Veterans: share your stories

ATTENTION ALL VETERANS

We are interested in hearing from you. If you want to share your personal experience of WWII with us and would like to have it published on our website, please email us at: info@maydaytugsofwar.com

HERE’S A HEALTH TO THE DEAD MAN’S EYE

Ever since seafarers brought back tales of mermaids and monsters, matelots have been noted for a tendency to ‘Swing the Lamp’ (i.e. to embellish or even invent, yarns) and some of you may suspect that the following story is a prime example, but I swear to you that this account is true in every essential detail, as any historian, with access to the appropriate Naval records, could probably ascertain.

The events I will describe, took place in 1948, when I was the ‘Tanky,’on  HMS Surprise, with the Mediterranean Fleet.  The Royal Navy has changed greatly since those days and few people today will know what a Tanky was and did, while the ‘Tot’, which figures largely in my story, has long been abolished; so let me first explain the background to this unique tale.

In 1948, as now, most RN ships had the ‘General Messing’ system, but some of the smaller ships, including HMS Surprise, still operated the older ‘Canteen Messing’ system (which goes back to Nelson’s day).  With General messing, sailors have no say, choice or financial interest, in the food they eat. With Canteen Messing, each Lower Deck Mess, consisting of about 20 sailors, was allocated its own victualling budget, and could purchase and prepare its own food.  Each Mess elected a President, who would order and collect supplies, usually from the Ship’s own stores, but occasionally ashore, if that was cheaper, while other members of the Mess would take it in turn to prepare the food and deliver it to the Galley, to be cooked as they instructed.  The President’s main task was to keep within the Mess Budget, because if he exceeded it, the deficit would be deducted from the wages of his messmates!  If he spent less, the surplus would be credited to the mess and could be spent or drawn.

The Store’s Petty Officer, (AKA Jack Dusty) was officially responsible for purchasing and maintaining the ships victualling supplies, and ostensibly, for recording each messes purchases, and billing them.  He was also responsible for the rum locker and for supervising its daily distribution.  However, Petty Officers are not expected to hump boxes and Barrels, nor do they like to spend hours weighing and doling out, supplies.  Therefore, on every Canteen Messing ship, an Able Bodied seaman (who had to be numerate and literate, as well as fit) was appointed to be the ‘Captain of the Hold’ (more commonly known as the ‘Tanky’).  His job was to assist the P.O. by doing all the donkey work and by giving out supplies and keeping the day-to-day records.  The more he relieved the PO of work, the more power and influence he accrued himself.  On the Surprise, as on most small ships, the Tanky’s mess was always in credit and everyone wanted to be his friend.

The more so and especially, because the Tanky also measured out the daily rum ration! (1/8th pint per man). Until it was abolished (in the early 70s, I think) the ‘Tot’ played a crucial part in life on the lower deck, where rum was an unofficial currency, used to buy favours and pay debts.  As the ship’s Tanky, I quickly discovered that, without giving anyone short measure, I could juggle with the allowance for evaporation, and spillage, to allow for selective overflowing!  This made me the most influential rating on the lower deck, even before the serendipitous event I am about to describe.

It was early in the Spring; I had given out the rum, under the supposedly watchful eye of the Officer of the Watch, and was sitting at the mess table, when I was approached by an AB from a different mess.  “Tanky” he said, indignantly “I want to make a complaint.  My Tot had a foreign body in it.  Look what I found in my mouth?”  He produced a small piece of what looked like very thin transparent plastic, no bigger than a three-penny bit.   I took it from him and quickly dispelled his ilIusion that he might be entitled to another Tot, and that would have been the end of it, if I hadn’t visited the Sick Bay that afternoon, where I remembered the item I had put in my pocket, and showed it to the Tiffy (SBA).  He didn’t know what it was but promised to find out.

We left Malta on a cruise soon after and were away for several weeks, during which I hadn’t given the matter a second thought.  Then, shortly after our return to Grand Harbour, the Tiffy sought me out. “Jim!  Remember that complaint you asked me to check out?  I sent it off to Bighi (RN Hospital) for examination and I have got their report back.  It seems that “foreign body” is an accurate description.  They say it is the skin of a human eyeball!”

This was serious!  A bit of skin or a fingernail, could be a matelot’s prank, but no one skins their own eyeball for a joke.  I informed the Crusher (Regulating Petty Officer) and we took the report to the Officer of the Watch, who took it to ‘Jimmy the One’ (the First Lieutenant), who took it to the ‘Old Man’ (the Captain). Who decided that all the rum we had in store from that particular batch, (two eight gallon kegs) should be set aside, pending a full enquiry.

The Navy keeps meticulous records, but it took them some weeks to trace the history of the rum before it had reached the Surprise.  Finally a detailed report arrived, which recorded that after the batch had been shipped from South Africa, it had been stored, in large barrels or tuns, in a bonded warehouse in London’s East India Dock, on a particular night in 1944 when a German bomb had landed nearby, damaging the warehouse and blowing a dockyard policeman to smithereens.  The official conclusion was, that a fragment of the unfortunate policeman must have been driven by the blast, between the staves of the tun.  The whole batch was therefore condemned and all remaining kegs were to be disposed of forthwith.

While the Admiralty frowns on all aspects of cannibalism, Jack is not quite so particular, and the thought of 16 gallons of neat rum being poured into the oggin, was enough to make strong men cry. The Crusher and I drew up a plan!

Thus it was that on a bright summer’s day, in solemn procession with ‘Jimmy the One’, the Officer of the Watch. The ‘Crusher’ ‘Jack Dusty ’and the Quartermaster, I carried the condemned kegs onto the quarterdeck and under the watchful gaze of my superiors, poured the contents into the grating that covered the scuppers (all of which I had scrubbed spotlessly clean in the dark hours); the while, sweating blood that no one would notice the four gallon mess fanny that I had jammed into the scupper outlet, and praying that ‘Jimmy’ would not look over the side until the fanny was full; because, although he would not see the protruding fanny, due to the rake of the hull, he would expect to see the rum hitting the water!  When he did look that is what he saw because the fanny was overflowing.  There followed several agonising hours until I could retrieve it. but eventually the Crusher and I were able to bottle and hide our booty; Thirty bottles of neat pussers rum! With just a hint of dockyard policeman.  Who, I like to think, was a good fellow, who would appreciate the many grateful toasts that we made to him on board HMS Surprise.

With such a store at my command, from that day on I could do no wrong and ask any favour, and that is how I became the biggest rum baron in the Mediterranean Fleet.

Jim Radford, Deep Sea Rescue Tugman, UK