Part of Ship
One brief conversation alongside in the Italian naval base at La Spezia revealed rather more about life aboard a Royal Navy destroyer than the painting of a radar mast ever could.
When the Buffer decided that HMS Glamorgan's Type 965 radar aerial mast required another coat of paint, two members of the Torpedo Anti-Submarine branch found themselves volunteered for the job. Their immediate reaction was perfectly logical.
It was not their Part of Ship.
To anyone who has never served in the Royal Navy, that expression can sound as though it simply describes a physical area of the ship. In reality, it meant something rather more important.
Every sailor joined a ship with a trade. Some were sonar specialists, some radar operators, some communicators, engineers, cooks or writers. Those specialisations were only one part of naval life. The moment a sailor joined a ship, he also became part of a much larger organisational system.
Soon after reporting aboard, every rating visited the Ship's Office. Among the formalities was the issue of a Station Card recording, amongst other things, the watch to which he belonged. At the same time he learned his Part of Ship and the many duties that accompanied it. None of this was left to chance.
The Royal Navy expected every man to perform more than one job.
During normal working hours a specialist might spend the morning carrying out the duties of his own branch before reporting elsewhere for routine ship's work. Over a period of months he might find himself allocated to the quarterdeck, the gangway, a mess, the galley or any one of a host of other duties organised by the Ship's Office. Those allocations changed from time to time as the needs of the ship changed. Everyone developed favourites, but nobody decided his own Part of Ship.
That was only the beginning.
The same sailor also possessed an Action Station for war fighting, a Defence Station for protecting the ship, emergency stations for fire or damage control, harbour stations, sea-going watches and any number of other responsibilities. Entering or leaving harbour brought yet another organisation into play, with Special Sea Duty Men carrying out carefully rehearsed tasks that appeared only for those evolutions.
One sailor therefore became several different sailors according to circumstance.
A Torpedo Anti-Submarine rating, for example, might spend the working day maintaining the quarterdeck, become a sonar controller during action stations, man a 20 mm Oerlikon as his Defence Station and stand First of Starboard Watch while the ship was at sea. None of those appointments contradicted one another. Together they formed the complete sailor.
The system extended throughout the ship.
Every branch possessed its own stores, workshops and working spaces. Rope lockers belonged to seamen, engineering workshops to the Artificers, radar spaces to the Radar Plot ratings and so on. These areas were respected as another branch's working territory. If there was reason to enter someone's kaboosh, it was only polite to knock first. Not because the space was secret, but because it belonged to those who worked there.
Even so, those invisible boundaries were never barriers.
The incident at La Spezia demonstrated the point perfectly. The Radar Plot ratings looked at the approaching working party with understandable surprise.
"We did it last week."
Quite possibly they had.
The Buffer remained entirely unmoved.
"Then do the bugger again."
From his perspective, the finer details scarcely mattered. He had responsibility for the upper deck, the mast needed painting and two ratings were available. The work would be completed.
No argument followed because none was really necessary. Everyone understood the system. A job that normally belonged to one group could perfectly well be carried out by another if circumstances required it. The important thing was that the ship remained ready, well maintained and capable of carrying out whatever task came next.
To an outsider, the arrangement could appear bewilderingly complicated. A single sailor might possess half a dozen different appointments, each activated by a different bell, pipe, emergency or routine. To the lower deck, however, it was simply the way the Navy worked.
Modern language might describe the arrangement as multi-skilling. Pusser never needed such expressions. Every sailor was expected to be capable of more than one job because a warship demanded rather more than one version of every man.
It was considered entirely normal.
More importantly, it worked.
La Spezia part 3 - Working Parties
Primary source: RN-008
RN-E-142
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