CHRISTMAS AT SEA

Evening Star, Issue 20053, 19 December 1928, Page 13

CHRISTMAS AT SEA

THE WAY THEY HAVE IN THE HftVY (From ‘The Times.’) Christmas finds the ships of the Atlantic Fleet—battleships, battle cruisers, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines—lying alongside the jetties and at buoys jn their home ports giving the customary leave to officers and ships’ companies. Tho naval barracks are more or less denuded of their occupants. Boys under training have scattered to their homes. Gunnery, torpedo, and signal schools have _ ceased their labours, and the familiar seaman’s uniform .appears in towns and villages far distant from the - sea.

Those left behind keel) up the old custom of the service by decorating the mastheads, ensign and jack-staff, and yardarms of their ships with evergreens, and their messes with paper streamers, holly, and photographs of their families. There is food in plenty, and the officers make their usual round of the mess-decks at noon and wish the men the compliments of the season. But invariably things fall a little flat. Everybody is thinking of home, and when someone tries to organise an impromptu sing-song in the evening it is discovered that “Shiner” White, the expert performer on the concertina and ukulele, is away in the bosom of his family. So arc “ Fincher ” Martin, “Buck” Taylor, and “Chats” Harris, other star performers in flic concert party. It is difiicult to fill their places at short notice. It is abroad, in meu-of-ivar in the Mediterranean, the East Indies, China, and on many another foreign station, that Christmas is celebrated with its time-honoured ritual. To seamen in the uttermost part of the earth their ship is truly their home, no matter whether they be wintering in North China with the thermometer well below freezing, or sweltering under awnings in the tropical heat of the Equator. For weeks beforehand the canteen manager will have been busy laying in his stock of seasonable food, while the marine postman will have sought help to sort out the greatly increased parcel mail from home. Nearly everybody on board has something from England, and very many of the packages are edible—made by wives, sweethearts, and friends all over the United Kingdom. Cakes, mince pies, plum puddings, and the like do not travel well properly boxed. As often as not they arrive in homely brownpaper—horribly battered. Christmas Day, if it does not fall upon a Sunday, is treated as such, and after “Divisions” at 9.30 and Divine service an hour later the real business starts at noon, the men’s dinner hour. The band assembles outside the officers’ quarters, and a procession, headed by the captain and preceded by the musicians playing ‘The Boast Beef of Old England,’ begins its tour of' the mess-decks.

The messes have been transformed — the beams overhead are all hut hidden in- chains and festoons of coloured paper and greenery; photographs and mottoes hang on the white enamelled ship’s side and bulkheads; the tables are laden with hams, rounds of beef, cheese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, plum puddings, mince pies, cakes, almonds and raisins, fruit, sweets. One hardly envies the ship’s cook and his myrmidons, who for days past have been working overtime to produce this feast. Nor can wo envy the officers, for at the end of each mess stands one of its occupants with a plate of cake or pudding which he proffers to each passerby. Every officer must take a piece; but there are many messes to bo visited and something at eo#i. A short “ caulk,”- gs. pap, ia tap

early afternoon to aid- digestion, is followed, perhaps, by the ministrations of the “funny party,” who, with blackened faces or dressed as ladies—such ladies!—parade the mess-deck to call upon their shipmates. Other men probably go aft to invade cabins and wardroom in search of their divisional, officers. If discovered they are seized upon and carried shoulder high round the miss-deck preceded by a “band” of concertinas, mouth-organs, pnd tin utensils beaten with spoons/ finally to be deposited among their own men, where their healths are drunk in Navy rum or so-called “port,” and they are expected to make a speech im return. In the evening there may be a smoking concert or other entertainment for the entire ship’s company; but by 11 O’clock 1 the hammocks are slung and everyone lias retired. Christmas is over. The festivities have been very innocent; perhaps, to an outsider, a little childish. Nevertheless, they have served a purpose. They have helped to strengthen that intangible link which binds officers to men and men !to officers.