...a large and ridiculous gunner told me that I looked like an out-of-work chorus boy. He was very startled when I told him that was exactly what I was, but that I found it easier to get work as a naval officer, a job requiring considerably less talent.
William DonaldsonTags: royal-navy
Black seamen - or "Black Jacks" as African sailors were known - enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and endured thier fellow seamen's racism, they were still freemen in the Royal Navy. One famous black sailor wrote, "I liked this little ship very much. I now became the captian's steward, in which I was very happy; for I was extremely well treated by all on board, and I had the leisure to improve myself in reading and writing.
Tony WilliamsTags: equality history racism sailors black-history royal-navy
The wife of a junior officer cooped up in a horrible canvas partition in steerage for five months wrote:
"I had enjoyed much peace there in the absence of every comfort, even of such as are now enjoyed in jail. I used to say that there were four privations in my situation - fire, water, earth and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set the foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe. Yet, with all these miserable circumstances, we spent many a happy hour by candlelight in that wretched cabin whilst I sewed and he read the Bible to me.
Tags: stoicism royal-navy east-indiamen mauritius sea-travel
The dangers of the sea should always take precedence
over the violence of the enemy’
Rear-Admiral Ben Bryant CB, DSO and two bars, DSC
Tags: history wwii sea maritime ships ww2 submarine royal-navy naval
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