BANISHED FROM NAVY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 20

BANISHED FROM NAVY.

SALT PORK—SHIPS BISCUIT.

SHOCK FOR OLD SAILOR.

(Special.—By Air Mall.)

LONDON, March 11

Salt beef, salt pork and hard ship's biscuit have been banished from the Royal Navy (says a writer in the "Sunday Express"). I was turned loose in the Royal Naval Barracks at Portsmouth yesterday to discover for myself how the men who will serve in our new warships are being trained and how ! they are catered -for. I As an old sailor, I received the shock of my life. No longer are the messrooms "bare of furniture, and the tables bereft of cloths. Gleaming cutlery was laid on snowy white tablecloths; there were flowers on the tables. And what a meal. Dinner consisted of oxtail soup, roast beef, roast potatoes and cabbage, apple and sultana roll, with as much bread as a man required. Just an ordering dinner, I was told, and I remembered the days before the war when - I looked forward to Sundays and relished the awful "plum duff" served on the plate on ..which my '"salt horse" and black potatoes had been. Sunday was the only day in the week when a. second course, was served. Now every day the "ratings" have a three-course dinner, followed by a tea at which cake, buns, and other delicacies are served, and a supper which always consists of either hot or cold meats, or fish. Never is the same dish served for breakfast two days in the week. Bacon and eggs, bacon and kidney, sausage and tomatoes, and fish appear in turn. And this was not the officers' mess. I was with the engine-room artificers, ' the men who may be described as key , men in the new ships.