Free Cruiser by Mike Carlton Page A
Authors: Mike Carlton
Ray Parkin was the creative director. Next morning, the circus began. Neptune was imperiously grand and hairy, his queen equipped with a shaggy rope wig and a pair of enormous breasts made from bakerâs dough. A yahooing retinue of policemen, bears, Judge Barnacle Seahorse and the Royal Barber, cavorted in their wake. The crew, stripped down to just shorts or swimmers in the sweaty heat, crowded the rails, perched on the shipâs boats and squatted on the deck as charges were read and punishments dispensed. As Ray Parkin recorded in his diary, the officers were not immune from the frolic. Bill Cook, aged 23, was one of the lieutenants drafted for Perth :
WARRANT NO 3.
Whereas it has been represented to me by Judy Garland Patching, Muscle twister that:
Name: William Cook
Rating: Could not be rated
Class for Conduct: Outclassed
Character: Skittish
Class for Leave: Girl Guides
Did whilst on passage to Durban on Alfie Holtâs Blue Funnel (extra big funnel) Luxury Liner, monopolise the deck tennis courts with unworthy sea lice who dared trespass on His Oceanic Majestyâs royal domain for the first time since shedding napkins, and adjudge himself âCock of the Walkâ.
Before awarding the foregoing punishment, I did not investigate the case laid against this self-opinionated âMug Champâ and adjudge him to be thrown to the deep and thereby cleanse him of all sea lice that tend to stick.
Given under my hand this 19th Day of June, 1939.
(Signed) Neptunus Rex. 7
Neptune and the bears respected no rank. To hoots of laughter,the victims copped the traditional shave with the barberâs filthy lather and a head-first dunking in the murky canvas pool.
Six days later, the Autolycus called in briefly at Funchal on the island of Madeira to take on more water. The Australians had been taking too many showers in the heat â a curious colonial custom for which the English shipowners had been unprepared. There was no leave ashore, but the ship was surrounded by local traders in small boats hawking souvenirs and Madeira wine, which, Rowley Roberts ruefully noted later, âturned out to be highly inflammable âmethoâ coloured with cochinealâ. 8
The voyage was nearly over. On the evening of 28 June, there was a last sing-song on deck and they saw the French island of Ushant to starboard, marking the entrance to the English Channel. Early the next morning, The Needles, those three ancient chalk pillars off the Isle of Wight, rose up to port. The pilot boat was waiting for them.
Portsmouth, a natural harbour on the southern coast of the county of Hampshire, is the home and heart of the Royal Navy and has been a haven for shipping since Roman times. For reasons nobody can remember, sailors have always known Portsmouth by the nickname Pompey. Intimately bound up with the history of England, it was here that Richard the Lionheart gathered a fleet for the Crusades against the Muslim heathen, and that King Henry VIII wept at the horrifying spectacle of his great wooden flagship Mary Rose foundering off Southsea Castle as she sailed to do battle with the French in 1545, with the loss of some 500 souls.
Arthur Phillipâs First Fleet lay at the Mother Bank anchorage off Spithead as the convicts were gathered from the jails and prison hulks for transportation to Botany Bay in 1787, and Nelsonâs last footsteps on English soil before his death at Trafalgar had been at Pompeyâs Sally Port in 1805, a small crowd cheering the one-armed Admiral as he took a boat out to his flagship HMS Victory . Victory was still there in 1939, firm in her dry dock, watching over a great naval base readyingonce again for war with a European tyrant. The signs were unmistakable. In the Channel, the Australians lining the deck of the Autolycus saw a flotilla of lean grey destroyers heading at speed for the Atlantic, and as they steamed up Spithead towards the dockyard a flight of RAF Hurricane fighters
WARRANT NO 3.
Whereas it has been represented to me by Judy Garland Patching, Muscle twister that:
Name: William Cook
Rating: Could not be rated
Class for Conduct: Outclassed
Character: Skittish
Class for Leave: Girl Guides
Did whilst on passage to Durban on Alfie Holtâs Blue Funnel (extra big funnel) Luxury Liner, monopolise the deck tennis courts with unworthy sea lice who dared trespass on His Oceanic Majestyâs royal domain for the first time since shedding napkins, and adjudge himself âCock of the Walkâ.
Before awarding the foregoing punishment, I did not investigate the case laid against this self-opinionated âMug Champâ and adjudge him to be thrown to the deep and thereby cleanse him of all sea lice that tend to stick.
Given under my hand this 19th Day of June, 1939.
(Signed) Neptunus Rex. 7
Neptune and the bears respected no rank. To hoots of laughter,the victims copped the traditional shave with the barberâs filthy lather and a head-first dunking in the murky canvas pool.
Six days later, the Autolycus called in briefly at Funchal on the island of Madeira to take on more water. The Australians had been taking too many showers in the heat â a curious colonial custom for which the English shipowners had been unprepared. There was no leave ashore, but the ship was surrounded by local traders in small boats hawking souvenirs and Madeira wine, which, Rowley Roberts ruefully noted later, âturned out to be highly inflammable âmethoâ coloured with cochinealâ. 8
The voyage was nearly over. On the evening of 28 June, there was a last sing-song on deck and they saw the French island of Ushant to starboard, marking the entrance to the English Channel. Early the next morning, The Needles, those three ancient chalk pillars off the Isle of Wight, rose up to port. The pilot boat was waiting for them.
Portsmouth, a natural harbour on the southern coast of the county of Hampshire, is the home and heart of the Royal Navy and has been a haven for shipping since Roman times. For reasons nobody can remember, sailors have always known Portsmouth by the nickname Pompey. Intimately bound up with the history of England, it was here that Richard the Lionheart gathered a fleet for the Crusades against the Muslim heathen, and that King Henry VIII wept at the horrifying spectacle of his great wooden flagship Mary Rose foundering off Southsea Castle as she sailed to do battle with the French in 1545, with the loss of some 500 souls.
Arthur Phillipâs First Fleet lay at the Mother Bank anchorage off Spithead as the convicts were gathered from the jails and prison hulks for transportation to Botany Bay in 1787, and Nelsonâs last footsteps on English soil before his death at Trafalgar had been at Pompeyâs Sally Port in 1805, a small crowd cheering the one-armed Admiral as he took a boat out to his flagship HMS Victory . Victory was still there in 1939, firm in her dry dock, watching over a great naval base readyingonce again for war with a European tyrant. The signs were unmistakable. In the Channel, the Australians lining the deck of the Autolycus saw a flotilla of lean grey destroyers heading at speed for the Atlantic, and as they steamed up Spithead towards the dockyard a flight of RAF Hurricane fighters