The senior officer had merely said, ‘You may get another opportunity later on.’ He had looked genuinely sorry for the pale-faced youth with the feverishly bright eyes. ‘We need volunteers in this war. We can’t all be officers, you know.’
Back home for a few days before returning to the barracks for drafting to another ship. His mother had been upset. Or had she been humiliated, shamed because of his failure? His father had muttered sternly, ‘Their mistake, son, not yours.’ None of it was much help. Boyes had returned to R.N.B. Chatham and almost immediately had heard about the growing demand for men in the mineswecping service.
As a petty officer at the drafting office had cheerfully remarked, ‘Good for you, lad, join the navy and see the world. Volunteer for minesweepers and see the next!’
With unbelievable dedication Boyes had entered the mine-sweeping course at the shore establishment, HMS Lochinvar. The need to prove himself, or to lose himself in danger, he neither knew nor cared.
He examined his feelings as he stood on the harbour wall, the light drizzle bouncing off his cap and oilskin, his kitbag leaning beside him in a puddle.
How did he feel? Not afraid, nor even elated. Just glad to be moving again, doing something which would wipe the shame away. He had heard the old hands talking about minesweepers. True guts, they said. ‘You wouldn’t get me in that bloody regiment—’
Boyes turned, but the leading patrolman had gone. He gathered ftp his kitbag, little suitcase, gas mask and the joining chit which he had produced several times on his way here to prove what he was doing and why. The train had been delayed for several hours because an air-raid had caused a derailment somewhere. He had been crammed in the overloaded train with sleeping soldiers and sailors, the air thick with tobacco smoke and crude jokes.
Boyes made his way across the brow to the inboard ship. It was high-water, and the crossing was reasonably safe.
The gangway sentry pulled his bag aboard for him and grinned as Boyes explained that he was the new replacement.
He said, ‘Never ’ave guessed, would we, Bert?’
The quartermaster pointed to Rob Roy. ‘Shouldn’t join ’er, matey, they’re killing ’em all off!’
They both laughed as if it was a huge joke.
Boyes eventually arrived on the other ship’s wet deck and saw a chief petty officer watching him from beside the quartermaster’s little folding desk.
‘Well, nah, my son? What are all we then?’
He had a Cockney accent you could sharpen a knife on, although Boyes did not understand that. But he did recognise the crossed torpedoes and wheel on the man’s lapels, his air of jovial authority. He was the coxswain, a kind of god in every small ship-of-war.
‘Ordinary Seaman Boyes, sir.’
The coxswain’s heavy brows came together to make a dark bridge across his battered nose.
‘Not sir, my son. Call me Cox’n. I run this ship.’ He grinned. ‘Me an’ the Old Man, that is.’
He became businesslike. ‘You’re in Three Mess.’ He gestured to a seaman by the guardrail. ‘Take ’im down. Then bring ’im back to me to get ’is part of ship, an’ that.’
Boyes eyed him thankfully. There was something reassuring about the coxswain. His face looked as if it had been in many brawls, but his eyes were steady and not unfriendly.
Chief Petty Officer Joe Beckett, the Rob Roy’s coxswain, asked offhandedly, ‘Age?’
‘Eighteen, si – I mean Cox’n.’
‘Gawd. Another wot’s too young to draw ’is tot. Makes yer sick.’
Beckett watched the slight figure being led to the forecastle. Already lost. He frowned. Not for long. Not in this ship. There was no room for passengers.
He saw the new first lieutenant approaching and toyed with the idea of avoiding him around the funnel, but sighed and stood his ground. Between them they had to manage the ship. He thought of the new lad, Boyes, sent to replace a seaman who had gained promotion and been drafted to an advanced course ashore.
The navy was like that. All comings and goings. He glanced aft towards the shining new paint where the previous Jimmy-the-One had been cut down. All goings for some.
Joe Beckett often considered his own entry into the navy. A London Eastender from Hackney, he was one of seven children. It was a bloody wonder his mum and dad had found the time, he thought. His dad was more in prison than out of it, and two of his brothers had begun thieving at Marks and Spencer’s and Woolworths almost as soon as they had got their first pair of boots. They were likely as well known at the Hackney nick as his father by now.
So Joe Beckett had joined the navy at the age of sixteen. He had done well, despite several demotions and bottles at the defaulters’ table in one ship or another. He was now thirty-six, one of the old bastards as they called him behind his back. It was a joke when you thought about it. His upbringing had been hard and without too much love. But it had taught him to take care of himself, as his face and scarred knuckles showed if anyone was stupid enough to challenge his authority. Now, as coxswain, he was as high as he would rise. Here in the fleet minesweeper he ran just about everything. A word in the right ear could shift a man from a miserable look-out position to a snug station elsewhere. Over half the ship’s company were too young to draw their rum. That was a bit difficult. Rum and tobacco, ‘ticklers’, were the currency of the lower deck. He almost smiled. Not far different from the nick after all. And as coxswain he was also responsible for discipline, a sort of judge and policeman in one. How his old dad would havfc liked that!
At action stations, entering or leaving harbour, and at any other occasion when his seamanship and hard-won knowledge were required, Beckett was on the wheel, thick and thin. He had been sunk once, wounded once, and three times recommended for a decoration. Like Christmas, it was always still coming.
He watched the new first lieutenant as he paused to speak with Mr Midshipman Davenport. Unlike some of the regulars, Beckett admired the Wavy Navy reservists for most of the time. Many of them, like the RNR ex-trawler skippers, were professional seamen, and others, like the Old Man now, had done something before they joined up. Were not too proud to chat about that other world which had probably gone forever.
He was not happy about the new Jimmy. Strait-laced, and from a bloody cruiser at that. Beckett had been an A.B. in a heavy cruiser, had been weighted off for punishment for pitching a petty officer over the rail. Fortunately it had been in Grand Harbour, Malta, where you were more likely to be poisoned than drowned. Cruisers, like the carriers and battlewaggons, were floating barracks. Not for Joe Beckett. He scowled as he saw the white flash of Davenport’s winning smile. Beckett had decided within a week of the midshipman’s joining the ship that he could well be the reason for himself being disrated, busted as low as was possible.
Even when he considered it calmly over his tot, Beckett had reached the conclusion that if Davenport had sailed with Bligh in the Bounty the mutiny would have happened a bloody sight earlier.
He touched his cap in salute as Hargrave approached him.
‘’Ad a good tour, sir?’