Open Writing

Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands was not everyone’s favourite base. Even sailors from the German Fleet in 1918, when holed up there, took one look around then pulled the plugs of their ships in sheer desperation, sending the lot to the bottom.

In World War II, however, Scapa was still the location for the British Home Fleet, and there it was that I took up residence on a semi-permanent basis. Then there was little talk of scuttling our own ships, only of scuttling ashore from time to time so that home-bred hostilities might take place. Meanwhile, on board we cheered our flagging spirits by moaning, grumbling, whining and cursing our miserable luck when we didn’t win at the excitingly breathtaking weekly games of tombola (bingo to some).

Thus my time spent in and occasionally popping out of the base did not provide for a gleeful sojourn, especially since it covered the period September to March, 1944/45. Christmas ‘44 was anything but a merry affair, entertaining in port perhaps, but more on that topic anon.

Flotta was the anchorage for big ships, and since I was confined to a cruiser, the Mauritius, that is where I spent my shore leave. Such release was known as ‘canteen leave’, with a duration from two p.m. until six p.m. Canteens, plural, since there were two, also a church, a cinema and the all-important beer-bar. I am informed that none of those exist today. That the beer-bar lasted the war out says much for its robustness, considering the various onslaughts it suffered, and they came from mariners who were -- to all intents and purposes -- on the same side.

At that time there seemed to be, and possibly still is, an unwritten naval law which stated that when crews from different vessels foregather in any drinking establishment, then hostilities shall occur between them, even though they are in the same navy. In my experience it was a law strictly adhered to. A ‘written’ naval law though was one which banned gambling. Yet on one occasion as I entered the bar-room toilets on Flotta, it was to be greeted by a cluster of startled eyeballs viewing me from ground level almost, whilst spread before their owners lay a crown and anchor cloth. Realizing I posed no threat, the gamesters continued with excited enthusiasm. Rules were always made to be broken.

Docks and piers were non-existent on Flotta. All warships moored or anchored out in the bay. Thus, small drifters were used as liberty boats, and as many as seven of these could lie alongside a small wooden jetty. That situation entailed the possible crossing of six boats should one be unfortunate enough to have to reach the extreme end of the line. So, in addition to bobbing from boat to boat, it behove one to be nifty at ducking and diving, since there would inevitably be fists flying amongst the crowded decks, the melee being created by all patrons pouring themselves out of the beer-bar at six p.m., many of whom were anxious to defend the honourable name of their particular ship from scathing remarks aimed by alien crew members. The grandfathers of future football hooligans.

Christmas 1944 demonstrated this procedure quite forcibly. At first, as was customary, all was merry and bright in the drinking zone, although some ratings had gained a head start of opening time by way of their rum ration and were thus well primed for the season of peace and goodwill. Once ashore however and in the company of ‘foreigners’, contingents from other ships that is albeit in the same navy, then all thoughts of fraternity fritted away.

The bar-room piano caught the worst of it. Long before closing time it had ceased to exist. Oh, joyful sound, that of a Joanna being torn apart and its constituent fragments utilized as weapons for both attack and defence. What better way was there, some thought, of celebrating yuletide other than beating one’s comrade-in-arms about the head and body with the lid of a piano? Hollywood film producers of bar-room brawls would have been ecstatic to record such mayhem. The blood was real too.

In mitigation of such barbaric northern practices I would offer the Church of Scotland canteen, where, in an oasis of serenity and contrary to accusations of all parsimony aimed at members of the Caledonian race, I can vouch for its total absence. The building, constructed of newly dressed stone, the only one so built on Flotta, was warm and hospitable with carpeted floors and deep easy chairs at our disposal. They were a novelty, creating a sinking feeling of a kind which was enjoyably welcome. The food was good, warm and wholesome. Only complete idiots would have deserted such a welcoming berth for the Spartan-like beer-bar. So that’s where we went and slopped around, instead of a concrete floor awash with swilling beer in an atmosphere of stale naval tobacco and a clamour that only a mass of semi-intoxicated matelots could create.

Yet, without any mock heroics, the situation at the time was in reality one of ‘drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die’. Many did so, at sea. I witnessed the cruiser Diadem enter harbour when her hoist of flags read, ‘All boats lost. Two men died of seasickness’. There was more than one enemy out there. She was returning from a Russian convoy. Sparks were bound to fly when her crew met in the bar-room with the one from the Anson, flagship to the Home Fleet. It was such a long time since she had left harbour that rumour had it she was marooned on her own milk tins. Fresh milk was unavailable on board ship. Nestle’s evaporated stood in lieu. I never witnessed such an inevitable encounter. Perhaps we were elsewhere at the time.

