Approach of the storm - Chapter 25

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Thomas Arthur Russell, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Approach of the storm Chapter 25
By
Thomas Arthur Russell

We spent time in the boiler room and engine room, anywhere we could do a bit of cleaning up and learning, and often under the supervision of the E.R.A.S who had come up with us. They wore the rank of C.P.O.’s but they were nice chaps and didn’t pull rank with us, nor did we give them any reason to.

I got chewed off one day because I was getting too friendly with the girl who heated the rivets. She used to look strange to us as she pumped the bellows with her feet and passed the glowing hot rivets to the riveter. She wore a bib and brace overall over a light coloured jersey, her hair tucked under the inevitable scarf and a pair of small clogs on her feet. She was having her break, a cup of tea and some sandwiches, forward below in the Asdic cabinet, and she invited me along for a sandwich. Anyway, I was kidding her along and fooling around, when her foreman showed up. Either he thought something else, or he was jealous, but he packed her off. Whenever I passed her, I’d wink and smile and she’d smile back. She looked nice with her face flushed from the fire and I can remember thinking what romances must be starting among the women on war work, especially if their men were away in the forces.

One day, some women invited us into a canteen across the road from the shipyard. When we went in, we were surrounded by girls and were enjoying a sandwich and a cup of tea, when a matronly woman came along and told us we shouldn’t be there, and told us to get out after we’d eaten. She said it was only for dockyard women workers.

If we had been single we should really have gone to town on the females of Geordie land, but they were all great fun and helped to make our work and waiting less arduous.

The accordions and sing songs in the pubs were okay, now we have discos, TVs, films and so on, but I doubt if the young of today enjoy themselves as we did then. But war brings its own stimulus to life. You wonder what tomorrow will bring and you live accordingly. Every moment with my wife was lived to the full and we knew, although we never mentioned it, that there was a good chance that she could receive the dreaded telegram that so many had already received.

The thing we’d hoped for happened and we were both very happy. She had told me she was pregnant and we didn’t mind what it turned out to be. Now I really wanted this war to end but I’m afraid it was some way off yet. One day when she was visiting me, I took her across the river on the ferryboat and we passed near the ship. “There she is love, she may look big to you, but she’s not all that big when you see a battlewagon.” As we drew away and her rakish lines came more into view, my wife said it looks like a fast ship. I felt a slight feeling of pride as I said, “Yes she should be, and she’s new. I hope she’s lucky and you’re all okay.” “We shall be love, don’t worry,” I said.

The days and weeks soon passed, and we knew our departure could not long be delayed. We had walked down to the dockyard through hail and shine, we had got to know most of the workers on the ship, the people of Tyneside had made us feel like V.I.P.’s and I only hope they knew how much we had appreciated it.

We felt as if the MacLachlans had adopted us. Leaving the family, and leaving the serving girls behind the bars, with their cheery banter, would be mingled with sadness. We knew in our hearts we would probably never meet them again, any of us, and looking back now to those days of forty odd years ago, I wonder how much of it still seems so fresh in the mind. I can lean back in my chair, close my eyes and I can see faces, young, cheerful, full of the hopes of youth, and I thank God I lived then and I knew the real Britain, the unselfish side of my race and country.

The day came and we were ordered to join the ship. I remember it was quite a nice day and we stowed our gear away in the lockers allocated to us, and our hammock netting. The stokers mess deck was through the passageway, running directly through the back of the forecastle past the heads at one side forward, past the T.S room and under the seamen’s mess deck one deck down. It was fitted with portholes, which could be opened if the weather was nice, and in harbour. We quickly became acquainted with the rest of the crew and the ship became as busy as a beehive. Our chief stoker and regulating P.O. soon sorted us out into watches and issued us with the appropriate cards, denoting our watches and parts thereof, green for port watch, red for starboard.

We took note how many drew their tot, as references for the future, birthdays, bets or favours could win sippers from your mates. The stoker’s mess deck had a large table at each side, one down on the port and one on the starboard, seating about 14 men at a time at each one. They were fastened down into brass sockets into which the folding metal legs slotted by means of a cotter pin attached to a small piece of chain.

The lockers in which our personal belongings lay, formed some of the seating, for they had upholstered lids and ran around the sides of the ship. Two wooden forms comprised the other seating, these also fastened to the deck by cotter pins. The steel-supporting stanchion which supports the deck head above us had two electric fires fitted to them and could be used for toasting bread besides giving out heat. Our hammocks were stowed in a steel box like structure on their ends and were easily available.

The steel ladder from the seamen’s mess deck above had a steel chain as a steadying agent - important in rough weather, especially if it was your turn as cook of the mess, and you’d balance the food trays while the ship was rolling or pitching in heavy weather.

Everywhere smelt of new paint and of the cork sprayed bulkheads, designed to minimise condensation. The ship was now a living thing. Ventilation fans hummed, and auxiliary machinery made its noise in boiler rooms and the engine room. The warmth from the funnel mixed with the heat and the smell of warm oil met you as you entered the air lock of the boiler room. We now became officially commissioned after a brief ceremony on the quarterdeck, and straight away, someone set off hauling the flag upside down, and got a real telling off from our captain. This was supposed to be an ill omen and didn’t augur well for the future.

