1956-1958 Commission    6th Destroyer Squadron

AS I REMEMBER IT

In late 1956, about 150 sailors were milling about the platform ready to board the night express to Glasgow.  Order was gained by petty officers' shouts and, with kits and hammocks stowed in the guard's van, we were off.  Some men were with old shipmates, many others hadn't spotted anyone they knew and, among them, were youngsters like me fresh from 6 weeks training and a couple of weeks in Pompey Barracks - hardly used to navy routine.

The Royal Navy is the best club in the world and, it wasn't long before men were comparing notes on past ships, old shipmates and ports of call.  We ODs or ordinary seamen, were soon absorbed into the crowd and, when the train arrived in Glasgow next morning, we'd learned a little about seamanship; how to play cribbage; which were the best pubs in town and a few new words.  No-one worried that our collars were dark blue, while the collars of old hands were Air force blue.  We would work on washing out the colour quickly, then no-one would know how green we were on our trips ashore.

To keep the men happy - feed them.  First, load all the kits and hammocks onto trucks and us into buses to a handy naval air station for breakfast and a wash and shave.

Driving through the suburbs, past the shipyards, it seemed very grey.  The Clyde was not an appealing place at all.  Occasionally someone would point out some place of interest and, I think, we were all a little surprised to see the aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, towering over the sheds of the yard where she was being rebuilt.

We turned off the road into the Yarrows shipyard.  At the time, I had never heard the name, but I now know that it was one of Britain's foremost destroyer builders.  Out of the bus and into the noise -  metal cutting, metal drilling, riveting and cranes grinding along tracks.  The noise must have been far worse when ships were riveted throughout and not welded.  We had to be careful where to walk as there were so many things to trip the unwary - look down at your feet, look up for your head.  Great plates of steel were being swung through the air above us, all fashioned and cut to shape for a ship on the stocks. 

We marched round the end of a shed to the water's edge and just a few yards up the wharf of the fitting-out basin was what looked like a brand spanking new destroyer.  In actual fact she had just been rebuilt and modernised.  She had originally been built in 1944 by Samuel White, the famous racing yacht designer.  It was reputed that all the ships he built for the Royal Navy, were finished to the same high standard.  Lucky us.

I'm sure the sun shone on her for a minute, even the pussers grey seemed to shine. 

This was HMS Carysfort and she was everything I had ever thought one of Her Majesty's destroyers should be.  I knew she'd be a good ship.  We all trooped aboard and a rating at the end of the gangway asked each for name and number - Holt PJ 966217.  Righto Tim, along you go under the break, then right forrard to 3 mess.  For the rest of my time in the Navy I was Tim.

Once one found the mess deck it became obvious that space was at a premium.  When you found a bit of room, you either sat on it or slung your hammock in it.   We had 3 messes in the focsle and here 31 men would relax, eat and sleep until the commission finished.  The allotted space per man used to be 18 inches square but whether or not we had a bit more I'm not sure.  The leading seaman, the killick, got us all sorted.  Our killick, a chap probably not much older than me, gave everyone a job to ensure the mess area was always clean and tidy.  Even the old 3 badgemen who knew all the dodges had to pull their weight.

After a few days, in which we were sorted and put into watches, day jobs, etc., the commissioning warrant was read to us.  This was the first time we'd all gone into divisions in our No 1 uniforms.  Next day, we were off down the river towards the sea.  Since the season was early winter, it was pretty chilly.

We were based at Greenock for our working up.  The guns blew bits off the Isle of Arran, frightened tugs towing targets for us to hit, shot holes in drogues being towed overhead and brought down several unmanned drones.  While this was going on the inclement weather sorted out the weak tums.  It can turn quite nasty in December in Scotland - sleet, snow, gales and fog.  We had them all.  It was a relief to fire torpedoes in a nice quiet loch.  It kept the boat's crews busy towing back the spent weapons.  After chasing submarines and trying to sink them, we berthed alongside the depot ship HMS Maidstone for Christmas and embarkation leave.  Well, most had leave but a quarter of us had Christmas amid ice and snow.  We had our leave later over the New Year while those back from leave took the ship down to Portsmouth to prepare for sailing south - Suez - we heard.