Possibly as a safety valve against such eruptions the almighty Admiralty powers decreed that ships should pay periodic visits to a world of relative sanity, populated by human beings whose chief aim was not to tear each other limb from limb. In accordance with such reasoning we sailed on a possible monthly basis to either Greenock of Rosyth and spent a few days in those ports, at times for either repairs or renewals to the ships, as well as ourselves. Fights still occurred but not on the grand scale of those in Scapa, or so it seemed. With hindsight, perhaps that was because there was more space and the combatants spread about more.

We also spent times anchored between the Isle of Arran and Holy Island, carrying out gunnery shoots for aircraft spotter planes to judge the accuracy of shot. It was during one such shoot that I expected my eardrums to receive damage -- of a serious nature. I had unwittingly stepped around the corner of X gun deck, just in time to see two six-inch guns belching flames. It was a situation where the brain works but the limbs don’t or won’t. I expected the following reports to shatter my eardrums, since I would have been unable to cover them with my hands before the bang. But I was transfixed. What a relief when the crash never came. Quarter charges only were being used, so the resultant ‘splut’ was just audible.

Another hair-brained action of mine occurred whilst running through the Pentland Firth, always a choppy bit of waterway and one we always made at night. I was on watch in the after radar cabin, which lay next to the officers’ galley. Fat had been spilled there, and it burned with the customary pungent stench. That combined with the bouncing ship brought me to the nearest point of sickness at sea I ever experienced in all my wanderings around the globe. For relief, bird-brained me, opened the door onto the after deck. True there was a waterproof curtain draped behind the door as protection against lunatic antics I was then performing. Even so, it was night time. The light inboard was bright. There could have been enemy vessels in the vicinity, and there was I blissfully and gratefully sucking in ozone. Fortunately the event was unobserved from both inboard and outboard. I quickly recovered my composure -- the lunacy remained -- and snuggled down in gentle repose on the steel deck, using for a mattress a pair of heavy knitted woollen long-johns known as Scapa scanties.

One other lasting memory is of an episode which developed when I learned that an ex-workmate was serving on the Belfast -- the one now moored in the Thames. At that time I thought it a good idea to pop over and pay him a visit. Catching the liberty boat, I got the skipper to deliver me to the Belfast, with the understanding -- so I thought -- that he would collect me when he had picked up the other liberty men at six o’clock. It didn’t work out that way. Seven, eight and nine o’clock came and went but no transport. I dutifully reported my predicament to the proper authority when, presumably, messages passed to and from the Mauritius and Belfast, messages which I’m pleased I never heard. Eventually at 10:30 p.m. a motor launch bringing officers back from Lainess collected me, and I was safely delivered into the awaiting arms of officialdom, there to be charged with being four and three-quarter hours adrift, thereby possibly endangering the safety of the ship in the event of her having to put to sea and me being absent from my station.

Thus I was listed on the Commander’s report for next day. I attended, delivered my defence, misunderstanding with combined idiocy, and it worked. Case dismissed! The Master at Arms (chief of shipboard police) told me I was a very lucky man. I didn’t stay to argue.

Came the day, however, when I left Scapa for the last time. It was also the final voyage I was to make on the Mauritius. We sailed for Liverpool and from there I returned to my depot, that bastion of naval accommodation which haunted all its allocated members, Chatham Barracks or, more specifically, the attached gunnery school, St. Mary’s, there to await my next drafting.

Where Mauritius went after my departure I have no idea, but she didn’t last very long, being scheduled for the breakers yard like to many Royal Navy ships at the end of the European conflict in 1945.

I carry fond memories of her. She was my first floating home, carrying me from coastal waters into the North Atlantic, the Arctic Ocean around Norway’s North Cape and into the fjords of Iceland, over white seas and green deeps, towards the swirling beauty of the Northern Lights, the magnificent Aurora Borealis, with her rigging encrusted in frozen spume and gun barrels bristling with icicles.

Yet there were other oceans to cross, distant seas to be sailed. Off with the old then and away to the new. It was a time to be moving on.