YARNS OF THE SEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14145, 21 August 1909, Page 5 (Supplement)

YARNS OF THE SEA.

INNER LIFE OF THE NAVY.

The ways they have in the navy are past

finding out. Landsmen can never understand the manner of life which officers and men lead. They are cut off from the shore by the very nature of their calling, and ! more so to-day than for many years, because the fleet is more continuously on active service. Never in modern times has the veil been lifted as completely as has been done by Mr. Lionel Yexley in his recent book of reminiscences, entitled " The Inner Life of the Navy." From the training-ship life, with all its vicissitudes, the young sailor was drafted to a gunboat, in which he experienced his first gale, which, apparently, came near ending his career. SHOWING TlfE FLAG.

It was a typical small man-of-war o the period.

The guns consisted of two 64-pounders and one light 7in muzzle-loader. The after 64-pounder was in the captain's cabin, and could not be used unless the same was pulled to pieces, so the earliest opportunity was taken to give it several coats of white enamel, and there it rested safe and untroubled as long as it remained in the ship that it was exceedingly dangerous to cast the other guns loose, except in the finest of fine weather, we had unpleasant experiences before we wew much older.

This type of vessel was very common at the time, our foreign squadrons being mainly composed of such, carrying out the duty of what we now term " showing the flag;" in fact, some of them were to-be found in the navy list up to the beginning of the present century. CHRISTMAS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. There are still men-of-war patrolling the Persian Gulf and officers and men who have to make the best of Christmas under the most unfavourable conditions. Mr. Yexley tells of his Christmas at, Bahrien, which his ship reached late on Christmas Eve. _It was intended to send a boat ashore in the morning for such seasonable fare as could be obtained. But the day brought with it a tremendous hurricane, with thunder and lightning, and there was nothing for it but to make the best of pork and pease soup for the day's festive dinner, with the pleasure which might be derived from the " splicing of the mainbrace."

Ye gods and little fishes ! , What constitutions Britishers must have ! Salt pork and pease soup, and on the top of it rum, with the temperature of the lower deck about 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, Christmas is Christmas, and it takes more than tropical thunderstorms and salt pork to knock the spirit out of the average Englishman on that day. Such was the case with us, and after the dinner was cleared away and grog was on the table, all hands settled down to a sing-song.

One of the privileges of Christmas Day in the navy is that smoking is allowed oil the mess deck, and soon ours assumed the density of a. mid-Channel fog. The small ventilating hatches were battened down to keep out the rain, for the heat had warped and shrunk them to such an extent that canvas covers were necessary. So numerous candles were lighted, each adding its quota to the general heat. Once the singing was started every discomfort was forgotten; and men who had never given voice before during the commission joined in or added to the general melody. From songs the crew got to choruses, and then to dancing, and then, in the intense heat and fog of smoke, one garment after another was abandoned. Thus was the tradition of Christmas kept alive in this ship.

HOW SHU'S WERE MOBILISED. " Mobilising" is the subject of one chapter. It cleans with the " good old days" before there were nucleus crews. Mr. Yexley, on his return from the Mediterranean, received orders to join His Majesty's ship Galatea, " then lying in the dockyard basin," for the summer manoeuvres and a Royal review.

The Galatea, though a recently-complet-ed cruiser, was by no means ready for sea. She carried two 9.2 in guns, one forward and one aft, with a battery of 6in guns on the upper deck on each side. These guns had been hastily got on board, but could not be used, owing to the unfinished state of the mountings, and the same could be said of other of the ship's armament. Still, the order had evidently gone forth that everything that could float was either to steam or be towed to Spithead, to take part in the review, so we proceeded out of harbour, and picked up our position somewhere off Cowes.

Never did I experience such a time as the next few weeks provided. Some of the officers had been called up from half-, pay, and had no experience of a modern ship, while the crew had been gathered together from all quarters, the bulk of them just returned from foreign service, with a sprinkling of coastguards. Being a torpedo-man, 1 was placed in charge of the after submerged torpedotube, but as I had never seen a submerged torpedo-tube before in my life, nor the class of torpedo with which the Galatea was supplied I was as helpless as the proverbial babe. The torpedo instructor and the leading torpedo-man were in a like plight.

I also found myself coxswain of the steam cutter, in which job I flattered myself I should be quite at home, having a pretty fair knowledge of the handling of steamboats. Not so my leading stoker, who found himself in the same position with the boat's engines as I was with my torpedo-tube he had never been in a steamboat before. Unfortunately for him lie could not do with his engine what I did with my tube— it alone— as the boat had to do all boat duty for the ship; and from the first trip at Spithead till the last one, when her nose was smashed in by coming too violently in collision with the ship's side, we * lived a life of excitement and explosions ! ADVENTURES OF A LEADING STOKER.

The tale of this boat's adventures is a brightly-written story of the evils of the old system of mobilisation. The leading stoker, we are told, was given some instruction in his duties, and the boat was then ordered to go alongside the starboard after-gangway, bo the coxswain made a wide circle round the stern of the Galatea.

"Stop her!" But the engines went merrily on. We just grazed the gangway; there was not time to steer her outside the starboard boom, so under it we went, the funnel just clearing by about an inch.

Then from the bridge : " Steam cutter ! Come alongside, you fool; what are you doing?" "Can't, sir; the leading stoker can't stop the engines." The same day there was an explosion— the safety-plug blew outand then came the crisis.

- By this time the poor leading stoker was in a state of nervousness bordering on collapse, and the climax was reached a few days later, when the boat was " called away" to take the captain on an official vist to the flagship, about two miles down the line.

The blowing out of the safety-plug had fully impressed on the mind of the leading stoker the necessity of keeping water in the boiler, so as soon as we were called away lie had set his pump going. The presence of the. captain in the boat had no doubt so added to his. nervousness that he evidently forgot all about the pump, and hardly had we got clear of the ship when she began to "prime," and great black splashes of sooty mud were ejected from the top of the funnel into the sternsheets, where sat the captain in full-dress uniform. ,

It was too much for the leading stoker ; he simply lost all control of himself, and stood stark still, with tears running down his cheeks as he gazed at the growing volumes of mud pouring out of the funnel. Let me draw a veil over the next. few moments combination of mud and other things is not fit to spread over these pages. " THE COOn OLD BAYS." Like all who have served in the. fleet of late years, Mr. Yexlev has been under the harrow of reform, but ho realises that it was for his own good and the good of the service which is his pride. He is no barnacle. In his introduction he refers to the first reform memorandum issued by Lord Sel borne about six years ago:

"The.navy has been flooded with a series of reforms and reorganisations until it may be said to have been reduced to a state of flux, from which it is gradually emerging to a state of efficiency for war.

"For nearly a hundred years previous to this, it had enjoyed a state of quiescence, till officers and men had practically lost sight of the fact that its primary 1 action was war ; and, though during • the closing years of the last century there had been mutterings of reform, 1 oid Selborne's memorandum was the first rude awakening it received.

" Once the besom of treform was set in motion, a clean sweep was evidently decided on, and an affrighted service found itself being hustled out of the lethargy of a prolonged peace routine into a strenuous preparation for war."

Apart from the light which the author sheds on the social side of life on the lower deck, the main interest of his work ,es in his reflections on the navy as it is to-day and as it was in pre-reform times.