain clouds over the desolate islands remind him of Britain in winter. Not that he is too familiar with Britain's coastal waters. Before he left Presteigne, at the end of August, he had never seen the sea before.

The ordeal of his fallout with Bronwyn, when her relationship with Philip Davies was revealed, proved too much to bear. The despair he was feeling about her betrayal, and the inevitable humiliation that would follow both within his family and among his peers, made life in the small community impossible.

He packed a few things in a canvas bag, collected his tools from his employers and left Presteigne on the same evening as the shocking encounter at Pentry between Bronwyn and Davies's wife, Clara. He did not tell his parents what had happened, but left them a short note saying only that he had to get away and that they would soon hear why. He promised that he had not done anything wrong, that he was fit and well and would write to them when he was settled.

Fortunately, he had his carpentry skills to fall back on and was able to find work in Hereford for a couple of weeks. He then trusted in his hunch that there would be lots of work for skilled craftsmen in and around the military establishments. He found some work at Bovington Infantry Camp, in
Dorset, where he heard that the Royal Navy's dockyard at Devonport was desperate for skilled craftsmen of all kinds.

When he arrived there, he simply gawped at the gigantic scale of the Royal Navy's warships. By some distance, they were the biggest objects he had ever seen. He was put to work on HMS
Inflexible
, a giant over 170 yards long and weighing over 17,000 tons, with 6-inch-thick armour plating. He tried to picture what her size would mean to people back home. He concluded that she would not fit into Presteigne's narrow High Street, but could just about wedge herself in between the buildings of Broad Street. She would fill it from one end to the other and would be three times the height of the Shire Hall, its tallest building. She carried almost 1,000 officers and men, the same number as the whole of Presteigne and its surrounding parish.

Tom watched in amazement as the dockyards' stevedores carried aboard new provisions. He had never seen so many boxes, sacks and barrels, in addition to the armaments, hoisted aboard by cranes. There seemed to be endless numbers of cases of ammunition for her fixed machine guns and her company of Royal Marines. Then came hundreds of gigantic
Lyddite shells
, each one painted canary yellow with a red ring below the nose to warn that it had been filled with explosive.

Despite her colossal weight, he was told she was capable of over 26 knots – which meant nothing to him whatsoever – but when it was explained that this was equivalent to 30mph, he found it impossible to believe. Built by John Brown on the Clyde only seven years earlier, she was a new innovation, a ‘greyhound', as quick as a cruiser, but armed like a battleship.

Her hull had already been repainted in dry dock on orders from the Lord of the Admiralty himself. She was a sight to behold. Every shade of grey imaginable, from gull grey to coal black, ran across her in bizarre patterns of swirls and stripes.

The dockyard painters said it was called ‘camouflage' and had been designed by a chap from London who arrived in an Admiralty Rolls-Royce, complete with easel, and was dressed in a paint-stained smock. The men were distinctly unimpressed by his bohemian appearance, and especially by his name, Solomon Solomon, which caused much amusement and soon became ‘Solly Solly the Silly Sod'! However, their opinion soon changed when, in less than two days, he reproduced
Inflexible
in his sketches in the most wonderful detail. He won them over even more when he sketched several of the men's portraits, signed them and gave them as gifts.

A week later, his designs arrived; ‘battleship grey' was a thing of the past, and the painters had to spend days mixing colours to match Solomon's new colour palette. Four-letter expletives and the word ‘gimmick' were much in evidence during the entire process.

Men swarmed all over her, replacing rivets, refurbishing boilers, painting her decks and interiors. Spanners clanged, hammers thumped and the painters sang and whistled as they made her gun turrets and funnels match her variegated hull. Particular attention was paid to her gunnery, which had been stripped and was being reassembled and calibrated.

Her sixteen 4-inch Mk III guns can hurl a 25lb shell 9,000 yards. Housed in four huge hydraulically powered double-barrelled gun turrets, her eight 12-inch
Vickers
Mk X goliaths can launch an armour-piercing Lyddite shell weighing 850lbs over fourteen miles. She also carries seven Maxim machine guns and five 18-inch Mk VI compressed-air torpedoes, which have a range of 4,000 yards.
Inflexible
is a leviathan, an awesome machine of war.