The Channel and the Bay of Biscay gave us a parting shot,  but the ship behaved like one of the builder's racing yachts.  It was always nice to hop into your hammock just to save having to hang on to something to stay upright.  A bit like a demented lift, which changes its movement while unexpectedly corkscrewing.  Gibraltar was a welcome sight.

Gosh, the sun, hot sun in January.  Hard to believe.  Fantastic place.  So much crowded into a small area and shops selling things we'd never heard of in England.  Outdoor cafes with Spanish ladies dancing on the tables and that great big rock towering over everything.  It didn't look much like a lion until a day or two later when I looked back as we steamed towards Malta.

That's how I remember meeting the ship I spent most of my time on in the Royal Navy.  She took us on a wonderful paid Mediterranean cruise.  We called it the cruise of the Carysfort.

Thanks to Pete (Scurs) Whellams for the following:

   My memory isn't what it used to be and I can recall but a few of our Ships Company. POEL Dave Miles rings a bell as does Ch. Elect. Bill 'Trapper' Culf, who used to clean and repair watches in his spare time. He also had a motorcycle with sidecar and would give a bloke a lift as far as Acton, for 10/-.

   I remember joining Carysfort at Glasgow. The ships company travelled en masse on the night train from Kings Cross. Left at 2200 and arrived Glasgow Central around 0800 on a dull rainy, typically Glasgowish day.  Kit bags, hammocks and tool boxes at the short trail. Most of the junior rates stood in the corridors all the way. It was not a pleasant journey, by any means. I can remember but a few of my messmates, LREM Groombridge-Harvey, LEM 'Perry' Mason, EM  'Archie' Brough and EM Hulbert 

Archie hailed from Tunbridge Wells where his parents owned or ran a hotel. He  said the girls in Tunbridge were the best so we wrote to the local paper challenging him to prove it. We were inundated with hundreds of letters from the ladies of Tunbridge looking for pen friends or something more romantic Archie's parents invited us to visit and stay at the hotel for for a free weekend 'up-homers'.  Great!!! This was before we started the GS part of the commission.

 Greenies were in the after 'L' shaped messdeck. (Forgotten the number). We had the short port side mess and the Junior Seaman were accommodated in the main fore to aft  Stbd side mess. We lost one of those youngsters during an exercise. His name was J/S Peter Seed. He had lost his father, a Merchant Seaman in the war and Peter was an only child. I can't remember the name of the exercise but the weather was atrocious, upper deck out of bounds and safety lines rigged over the tops. The ship was blacked out, of course.

 Peter had the last dog in the ACR and we saw him getting into his foul weather gear at 1745, wellies, oilskins and sou' wester. He went up the ladder from the mess and that was the last we saw of him.  He must have considered his clothing too cumbersome to negotiate the vertical ladder to the Squid deck and went through the starboard screen door instead.  The Petty Officers mess was the next mess fwd to the J/S mess and they heard a heavy bump on the main deck above them at around 1750.

  Just before 1800 he was piped to report to the ACR.  Shortly after 1800 he was piped to report, again, this time 'at the rush'. At about 1815 ships company were piped to search the ship for J/S Seed and Carysfort was brought into the lee. I was duty LEM and rang the bridge for permission to switch on upper deck lighting. The answer was  'Certainly not!  We are at war. Ship will remain blacked out'. After a fruitless, time consuming search in darkness, we were advised that permission had been obtained from Captain (D) to detach and reverse course to our estimated position at 1545. After 20-30 minutes steaming we arrived and spent 10 minutes or so using the 20" searchlights and 10" sig. projectors to no avail, of course. The lad was long gone. I have often wondered if things might have been different if the ACR controller had considered the fact that especially, a Junior Seaman, would not dare to be absent from his place of duty. It would probably have made no difference, but a lot of time was wasted in my opinion, getting back to the position where he was lost.

    On the trip back to UK we had a 'Sale of Kit'. And this was a fantastic affair. I had been present at a couple of these in the past and the sum raised was usually of the order of £20 or so. But not this one. Oh No! Peter was a popular lad and we all knew his widowed mother had now lost her only child. Jimmy the One conducted the auction a nd I believe the first item was Peter's housewife.  The Captain bid up to £29, and then tossed it back for resale.  A bunch of pencils reached £6 then someone said '£6 for one'. Everything was bought and returned for re-sale and eventually 'Jimmy' said it would have to stop. No more throw backs.  We raised the magnificent total of £642 something, a tidy sum by any standards and a fortune in 1957. The News Chronicle splashed it all over their front page reporting how 'a fantastic sale took place on HMS Carysfort as she  battled her way home, in stormy seas'. Wish I still had a copy of that! It was said that Peter's mother commented 'Is that all?' when she was ceremoniously handed the proceeds of the sale. I believe she  apologised when told what these sales of kit usually raised and the financial sacrifices many of his shipmates had made.   

