The Letter from the Admiralty
Leaving Blackfriars House should have brought a sense of relief. The entrance tests were over, the interview had ended and an offer to join the Royal Navy had somehow been accepted.
Instead, the journey home was accompanied by one increasingly uncomfortable thought.
The Admiralty intended to write to his parents.
There had been no opportunity to prevent it and, more importantly, no opportunity to prepare them. The visit to Blackfriars House had never been mentioned at home because it had never seemed sufficiently important to justify the conversation. It had begun as little more than curiosity and was expected to end in much the same way.
Instead, events had gathered a momentum entirely of their own.
The following days became an exercise in waiting.
Questions about future employment continued to arise, as they naturally did for any school leaver approaching the end of compulsory education. Friends talked about jobs, apprenticeships and whatever opportunities might present themselves. At home, similar conversations reflected the perfectly reasonable concern of parents trying to understand what their son intended to do with his life.
There was only one difficulty.
He still had no satisfactory answer.
The truth sounded almost too improbable to explain. Somewhere in Manchester, an official letter was making its way through the postal system carrying information that would answer every question before he had managed to ask permission.
Meanwhile, another unexpected consequence of the visit to Blackfriars had already become apparent.
The three friends who had entered the recruiting office together had not shared the same outcome. They had been thanked for attending and quietly sent on their way while one remained behind for interview.
At fifteen, such distinctions could seem rather more significant than they perhaps deserved.
Friendships changed.
Whether through disappointment, embarrassment or simple youthful rivalry, relationships that had once seemed uncomplicated were suddenly different. Looking back after many years, the reasons are impossible to judge with certainty. What remained was the unmistakable impression that the easy companionship enjoyed only weeks earlier had altered, and not for the better.
Then the letter arrived.
Like countless official communications of the period, it was direct, formal and entirely lacking in unnecessary decoration. Somewhere behind the familiar envelope lay confirmation that a fifteen-year-old schoolboy had been accepted as a Boy Sailor and would shortly begin training at the Royal Navy Training Establishment, HMS Ganges, at Shotley Gate in Suffolk.
Its arrival produced exactly the reaction that had been feared.
His mother was utterly astonished.
The discovery that her son had secretly attended a recruiting office and apparently arranged his own future without discussing it first produced an explosion of language remarkable both for its force and its variety. It was a vocabulary that had previously remained well concealed and was now delivered with considerable energy.
Retreat appeared the wisest available option.
His stepfather, known simply as Pop, intervened before events became any more physical, while the intended recipient of the family's displeasure made a rapid exit through the front door to allow tempers an opportunity to cool.
Distance, on that occasion, seemed an excellent survival strategy.
By the time he eventually returned home, the immediate storm had largely passed.
His mother remained deeply unimpressed by the manner in which events had unfolded, but conversation had become possible once more. Beneath the understandable anger lay something rather more familiar to any parent confronted by unexpected news concerning a child: concern.
The prospect of a fifteen-year-old leaving home to join the Royal Navy was hardly something to be accepted without questions.
Those questions were eventually answered as best they could be.
Not that the answers were especially enlightening.
There was still very little understanding of what lay ahead. HMS Ganges was merely a name. The Junior Assistant Stores Accountant branch remained a mystery. Naval life existed largely in the imagination because there had been no opportunity to experience it.
The only certainty was that the Admiralty now expected him to report for training on 21 September 1971.
The decision, it seemed, had somehow become real.
Years later, the whole episode would become a favourite family story. Pop, in particular, took great delight in recalling the arrival of the letter and the extraordinary chain of events that had produced it. Time had transformed alarm into amusement, allowing everyone involved to appreciate just how improbable the situation had been.
At the time, however, it felt anything but amusing.
One thing, at least, had become unmistakably clear.
There would be no quietly changing his mind.
The Royal Navy now expected him.
Part 1 Essay 6
Part 1 Essay 7: A Future at Fifteen
Primary source: RN-001
RN-E-106
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