from Swinging the Lamp by Ted Bedwell
As a Coxswain in the Royal Air Force Marine Branch the author had many experiences afloat, a few of which are displayed below...
Watch Your Language!
One day Ernie and I had picked up eight torpedoes and were overwhelmed with sonar buoys. The armourer that we carried was violently sick and more interested in dying than making safe the torpedoes. The Pinnace hold was full. The torpedoes had to be de-gassed and made safe before we could turn our attention to dropping the large batteries out of the bottom of the sonar buoy’s detectors, after having first stowed thirty metres of slippery rubber-coated cable back into the sonar buoy’s casings.
Things were pretty hectic on board and Lofty Graham, our coxswain was out to beat the record for equipment recovered. It was a day when the aircraft crew were good at detecting the submarine and our sonar buoy indicator meter was spot on.
It was also the day that Ernie and I found out that the Shackleton crews could hear what we were saying. Our captain received a curt signal asking us to moderate our language, whilst we recovered and safely stowed all of the recovered gear.
We apologised, using a sonar buoy, though it did feel daft talking to it.
From then on we used this knowledge to our advantage by dropping hints as to how bad the sea conditions were, when really wanting to get back for a date. We also mentioned in 'conversation' that we never received any of the photographs that were taken of our launch by the working aircraft.
It worked like a dream, with photographs arriving out of the blue back at base some days later, addressed to ‘the deckhands of Pinnace 1203’.
Can You Drop Them a Little Closer?
One of our skippers complained to the Captain of the Shackleton aircraft that he was dropping the torpedoes too far away for us to recover the parachute that detached as the torpedo entered the water.
We normally never bothered with the parachutes because they had a canister of fluorescent marker dye attached to them which stained the deck. They normally sank after a short while, so we tended to not go looking for them.
I think that our skipper wanted a tent for his son this occasion. On its next run in, the aircraft dropped a smoke float close to our bow to gauge the wind direction and strength whilst we sat there with engines stopped.
He flew a big circle and came in low.
He was good. The torpedo splashed our bow on entry and the parachute snagged our anchor winch. I call that accuracy and would have been pleased to see him if I was adrift in a life-raft awaiting a Lyndholme drop of life-saving supplies.
However, our skipper was not amused and promptly cancelled the exercise – although he did keep the parachute!
What Did He Say?
During another exercise I was crewing Pinnace 1373, a new-style launch that had just entered the service. She had much updated equipment, one of which was a fitted loudhailer, replacing a hand-held one that always suffered from feedback. We were working with HMS Andrew, a submarine out of Devonport Naval Base. She had just submerged when her ‘sub-smash’ buoy popped to the surface, indicating that she had a problem and was in trouble. We stayed well clear in case she came up underneath us and informed Naval Control of the incident, who then ordered her to surface.
The buoy meanwhile was broadcasting ‘SOS’ on channel 16, which brought a response from every ship and aircraft in the area. With much blowing of air and quite a lot of crashing water, the submarine surfaced some fifty feet away from us.
We were rolling all over the place. The submarine’s captain called from his conning tower for us to go alongside and recover his crash buoy.
Our skipper, secure in our closed wheel-house, remarked that there was ‘no effing way’ we were going alongside his submarine in ‘this effing sea’.
He had not realised that our loudhailer had been switched on and was pointed at the conning tower where the submarine’s captain was waiting for our reply with his loud hailer in listening mode held to his ear. He got the full unscripted message and got his crew to fire the wire cutter cartridge and cut the umbilical, setting the buoy free for us to recover, plus at least a half a mile of wire, as he headed back to Plymouth on the surface.
The buoy was too heavy to lift aboard, it being full of golf balls for buoyancy. Luck was on our side. Having dropped the hand rail we manoeuvred alongside to secure a tow rope when a large wave dipped the deck below the surface and the crash buoy rolled aboard, being hastily lashed where it rested.
It took much effort to recover the grease-covered wire before we could head home. The buoy had a phone and a light that was flashing ‘SOS’ as well as transmitting the distress call. Because we could not switch it off (only the sub’s captain could), every ship and civil aircraft in the area were busy reporting it.
The submarine captain was very pleased to get his buoy back when we dropped alongside HMS Andrew and transferred it over, even to the point of not mentioning our skipper’s comment. I think he was a bit embarrassed. The airways were alive until he got it switched off.
He is Definitely The One
During my first few months at Mount Batten I was asked to take part in an identity parade. One of a local group of girls (known as the ‘Turnchapel Commandos’) had become pregnant. I was completely gob-smacked when she touched me on the shoulder, having never seen her before in my life!
It appeared that she was in her seventh month of pregnancy and had been told to finger a serviceman for a sixteen-year meal ticket for the baby, which amounted to thirty shillings a week until the child left school.
She had already picked the wrong person, as I only received twenty-eight shillings a week, before deductions!
She had conceived around the time that I was training to be a deckhand. The booking out of camp book, which was kept in the Guard Room was checked. Luckily, my lack of funds and swatting for exams only allowed me off camp every Tuesday for two hours, when I helped to run the local Sea Scout group.
After much cross-checking I was given the ‘all clear’, much to my relief. It had been my word against hers and a pretty daunting thought of working for the next sixteen years with no cash.
I explained that every month I hitched a lift to London to see my girlfriend, returning on the Sunday night milk and paper train, which stopped at all stations and arrived in Plymouth at 0530 hrs.
