|
Date: |
|
Description: | British boy seaman trained at HMS Ganges, GB, 1910-1911; boy seaman served aboard HMS Prince George in GB coastal waters 1911; served aboard HMS Good Hope in GB coastal waters, 1914; petty officer served aboard HMS Munster in GB coastal waters, 1916-1918
REEL 1 Background in Brighton, 1893-1910: family and social circumstances; education and missing exams through breaking leg; work as clerk at coal merchants; developing interest in coastguards and sea; recruitment into Royal Navy, 1910.
REEL 2 Continues: parents reaction to enlistment; brother's army service and sisters' careers. Recollections of training as boy seaman at HMS Ganges Shore Station, Shotley, 9/1910-12/1911: preconceptions of naval service and reasons for enlistment; education classes including assignment to advanced class and relationship with schoolmasters; seamanship training.
REEL 3 Continues: advantages of superior education; conditions of service; reception; preconceptions of naval service; reactions to naval discipline and punishments; question of role as boy petty officer.
REEL 4 Continues: question of role, privileges and pay as boy petty officer; award of prizes for general efficiency and gunnery; question of failure to become writer and later specialisation as torpedoman; question of civilian attitude to sailors.
REEL 5 Recollections of period as boy seaman aboard HMS Prince George, 7/1911-8/1911: meeting with Prince Louis Mountbatten; training and examinations. Question of substantive and non-substantive ranks on qualification as seaman torpedoman at HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, 1913. Recollections of period as leading seaman aboard HMS Good Hope and petty officer aboard HMS Munster, 1914-1918: role as seaman torpedoman with electric light and torpedo parties aboard HMS Good Hope, 1914; question of responsibility for serious electrical and mechanical repairs; status as specialists; problems in locating electrical faults in gunnery control systems; question of discipline.
REEL 6 Continues: opinion of ship's police; question of humiliating nature of punishments; attitude to discipline and question of punishments later awarded when officer; examination and interviews prior to appointment as warrant officer; story illustrating difference in conditions of service for ratings and officers.
REEL 7 Continues: story of US destroyer reporting success in sinking U-Boat to C-in-C Devonport, c1918; question of being commissioned and prospects for promotion; prior accelerated promotion to torpedo gunner's mate; status within wardroom aboard destroyers; status of wife; nature of wardroom; officers' conditions of service and relationship with lower deck.
REEL 8 Continues: officers' recreations; relationship with officers; story of reception from captain and his encouragement of good morale in wardroom; relationship with lower deck as 'ranker' officer; aspects of service on destroyers , 1914-1918, including personal morale, changes in routine, practical nature of training, opinion of hostilities only ratings, reaction to Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officers; aspects of participation aboard HMS Munster in Battle of Jutland, 31/5/1916, including personal morale.
REEL 9 Continues: aspects participation aboard HMS Munster in Battle of Jutland, 31/5/1916, including story of method of escape after accidentally escorting German battleships at night, opinion of Beatty's tactics, question of result and subsequent temporary lifting of censorship; reaction to Armistice, 11/11/1918; post-war introduction of welfare officers. Role as officer commanding naval station at Nigg, 1943. Reaction to retirement from navy. Question of subsequent contacts with old comrades. | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Parsons, William Allen | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
|
|