SAILORS' YARNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 17 October 1925, Page 11

SAILORS' YARNS.

STORIES OF HALF A CENTURY AGO.

Life 55 years ago on the old Implacable—towed from Falmouth to Devonport for docking—was described recently with many other sea affairs, to a "Daily Chronicle" representative by Mr. G. A. Towers, of Holloway.

"When I joined the training ship Implacable as a lad of 15," said Mr. Towers, "the weekly pay for a third-class boy was 3d. Every Thursday we were handed this sum by the chaplain—sometimes with a little advice before we went ashore —and the threepenny bit was known among us as a 'holy Joey.' Our training was hard. It fitted us for the sea. For food it was salt pork on Monday, 'Fanny Adams' (otherwise bully beef) on Tuesday, salt beef on Wednesday, and then back to salt pork. Sunday was the fresh meat day. And there were two days when we had soft bread, while the other five we chewed ship's biscuit. The biscuit was good tack when you could soak it, fry it, and spread it with dripping. As we had not enough greenstuff, I've known the whole ship in hospital with scurvy.

"Duty started at 4 bells (0 a.m.) We ranged on the upper deck to scrub decks, and by way of further exercise went over the masthead—up one rigging, down the other. Then the cooks piped us to breakfast—hard biscuit and cocoa. 'The rig of the day' orders (clothing to be worn) was signalled to the Implacable from the flagship. "All day we were kept hard at it. There was always wood to clean and brass to polish. I was a petty officer when 1 left the service in 1881. I'm now 71, and, except for rheumatism in a leg, I'm still bard as nails. I have been in the coldest places of the earth and the hottest.

"Once in the Persian Gulf we were after gun-runners and slave dhows, the deck had double awnings. We put some flour ..and water on the top awning, and in half an hour it was all brown like toast: The heat was so terrific that there came an afternoon when only seven of ns could stand upright. I was one of the seven. The captain died from the heat. Unless we had been ordered back we should all have been dead men. During the night the men used to let themselves out of the portholes and remain in the water for hours suspended by a rope under their armpits. "I was on the Wolverene in 1575, when we touched Tristan da Cunha, heaving to in terrible weather. It is an island without trees, for the winds rip up everything. I've seen boulders driven about by the force of wind like paper in a London street. For protection against the wind the houses are built of dovetailed boulders. Just before our arrival the people told us that a flock of 200 sheep had been blown over the cliffs into the sea and drowned. Our ship's Captain married 17 couples. . . . We gave the islanders all sorts of stores, and they loaded us with curios... I am still interested in Tristan, and am sending out a parcel of little things for general distribution by the ship now under charter by the committee."