Ready for Rounds
There came a point during training at HMS Ganges when recruits no longer needed to be told what had to be done.
It was not because the rules had become less strict. If anything, the opposite was true. Standards remained as demanding as ever, but after weeks of living within the same routines, most recruits understood instinctively what would happen if those standards were allowed to slip.
One winter evening in late 1971 demonstrated the process perfectly.
Hawke Division had eventually returned from an endurance exercise along the marshes of the River Orwell cold, hungry and carrying a generous quantity of East Anglian mud. The showers looked as though part of the estuary had followed everyone back into the building. Boots had left muddy footprints across the floors. Sports kit was soaked, stained and in places scarcely recognisable from the clean clothing that had left Ganges only a few hours earlier.
Nobody stood over the recruits issuing instructions.
Nobody needed to.
The showers were cleaned.
The floors were scrubbed.
The sports kit was washed before it had time to dry stiff with mud. Clothing found its way into the drying room while there was still a chance that it would be ready for the following day.
There was no discussion about whether any of this was necessary.
It simply was.
Every evening the Officer of the Day visited each messdeck on rounds. Before that happened, the duty hand reported that everything was ready for inspection. It was a responsibility taken seriously. Reporting a messdeck ready when it plainly was not would have been an uncomfortable experience for everyone concerned, but particularly for the unfortunate recruit whose duty it happened to be.
By this stage of training, nobody wanted to be responsible for that conversation.
Responsibility rarely rested with one person alone. Although the duty hand formally reported the messdeck ready, everyone had a part to play in ensuring that it actually was. One untidy locker, one muddy shower or one carelessly abandoned item of kit reflected on the whole messdeck rather than simply its owner.
That understanding changed behaviour in subtle ways.
Recruits reminded one another of jobs still to be finished. Someone who had overlooked something seldom needed an instructor to point it out; another recruit usually noticed first. Standards became collective rather than individual, not through formal lectures but through everyday experience.
Looking back, it is difficult to identify the exact moment when that change took place. It happened gradually, almost unnoticed. During the early weeks much had to be explained repeatedly. Later on, explanations became unnecessary because routine itself provided the instruction.
The endurance exercise beside the Orwell had left everyone exhausted. The missed evening meal had done little to improve morale, and by the time the cleaning was finished the NAAFI had already closed. There would be no welcome mug of tea, no snack and no opportunity to recover what had been missed. Even so, the work was completed before anyone thought about sitting down.
That was simply the order in which life worked.
Only afterwards is it easy to appreciate what HMS Ganges had quietly achieved. The establishment certainly taught drill, seamanship and physical fitness, but it also taught something less obvious. It developed habits. Recruits learned to notice what needed attention and to deal with it before someone else needed to ask.
The process was so gradual that it scarcely seemed remarkable at the time. Cleaning showers after crawling through estuary mud, washing sports kit before it attracted attention on rounds and helping ensure that an entire messdeck was ready for inspection all appeared perfectly ordinary.
That ordinariness was perhaps the greatest achievement of all.
The routines had ceased to feel imposed. They had simply become part of everyday naval life.
Primary source: RN-005
RN-E-127
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