Carysfort had her gunnery system converted from the tried and trusted MRS 3 to the latest Fly.5 anti-aircraft installation.  On arrival Malta we went on a gunnery exercise.  First we decimated a towed drogue target, proving the system worked.  Next we were invited to try our luck with a Buzzbee, a small pilotless aircraft that had confounded all gunnery systems in the past. Target was duly acquired, 'A' gun fired ahead, 'B' gun fired astern and 'Y' obliterated it.  We received a highly complimentary signal from Malta congratulating Carysfort for being the first ship to shoot down a Buzzbee.  However, when we repeated the exercise exactly as before a week or so later, 'Y' gun again doing the business, we got a reprimand, being told in words of one syllable that; Buzzbees are expensive (£2000 a time) and are not to be shot down.  "Aim off in future.  You've made your point".

  Cyprus Patrol. Why did we never get a medal for that? I got one for a six week stint in Borneo in '62.so why not Cyprus? Ah well. Se la vie. We had a fortnights exchange arrangement with the army, some of the Pongoes joined Carysfort and some of us went ashore to Kykko Camp, not far from Nicosia. We got the better deal. The army lads were apportioned to the deck p.o.s and spent much of their stay aboard cleaning and painting. I went shoreside and as a junior nco was accommodated in solitude in a comfortable tent. We had one spell of military service, if you can call it that. We went on a patrol up the Troodios Mountains, armed with sten guns, ostensibly looking for Col. Grivas but actually to sample some of the local brews in the odd hostelries, in the villages en route. From the top of Mount Olympus we had a marvellous view of miles of unspoilt, untenanted white sandy beaches. We couldn't wait to get back down and make use of them.

  As we were due home for Christmas I decided to get a bottle of Keo brandy before returning aboard. As soon as boarded from my sojourn with the army I went straight to the Cox'ns office and handed over the bottle for safe keeping in the Officers bond, till we got back to the air-conditioned streets of the UK. Bad move! I guess those fly so and so's in the wardroom fancied a drop of the local hard stuff. In any event i was piped for to report to the Cox'ns office. The Cox'n was somewhat apologetic when he said I was in the rattle for bringing spirits aboard without permission. OOD and Jimmy's table and 7 days stoppage of leave. The brandy to be cast into the sea. I guess it was too, via the officers  heads then flushed through their 'heads!'

 Istanbul. Now there's a place for a run ashore if you want horrific excitement. At least it was in '57. I was in the rig, of course and sported a reasonable  'set' with waxed moustaches. I was on a rabbit run, shopping for my fiancee. (I got the 'Dear John' a week or two later).  Anyway, there I was wandering along the main thoroughfare, window shopping and stall bargaining and noticed that everyone appeared to heading in the same direction, like a crowd of football fans. So I tagged along out of curiosity. Came to a large square where hundreds of people were crowding round two sides, which were roped off. The other two sides comprised the walls of a large building which transpired to be a prison. In the centre of the square was a tripod of three poles and a block at the apex with a rope through it. The rope had a noose on the end. As I reached the outskirts of the crowd, people turned and then opened a lane for me to reach the ropes. I later learned that hirsute men are highly respected, if not venerated in Turkey which is why I was afforded pole position!

 My mind was telling me I was about to witness something terrible but logic dictated this just does not happen in today's society. A pair of large doors opened and a cortege of officials came out in two lines. Halfway down, between the lines was a youngish man wearing a neck to feet smock and around his neck hung a kind of sandwich board. Beside him was the epitome of the executioner, all in black with a mask over his head and eyes. There was a lot of writing on the board. I could only recognise the numbers which were obviously dates.  I remember 1948.  