Tom fell in love with her as soon as he saw her.

He spent most of his early weeks below decks working with a team of men under the supervision of
Inflexible
's Chief Ship's Carpenter, William ‘Billy' Cawson. A Cornishman from Stratton – not far from the sea, near Bude, but a long
way from anywhere else – he has completed thirty years' service in the navy, having joined at the age of fifteen. He should have retired in the summer, to run the Port William, a pub in Tintagel, which he has had his eye on for years. But, with the outbreak of war, his captain, Richard Phillimore, asked him to stay on ‘until Christmas'.

Then, on 10 November, Billy heard that orders had arrived from the Admiralty that
Inflexible
and her sister ship,
Invincible
, being repaired in the dock next to her, were to set sail the following morning. So his retirement would have to wait.

When Tom and the other civilian craftsmen on board heard the news, they made the obvious point that their work had not yet finished. To which came the blunt reply that Mr Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, had ordered that any civilians with work still to complete must sail with the ships and finish their tasks in transit. Needless to say, there was great consternation, but the men's employers had already bowed to the inevitable and thus the men had to stay or lose their livelihood.

To make matters worse, their destination soon filtered down below decks. Chief Artificer Engineer Charles Richard had been told to get up steam for a fifteen-day, 15 knot marathon voyage south; first stop, Montevideo.

Most of the men had never heard of it. When they were enlightened, they all dashed home to their wives and families. Some called into church to pray; a few wrote wills on scraps of paper, or whatever they could find. And all the men – bar a couple, who had ‘taken the pledge'– got drunk.

In a role that harks back to the days of timber ships and canvas sail, as Chief Ship's Carpenter, Billy Cawson is also a warrant officer, the navy's equivalent of an army serjeant. Apart from the engine room, steering, weapons and wireless, he is responsible for all structural and maintenance issues on board. He has a crew of thirteen: a mate, a blacksmith, two plumbers, two painters, an electrician, a cooper and five
artisan mates. They look after the integrity of the ship, especially emergency repairs to any breaches of the hull or damage on deck. The loading and securing of the ship's cargo and
dunnage
is under Billy's charge, as is the maintenance, dropping and raising of the 150 tons of her anchor and chain.

Tom's work on
Inflexible
's interior, especially the repairs and alterations to the wardroom and to Captain Phillimore's quarters, was completed just four days out from Devonport, after which he asked to join Billy's team. He discovered he had good sea legs – even in the bowels of the engine room, where even the most experienced men often submit to sea sickness – and found the work absorbing. The residue of pain from the memories of Bronwyn and Presteigne was still considerable, but his new life at sea did much to help him push it to the back of his mind. He had little time to brood and the further from home they travelled, the better he felt.

There has been so much to learn about the life of a ‘
Jack tar
', most of it fascinating, some of it bizarre, and a few things offensive. Tom is amazed to discover that some of the junior midshipmen in the Gunroom – called ‘wonks' by their superiors, who treat them with varying levels of degradation, including beatings and verbal humiliations – are only fifteen. Instead of going from Osborne House, the junior Royal Naval College, to Dartmouth to complete their officer training, they have been sent to sea.

While at Devonport, Tom soon heard the common naval expression, ‘Ashore it's wine, women and song; aboard it's rum, bum and concertina.' Or alternatively ‘rum, bum and baccy' or ‘rum, bum and the lash'. At sea, he has become aware that behind the amusing ditty there are still some unfortunate practices. He has witnessed several incidents.

In one, the Gunroom President, the most senior of the three sub lieutenants, or ‘subs' – called ‘snotties' by the rest of the ship's company – assigned to the Gunroom, was
feeling bored. Possessed of a vindictive streak, he shouted: ‘All the young men are getting slack; half a dozen all round!'