Boilers were pumped up and tested for pressure, machinery and pumping equipment were tested, and so on. Soon we were ready for sea trials and we sailed down the Tyne and into the North Sea. Although it wasn’t as rough as I’ve since seen it, I felt a bit queasy and it didn’t improve things to see some being violently sick. I don’t know what it was like down below for I had managed not to be on watch in the engine room or boiler room just then, but the pitch and roll seemed alarming, especially when our skipper Lieutenant Commander Jenks, a burly ginger haired man tested her steering capabilities by swinging her round. I think he was testing his crew. Once, I thought he was trying to turn her over, for the starboard guard rail didn’t look far off the foaming, rushing water, and having been in a battle wagon, this was a new experience for me.

The sky was grey and low cloud lay over the grey water and seas and sky gradually faded into the distance to leave a barely discernible horizon. The roll and pitch of the ship had gradually settled down, or maybe we were getting our sea legs. Soon we were making our way back to come to anchor. Except for a few minor adjustments she seemed okay and we finally left dockyard hands and sailed to Scapa Flow. for working up exercises, which included gunnery and anti submarine practice, manoeuvres at speed and smoke screen cover. The real work had now begun for all of us, both engines room and seamen’s department. Among all this, the ship had to be kept scrupulously clean. There was no shore leave and nowhere to go in any case, unless you fancied yourself as a shepherd.

We did hear a tale about a hard up sailor missing the girls so much he’d managed to get ashore and was found with sheep wool down his sea boots. But whatever the situation, someone could always be forced to spin a yarn to fit it and no doubt many a tale had been invented. Scapa fitted us out okay, for we used to feel the long Atlantic swell even at anchor. The ship used to creak and roll and our stomachs were getting acclimatised and meals were more readily fancied. Down on the mess deck, we older hands used to pay particular attention for any young rating, for sometimes he didn’t fancy his rum ration, and then we used to vie with each other for a sip of it. Eventually, even that was hardly possible as they became seasoned to the sea and weather. Those days at Scapa were nearly always grey and overcast. Odd days were brilliant sunshine but very cold. The rocky shorelines looked grey and bleak, and the weighing of anchor and going out on exercise was a counter to the monotony of the cold bleak place.

One day I got a new job. I’d never heard of it before, I was appointed ventilation maintenance rating and it turned out to be a plum job. I had to check the joints in the ventilation clinking system, the square metal tools fitted with the swivelling air directors. My tools comprised of a small spanner to fit the nuts of the joints, a large ball of putty and tin of red lead powder, a ball of caulking material and a narrow bladed scraper. My work consisted of looking for leaks from the joints and then loosening the nuts off, applying the spun yarn and red lead putty in, and replacing the nuts and retightening them up again. My busiest times were when we sailed out for a shoot, practising to bring our gunners up to a good standard for the operations we knew were coming.

The crash of the 4.7-inch would fuse light bulbs and be accompanied by a tinkle of glass. The crockery would rattle and the putty in the ventilation joints would sometime be displaced, so I was kept pretty busy. We practised anti-aircraft fire from pom pom and Oerlikeons at canvas sleeves towed by plane, and 4.7’s at simulated torpedo bomber attacks coming in low. Our skipper nearly threw a fit on one such shoot, for one of the after 4.7’s fired a shell on which the fuse setting had been set too low and the shell exploded on the port side above the bridge. If it had been closer it could have caused casualties. I didn’t know up to then that our captain had such a rich vocabulary as any irate collier, and as his voice echoed over the tannoy, it gave us a good laugh and proved captains were only human after all.

These little incidents were all part of the process of welding the ship’s company into one large family. The constant weighing of anchor and sailing out into the Atlantic, sometimes riding easily through a heavy swell, sometimes pitching and yawing through waves like small hills into which the boys would crash. Then you would feel a shuddering lift as she came up, throwing the seas away in streams of spray and water pouring through the scuppers, down again with a terrific crash as if she’d break her very back. We certainly gained our sea legs then and you learnt to time the sudden lift as you went down to the mess deck and the drop as she dipped to plough through the next oncoming sea. It was nearly like being on a kind of lift that came up and just as suddenly dropped away.

During this type of weather the mess deck became a damp foggy place, with water from overturned mess kettles tipped over and mixed with the smell of damp wool from wet clothes and the smell of vomit from sea sickness, for some were still suffering. Sometimes mixed with the water swishing around was the next day’s dinner of peas and potatoes, which had been upset. In times like this, the mess deck could be a miserable place.

Imagine for a moment, a steel walled room, narrow and tapering at one end, the only light electric, and looking and speaking to each other in this constantly moving and heaving room. Sometimes, someone opposite would be on a higher plane, sometimes lower, according to the movement of the ship. The seamen’s mess deck was above us, and besides all the other smells, we sometimes got a mixture of sweaty feet, which seemed to me to be extra strong on their mess deck.

Meal times could be an important operation in themselves, for it was a hazard transporting the large flat metal dishes of hot food from the gallery, with a deck constantly trying to buckle your knees and send the whole lot flying. Going down the hatchway was the worst — the steel steps would seem to suddenly drop away when you didn’t expect it.

Pr-BR

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