One of the officials had a scroll and he read from this.  As he read, the crowd reacted with hisses and screams, especially the women, I noticed.  Then, charges read and sentence declared the man was led to the noose and the executioner hoisted him just high enough for his toes to just touch the ground.  He was not wearing a hood and his facial contortions were indescribably horrible.  The crowd cheered and I was violently sick which seemed to amuse some of the women closest to me.  I didn't wait to se him expire but eventually wandered to the Blue Mosque.  Here I was approached by a senior policeman who spoke excellent English.  He told me he was the Chief of Police and that I had witnessed the last public execution that will ever take place in Turkey.  I asked what the man had done and was told he had raped and killed a little girl.  That accounted for the women's reactions I guess.  It also mollified the horror I had experienced.  Not your usual "entertainment" on a "quiet" run ashore.

 I asked about the date and the CoP said 1948 was when he committed the crime. I asked why so long before the sentence was carried out and he said that under Turkish jurisprudence, the date of your trial is the date sentence is carried out. This man had committed a particularly abhorrent crime so must be made to suffer for it. Once incarcerated he would be left for days, weeks or months before he would be told his trial would be held on a specific date. He then knew that was the day he would be put to death. As the day drew nearer he would suffer great fear and agitation, then a day or so before the due date he would be told the trial had been postponed and another date would be set at some later time. This routine was repeated time and again until the prisoner had been subjugated to total resignation of his fate and would welcome the sentence. At which time there was no point continuing with this form of torture.  Fancy a game of hangman?  Nah! Bridge or Uckers!

In the Med. with HMS Carysfort - 1957

While the ship was in Malta, with time on our hands a few of us senior rates took up the offer of hiring bikes from MEDFOBA (Med. Fleet Outward Bound Association) for a weekend, cycling off to the island of Gozo.  Names of who they were? – I can only remember POME’s Rudge and Mayhew plus a ‘Geordy’ Mechanician. We slept rough under the stars.  This turned out OK. Mind you the bikes were none of your lightweight 21 gear jobs we have about today, we were each issued with a ‘Postie’s Red Devil – remember them? They weighed a ton!

  Therefore after this episode, some while later on anchoring off  St. Raphael, southern France for a few days ‘jolly’. We volunteered to take a few of the Junior Ratings cycling up into the hills of southern France. Having taken on board from the base in Malta about a dozen of their heavy red bikes plus rucksacks we were ready. Our route as far as I can remember was to make for the town of Grasse – famous for it’s perfume. (I think we all bought a tiny sample for the girl friends back home.)

We were each loaded up with a heavy rucksack with sleeping bag and the necessities of life for a few days living rough – again no tents. The first hour or two went well until the roads became steep. You would have thought it to be the young 16 and 17 year olds who would set the pace – not a chance – it was us ‘old’ two badgers who had to bring up the rear, chivvying the Juniors along. We feasted well on local baked baguettes, cheese and fruit along the way. Two days later on arriving in Grasse, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Pooling our resources we booked ourselves into a couple of rooms in a cheap Chambre d’ hote, and spread ourselves out to sleep. I’m sure us senior rates must have taken the beds while the ‘erberts dossed down on the deck – only right too! Moving on next day – when the going got tough again we were strung out down the hillside like a snake - with one of us bringing up the rear for fear of us loosing a backmarker. Imagine what it would have been arriving back on board, reporting to the Officer of the Day – “Sorry Sir, we are one short, he’s lost somewhere up in the hills between here and Grasse”  

At villages when we stopped for a break, the local lads would soon gather around, look at each other and nod their heads in dismay at our great heavy machines – the French know a thing or two about cycling, ‘Tour de France’ and all that – they just couldn’t imagine how we managed. One evening out in the forest having found a likely spot for the night, we lit a fire. We had previously just enjoyed a good meal with a few bottles of wine. With a good fire going and after spinning yarns for a while we all ‘turned in’, in a circle feet towards the fire – cowboy style. Having all just about ‘dropped off’ when the noise of a siren woke us suddenly. Dashing through the trees searchlights blazing came the local sapeurs-pompiers (fire brigade). Out hoses and our fire was very quickly no more, just a steaming heap. We were told in no uncertain terms – Pas des Feu  (No Fires). As by now it was raining hard we finished up the night sleeping in filthy old barn nearby. With ‘Jack’s usual sense of humour we soon laughed it off, wondering what all the fuss was about. Any way in the end we did all make it back to the ship.

David Miles (P.O.El. 1956 –58)