After which, all six wonks were beaten across the bare arse with the Gunroom Punishment Stick and their chastisement recorded in the Punishment Book, a large leather tome with all the wear and tear of frequent use. One wonk, a lad scarcely fifteen years old, received six beatings before they got beyond the Canaries, the last one because some beard fluff had appeared on his chin. Sadly, because he had never shaved, he had not realized; nor did he have a razor with which to scrape it off.

On another occasion, the cry ‘Uttings!' was heard. Despite the fact that it was not the name of any of the wonks, they had learned that they must respond immediately. The nearest one did so at the double.

‘Yes, sir!'

‘What use are you, Uttings?'

‘No use at all, sir. None, absolutely bugger all. Sweet FA, sir.'

His prescribed response, which had to be repeated verbatim every time he was summoned, made the subs howl with laughter. The silly catechism of ‘jolly japes' was repeated several times a day throughout the entire voyage.

When Tom got to know some of the boys, he discovered that most were from modest middle-class backgrounds. To his amazement he learned that, because they are still officially undergoing training, in order to supplement their meagre salary of 1s and 9d a day, their parents have to pay the Admiralty £50 a year. Tom wonders what will happen should the young boys be killed in a forthcoming battle.

Wonks are not permitted to smoke or drink spirits, but they are allowed a 10s wine bill each month. With port or sherry costing only 2d a glass, they soon acquire the habit of consuming large quantities of alcohol.

But the midshipmen wonks will, one day, be officers. Many
will go on to be commanders and captains with their own ships, and a few will even be admirals of the fleet. Not so, the junior ratings. On the early days of the voyage, Tom watched wide-eyed as boys of the same age as the midshipmen, some looking even younger, and certainly smaller, scurried around the decks going about their work. Many were barefoot, their trousers rolled up to their knees, looking for all the world like street urchins, which is what they were before being picked up off the street after some minor transgression and given the choice: ‘The
spike
or the navy?'

Tom asked one, who looked no more than twelve and whose feet looked particularly raw after spending days scrubbing the decks in the wind and rain, why he did not wear shoes or boots.

‘Never 'ad none, Mister.'

‘Where are you from, lad?'

‘Rotherhithe, Mister.'

‘Do your parents know where you are?'

‘Ain't got none, Mister. Am I in botha?'

‘No, no, carry on.'

Young ratings on
Inflexible
carry the rank ‘boy' and are, in effect, ship's servants until they are older and are given the rank of ‘ordinary seaman'. There are nine boy telegraphists, five boy signallers and thirty-four boy seamen on HMS
Inflexible
.

Floggings in the Royal Navy were abolished in 1879, but the aura of rigid discipline is still present, and navy life is rich in curious rituals, peculiar phrases and odd behaviour. Tom finds it all intriguing. Although he has had to go through a highly disciplined and exploitative apprenticeship, he finds the navy's traditions unnecessarily harsh. But few of the older men on board agree with him, saying that the system instils discipline and, indeed, made them the men they are today.

As for the ‘bum' and ‘buggery' of naval ditties, nothing is ever said. As far as Tom can tell, there is no evidence of the
ship's boys providing sexual gratification, willingly or otherwise, to the older men. However, the wonks and boys are also known as ‘peg boys', and ‘pegging' is an old-fashioned euphemism for fucking.

Eventually, on a sultry night near the equator, by which time Tom knew Billy Cawson much better, he asked him directly.

‘Mr Cawson, if I may ask?'

‘Ask away, laddie.'

‘Well, I've enjoyed the rum, and I've seen the boys thrashed black and blue, but what about the buggery?'

‘What about it?'

‘Is it true, Mr Cawson, that the wonks are bum-boys?'

Billy laughed loudly.

‘Look, lad. I've known it 'appen. Every ship's got a few pansies an' little lads who take it up the arse – probably got a likin' for it at school – but no more than on Civvy Street. You put a thousand men on a ship for six months, with no women for company, and some will end up shaggin' the ship's cat, let alone one another. Truth of it is, it is against King's Regulations and if ye're caught, ye're for the high jump.'