h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Damage control training hadn't changed that much when I went through it for the first time in 1986...

I can still remember my disbelief when I was told for the first time - this is how you stop a ship sinking... And was then shown a bucket full of wooden wedges, a few old mattresses, a couple of wooden beams and a telescopic brace! - 'Yeah', I thought, '*** that for a game of soldiers in real life!'

Mind you, by the time I went through it, the firefighting suits had improved a bit - ours were more like giant sized white babygrows...

Made us all look like anaemic teletubbies!

Oh, and by 1986 it wasn't just the stokers going through it all - every one did... Although the Standing Fire Parties on board all the ships I was ever on were still all made up of stokers - I guess they didn't trust the rest of us (either that or they considered stokers were expendable )

Aye! Whisky, I reckon stokers were expandable The tool we used for measuring the supports we had to cut was a "Gunterbaton" Yea! I know, it just stuck in my mind for some reason
I saw a clip on TV and they were wearing them new shiny type fore suits not the rough kind we had to wear

I am surprised the put all ratings through that course though I think they used stokers for down below decks for damage control and fire fighting as they were familiar with the surroundings
Imagine giving a gunner tools and asking him to shore up a bulkhead? Yea the mind boggles!
Smudger,

Heck, I was a Comms Tech... I wasn't even sure half the time where the pointy end of the ship was and where that noisy thing with the great big fan on the roof sat

Seriously though - I think they did a major reworking of all FF & DC training after the Falklands in 82...

I never knew that about putting all branched through that training, a shame it took a war to show the fact that it was needed
I lost my best mate there, he had stayed in after I came out in 74

I reckon I got out just in time, as they now have wrens at sea apart from that they also stopped the tot
Smudger,

They learnt quite a bit from that war... Including the fact that most of the Navy was falling apart at the time, the new type 22 frigates they'd purchased were useless, the 21s couldn't handle the heavy weather and that they should have thought about fireproofing warships...

I must admit, from what I heard from guys who'd been 'down south' when I joined up in 86 I'm glad I wasn't in prior to 82!

Oh, and they might have stopped the tot but they still let you have three cans of beer per person per day.

We used to draw it from the NAAFI each day for the whole mess - when on a deployment, any that weren't drunk that night ended up being hidden in ventilation ducts, under beds, in lockers and just about anywhere else we could find. 'Channel Night' was quite fun on the way back - I remember on one occasion our skipper actually stopped the ship 30 miles off Plymouth for the night because he wasn't going to risk entering harbour with half his crew completely legless!

Ah! Yes, The old beer hiding routine
I wrote a Snippet about that, its in there somewhere I remember writing it and about the crates of beer rumbling down the boiler room vent shafts

We were called out to a ship in distress right after we had just completed a 12 week work up in Portland
Talk about being pissed, and there was only half the ships company on board as well? (story is amongst my Snippets) Mind you we all sobered up really quick! and did 3 days and nights without sleep until we got back
Smudger

12 weeks in Portland

Who the heck did you lot annoy to end up doing a twelve week workup???

The longest I think I ever did was about 4 weeks - and that was _quite_ long enough!

Sometime I'm going to have to go through the backlog of what you've written - I'm sure they'll be lots I've missed!

Yea! the reason we did 12 weeks was because we FAILED the first work up It wasn't hard to do really you see it was not a happy ship, and was ran by a dizzy skipper, who had a thing against drink

The crew was made up from men from all over the UK, and they did not mix very well at all, (as a few of them had been demoted for Drink related offences) on top of that we had this skipper, who should have been pensioned off years earlier, who kept getting things wrong

His best ever trick, was to sail us through a hurricane in the Bay of Biscay (rather than avoid it) which meant we got 5 days in Gib (to carry out repairs) instead of the 5 hrs to pick up fuel, which was the original plan
Smudger,

Remembering it now, I reckon I'd visited Gib about five times before I actually saw anything of the place apart from the inside of several bars

The one thing I regret a little about my time in the Navy was the number of times I visited somewhere I'd never been before (and probably will never visit again) and spent my time drinking instead of exploring!

Youth - it's wasted on the young

Yea! I am exactly the same Its all a blur to me now, I did however take a lot of pictures, but trouble is they are all on slides

That was the way back then in the early 70s I wish I had stayed out of the bars (and other such places) now, and spent more time exploring
Smudger,