Peter Broadbent - HMS Ganges Days. by Peter Broadbent

Title Page

HMS GANGES DAYS

From Nozzer to Dabtoe in 386 Days

by

Peter Broadbent

Publisher Information

First published in 2012 by

Chaplin Books

1 Eliza Place

Gosport PO12 4UN

www.chaplinbooks.co.uk

Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

Copyright Peter Broadbent

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of any nature suffered as a result of the reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in the contents.

Authors Note

I wrote this book to commemorate the 50th anniversary of my joining HMS Ganges and to answer the following questions:

Why did a relatively introverted Grammar School boy join the Royal Navy at the tender age of 15?

Why did I elect to join-up at the extreme bottom of the Naval pile as a Junior Seaman Second Class?

How in the world did I, a boy with little ambition and no resolve, sail through my time at the Royal Navys toughest and most notorious training establishment?

I hope that this book answers all these questions and that my children (Paul and Helen), my grandchildren (James and Oscar) and those who may come after them will curl up on a warm, comfortable chair - and enjoy my story.

Acknowledgements

I happily start by acknowledging the support and understanding of my wonderful wife Margaret. For years, I tapped away at my keyboard while she gardened, washed, cooked and did a hundred and one other things that I should have helped with.

While my story draws mainly on my personal experiences, I have used fragments of information gleaned from a multitude of memories which other ex- Ganges boys have posted on the Internet. I have never purposefully plagiarised anything written by others and I offer heartfelt thanks to everyone who has written about HMS Ganges and placed it in the public domain. I have tried to make the book entertaining as well as being an accurate description of HMS Ganges training methods and UK life in 1960. I have purposefully avoided any individual references, and have invented characters and dialogue in order to give the book some depth. Individually none of the books characters, in any way, represent actual Hardy or Keppel mess members or Instructors of the time.

Cheers to all my actual messmates and Instructors: in a multitude of ways you helped me through my Ganges Days.

I grew up with the archaic pounds shillings and pence monetary system and Ive used it throughout this book. If anyone wants to find out the decimal equivalents (or, indeed, to convert the amounts into any currency) there are plenty of websites that will do this for you.

Peter Broadbent

Ex Junior Seaman, Second Class, P/053653

Hondn de Las Nieves, Spain

April 2012

A Brief History Of HMS Ganges

The first HMS Ganges came into service in 1779 when the Honourable East India Company presented three vessels to the Royal Navy. One of the vessels, the Bengal, was re-named HMS Ganges and broken up in 1816. Her successor, also named HMS Ganges , was built in Bombay, launched in November 1821 and arrived in Portsmouth in October of the following year.

After various commissions, she became the flagship of Rear Admiral R L Bayes and left for the Pacific in September 1857, the last sailing ship to be a sea-going flagship. In 1866 she became a boys training ship, firstly in Falmouth harbour and then transferring to Harwich harbour in 1899. For seven years HMS Ganges served her purpose but a severe winter confirmed that better conditions were necessary to ensure the well-being of the boys. It was decided in 1905 to move the boys ashore onto land adjacent to the village of Shotley Gate. The move encountered fierce opposition from Their Lords at the Admiralty who could not imagine sailors being trained on dry land. The following year, at 4am on the first Thursday of July 1906, the ship HMS Ganges was towed away by Government tugs to be scrapped.

When the boys first moved ashore there were around 500 of them. As the establishment developed, the numbers increased and by the end of the 1940s there were 2,000 boys under training, with a new batch of boys arriving every five weeks.

The raising of the school leaving age from 15 to 16 marked the end of HMS Ganges and on 16 January 1973 the final recruitment (No 41) of Junior entrants joined. On 6 June 1976 Ganges closed. The White Ensign was lowered for the last time at sunset on 28 October 1976.

Between 1905 and 1976 some 150,000 boy recruits had passed through her gates. Most had gone on to enjoy a full and active Royal Naval career. Many made it to the Wardroom. None of us ever forgot the place.

Chapter One: A Nostalgic Visit

Its 16 February 1989, my 45th birthday. Im sitting in my car, parked on a short, unremarkable Suffolk road staring at a pair of imposing black iron gates and smoking a cigarette.

Instead of driving all the way home after a late business meeting in Great Yarmouth yesterday, Id decided to stay overnight and drive home to Stubbington in the morning. As I approached the outskirts of Ipswich, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to re-visit Shotley Gate.

Ive been to all corners of the world but not to this part of rural Suffolk for 28 years. I wind my window down: I can smell it. Caledonia Road, Shotley Gate, leads to only one place, the place that now sits silently behind those gates.

I recall how I had felt when Id first marched down this road 29 years ago as a 15-year-old Nozzer. The gates look less daunting now. The large anchor plaques, the huge figureheads and the flanking field-guns have gone. All those years ago, the place behind those gates had determined the course of my life and had turned a feckless, unremarkable schoolboy into ME!

Shotley Gate is a small village at the southern tip of the Shotley Peninsular, a piece of East Anglia bounded on the north east by the river Orwell, and to the south by the river Stour. The wind and rain whip mercilessly across this part of Suffolk which has an air of brooding isolation about it. If I had known the reputation of this place back in 1959, I wonder if I would have taken the Queens Shilling, and subjected myself to what went on here.

I stub my cigarette out in a half-full ashtray and stroll towards the gates for a closer look. One of the small personnel side gates is unlocked. I give it a push and for the first time in many years Im onboard Her Majestys Ship Ganges , a brick-built barrack of a place. The hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.

A smiling gentleman wearing a dark grey duffle coat emerges from what I remembered as the Gatehouse. He pulls his hood up to protect himself from the wind and greets me politely. Im pleasantly surprised: I associate these gates with bellowing, strutting, unsmiling Regulating Petty Officers, brandishing swagger-sticks and crunching gravel under their well-shined boots.

I explain that I had spent time here as a young boy and am interested in seeing what has become of the place.

No problem sir. Would you like to bring your car in? he asks.

Bring my car in indeed! Thats unexpected.

He opens the two large gates for me. I drive in and wind my window down. Still smiling, and gripping his hood tight, he explains that a company called Eurosport now owns the site and they provide sporting facilities for, amongst others, the police. Most of the original buildings are still here but some are in a sorry state of repair and any exploring I do will be at my own risk. I nod understandingly.