BOYS WHO DO MEN’S WORK.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 May 1927, Page 4

BOYS WHO DO MEN’S WORK.

(By J. M. N. JEFFRIES, the Special Correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” with the Third Battle Squadron during the recent Fleet Exercises in the Mediterranean.)

HALS. BEN BOW, Mediterranean. Boys will lie boys, they say, but sometimes they have to be men. Never was tiiis truer than of fluboys in H.M.S. Benbow and her sister ships of the Training Squadron. In each of these ships over 400 boys are carried, the number of adult seamen on board—in which, of course, stokers are not included—being only one quarter of the number of boys. But as the Benbow, accompanied by the Revenge, Iron Duke, Marlborough, and Emperor of India, also constitutes the 3rd Battleship Squadron, and lias to act as such, we have one more of those naval feats of which hardly anyone knows, a squadron of battleships mainly manned by boys. Only the Revenge has the normal crew,

Boys keep watches, boys coal their ship, hoys paint her and dean her, sail her boats, and man her launches, work in her galley, form her colour-guard, take their predominant share in most of the departments of her being. Stoking, manning of sea-boats and turrets, and other duties impossible to a boy’s physique are carried out by men. The rest is the hoys’ sphere. They can extend that sphere sometimes, too. A day or two ago in Lagos Bay the whole Atlantic Fleet put its boats out for a sailing competition. There were perhaps 70 boats afloat. But it was a crew of Bcnbow’s boys, commanded by n midshipman, which gained the second place, shaving the beards, so to speak, of all the adult battleships and battle-cruisers, ic> say nothing of all the lesser craft. Indeed. Bciibow's boys in these matters are rapidly showng themselves experienced barbers. There is no learning at second-hand in this battleship. On deck or at their stations below everything the boys do or handle is done or handled as part of the ship’s work of the clay, and thus they learn in the wonderful and interesting school of practice. T The only pity, indeed, is that they are not a little longer afloat in their battleships. The course is a six-months one.’ If ever money permits it might valuably he extended and terminated by a special cruise. But in any case, with things as they are, the hoy-manned battleships are taking their part in the present meeting and manoeuvring of fleets in a line with great vessels having full crews of men. What makes it really difficult is that there is no unskilled work aboard a warship. The barefoot hoy busy on deck wth bucket or rag may be twenty minutes or so later asked in a class why the cleaning and elevating gear of guns is made frictional or how a sounding is taken with Kelvins machine. Some of them will put down mops to go to logarithms and other studies beyond the philosophies of most of us. > For in the Bendow and her sisters

they are reining a new, instructed Navy, wherein an able hoy gets his chances. Even the ordinary hoy must pass an examination to qualify as a seaman. It is a simple one, hut calls for some knowledge at least of those decimal dots which a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Queen Victoria never could understand. So does the world change. As for the lads of parts they can, if they profit by their training, not merely will promotion to seamen half a year before it is due, hut can actually anticipate as boys the examinations they would have to pass in years to come to qualify as petty and warrant officers. A. hoy of IS may get the educational certificate which he will need to become a warrant- officer in, say, ten years’ time, and he free henceforth to devote himself to the technical, side of his career. A wntc-li is kept on very -exceptional boys, who may F>e specially advanced through the rank of “mate” to full commissioned rank. Such a boy can be a lieutenant at 23. with about the same seniority as lieutenants who have entered the Service in the ordinary way. Six such commissions are awarded every year, and there are now actually some thirty lieutenant-commanders who have risen from the lower deck in this fashion, while one. Commander Figgins, whom I have had the honour of meeting, was recently promoted to that higher rank, one of 21 officers out of well over 400 available for that promotion. Xo doubt hut a few talented youths will ever reach this level, hut the way is open, and there is not a hoy in the Benbow with his cleaning-rag in one hand and his logarithm hook in the other, who does not stand at the foot of a ladder lending to warrant officership. And a warrant officer in the Jtoval Xavy is a man with the reliability of a bank, the responsibiltiv of a public trustee, the respect of a senator, and the character of the better I sort, of bishop, I