Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Sep 23, 2004
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Movie
I would like to share a funny story with you all that happened many years ago in the early seventies while I was in the Royal Navy. I say funny, but it was not all that funny for the poor bloke it happened to, but it was at the time.
Like I said it was way back in early seventies and our ship was in dry dock for a re-fit during the worst winter we had seen in years. While the ship was in dock they kept a duty watch on board at all times. This meant that we had to actually live on board this refrigerator - that was what it felt like. We had no electricity or water on board and all meals were sent down in a container which was supposed to keep the food hot. I'm afraid technology was not all that far advanced in those days, so the food was just warm to say the least.
When we pulled a weekend duty watch it meant living on board for the Friday night through to the following Monday evening. Most of our duties were patrolling the ship on the hour every hour looking out for fires, which seemed pointless to me as there was no power anywhere to cause a fire, and all the dockyard workers were off for the weekend, so no threat from there either. We used to huddle together in one mess trying our best to keep warm. We looked like yetis dressed in our overcoats with balaclavas under our uniform hats. In fact, due to the fact that we could not wash or shave, we did not look our best by any means. This point was brought up when we mustered for our duties detail with the officer of the watch who lived ashore in the officers mess and came down to inspect us at the start and end of every day.
So it was early one Saturday evening, when moral was not very high due to the fact that we were expecting our evening meal soon and we all knew it would be cold, that I decided to set up an extension power cable from shore side to show a movie that I had found during my earlier rounds. I found a socket in a building close by and set about running the cable from it to the ship. It took every length of cable we had to reach, but we made it and I set up the projector in the dining hall, or what was left of it! The meals were late in arriving so I decided to start the movie as we all huddled up to keep warm. About halfway through the first reel the meals arrived and one bloke got up to go and collect them at the gangway. There were the usual shouts of abuse as his silhouette covered the screen when he made his way out in the dark.
He had been gone for some time but the movie was good and we were happy to have this respite in what was going to be a really boring weekend, so we never gave him a thought. Just towards the end of the first reel he appeared back in the dining hall and made his way to the front of the screen carrying the heavy container. There were the usual shouts of 'Sit Down, Get out of the way' and the like as his silhouette once again filled the screen, then he just disappeared! Just at that moment the reel ran out and I shouted for a torch in order to be able to set up the next spool. It was only then, as one of the lads lit his torch, did we see what had happened to our mate who went for the meals.
As he was making his way over to the table at the far end of the screen he had fallen down an open fuel tank hatch which none of us had seen in the dark! We never even heard the crash of the container as it hit the metal deck, due to the noise of the movie. The poor bloke was hanging by his arms which were both broken and made our rescue even more painful for him. Had he slipped right through he would most certainly have been dead as he would have fallen on the metal sheets which acted as wave breakers when the tank was half empty at sea to stop the ship rolling. The tank itself was about thirty feet deep and full of debris that had fallen during the re-fit work. In the end he was the lucky one, as once we had carried him to the gangway he was whisked away to the Navy hospital where he was living the good life for the rest of the re-fit. We were left to fill in the accident report which, of course, had no mention that we were actually watching a movie at the time.
One good thing came out of all this, however. For safety reasons temporary electric lighting was installed throughout the ship to enable us to carry out our fire watching rounds in safety. This meant, of course, that now that we had a power supply on board, we could tap into it to watch more movies during the weekend duties. It also meant that all dangers, such as open fuel tank hatches, could now be seen.