If only DNA fingerprinting had been known of in those days it could have saved a lot of anguish!
She turned out to be a nice girl and apologised, saying that she had been put up to it by her parents because the real father of the child was one of the local layabouts.
RAF Gan – An Island Paradise?
‘A tropical island forming part of an atoll, situated in the middle of the Indian Ocean, some 37 miles from the equator, being part of the Maldives’. That was the information that stuck in my mind as we descended towards the ocean with no land in sight, followed by a bump as the wheels touched the runway. The shock of the sauna-like blast of air as the cabin door was pushed open left a lasting memory. Within minutes my clothes had stuck to me, and I still had to disembark. My first impression of Gan was of a truly beautiful tropical paradise (later to be amended to ‘ideal for a long weekend’).
It was so stifling hot that many servicemen there kept ‘go-zomie’ charts pinned up in prominent positions, which showed how many days they still had to suffer before escaping back to the UK. These were carefully ticked off daily. Newcomers were welcomed with open arms and used blatantly to boost morale as the old hands fed off the newcomer’s misery by pointing out how many days and hours they had to endure before repatriation. It was a soul-destroying place, manned by some four hundred airmen plus one hundred Pakistanis and some ancillary civilian workers, all housed in separate small camps on an island one mile long by half a mile wide. An army of local inhabitants arrived daily by boat from the other islands in the chain to help with the running of the camp.
I dodged from shade to shade under the incredibly beautiful flower-covered trees as I went about the usual routine of signing in with the various people who needed to know that I was a newly-arrived prisoner. Suddenly I was being shouted at by the Station Warrant Officer. He caught me at a bad time and I was none-too-impressed when he informed me that I was not to walk on grass. I replied: "We play football on it where I’ve just come from!" My response did not go down well, but knowing that I would not have any further dealings with him I was not too bothered by his verbal rebuke. If it made him happy then at least my day had not been wasted.
I arrived at the Marine Craft Section last for a signature and the CO welcomed me, saying that I was taking over the RTTL and not to waste any time acclimatising, but to start straight away and go out and take over the boat’s inventory, which I thought was pretty good of him. Borrowing the marine tender I headed out to meet my crew.
There was some sort of altercation taking place on the tank space. Stepping between the two deckhands that were sizing-up to each other I forgot to duck and received a black eye for my trouble. What a welcome! It took an ice-pack and a black coffee for me to get to know the crew. The boat was kept on top-line by the crew, which made a pleasant change from some of the boat hand-overs I had experienced in the past.
I soon settled in and after a few local area familiarisation runs, we settled down and became a working crew.
Royal Shark Bait
Prince Charles asked for the camp swimming pool to be made available for his entourage as he dropped in on his way back to the UK. This would not have been a problem normally, but a corporal hygienist had been posted to Gan to fill a sergeant’s post, with the promise of promotion. Having been doing the job for three months and still no sign of being promoted he was not very happy. When he was told that Prince Charles would be using the pool later he threw a spanner in the works and said that he was putting the pool out of bounds as he had found a bug in the water associated with sewage effluent.
Total and utter chaos ensued but he stood his ground and the pool was off limits. I was duty coxswain and was not involved, so did the usual Hittadu run to change the watch-keepers over. On my return, a landing craft was moored alongside the jetty, having generators and floodlights fitted, all pointing overboard, and I was informed that as duty coxswain I would be driving it in order for Prince Charles to swim in the lagoon. I laughed and said no way am I going to be responsible for the death of the heir to the throne, pointing out that being lit up like Blackpool Illuminations would attract sharks from miles around. When someone mentioned a sharp shooter I just went for my tea.
At 2230hrs the aircraft landed and I waited to see if I would be needed after Prince Charles had been told of the arrangements. He went for plan ‘B’, with officers dressed in uniform standing in the shallows across the two coral reefs off the Officers mess beach, each holding a pole with hurricane lamp fastened to it, just in case he wanted to go for a swim. His PA (personal assistant) opted for the swim off the floodlit landing craft. My crew declined the invite so I took a couple of Maldivian deckhands with me, plus my engine fitter to run the generators. However, nobody had worked out that it was low water so I could not get anywhere near the beach in the landing craft; in the end it was paddling only on offer.
I headed out into the lagoon and told the PA to stay close to the boat during her swim. I had strict instructions not to take my eyes off the swimmers, but she was the only one swimming. Seeing that she was a honey blonde, aged about eighteen, with an hour-glass figure and attired in a micro bikini it was a pretty tough assignment! She tended to float face up, lying on the surface in the glare of the floodlights some twelve feet off our beam. There were some sad faces among the European deckhands the following day when they found out what the fitter and I had been through for Queen and Country!
Mr Twenty Percent was happy to get his assortment of swimming trunks and towels back, which on the orders of the Station Commander he had had to give me without any money changing hands. It was like re-uniting old friends as he checked them out.
The Maldivian workers that kept the grass cut and the roads swept were disappointed that Prince Charles had landed after they had returned to their villages for the night. During his journey out to the far east when he called in to the Officers Mess they had, completely unrehearsed, lined the route along the road to the mess and each came to attention as Prince Charles passed, presenting arms with an assortment of implements from rakes and brushes to hedge clippers. They were on a par with any guards’ regiment.
copyright 2004 ~ Ted Bedwell ~ all rights reserved
