The heads ceased working at 0715. I know this because I had just finished using the facility and I was now (literally) faced with the ghastly residue. The heads, as you seasoned sea dogs will know by now, is the nautical equivalent of the lavatory. As there is only one lavatory onboard I suppose the name should be ‘head’ as favoured by the USN, but traditionally we of the Royal Navy have called the facility ‘heads’ whether singular or plural, just as the French refer to les toilettes, and who am I to mess with tradition? The heads onboard is a sea toilet, that is to say that the device operates differently from your lavatory ashore: you do not just press a button that leads to a flush of fresh water washing away the effluent to somewhere that is “anywhere but here”. Instead, there is a hand pump and a little lever; you pump away vigorously and it empties the pan, you move the little lever and pump some more and sea water flushes the pan at the same time as it is emptied. The operation is mechanically simple and theoretically reliable, and a series of simple non-return valves ensures that the effluent does not come back at you (you hope). In our boat it takes 30 vigorous strokes fully to empty and flush the system. Where does the effluent go? Well, at sea it goes overboard; in harbour it goes into a holding tank onboard, which is subsequently emptied by sucking it out or by dumping it at sea beyond the three mile limit. The mackerel love it. Anyway, to come back to my early morning adventure, I pumped and pumped and the brown contents of the bowl, instead of going down, actually increased in volume, dangerously approaching the rim. In desperation I prayed to the patron saint of engineers, St Patrick, and he clearly took pity on me as the bowl suddenly began, very slowly, to empty – though not without frequent blowbacks, spitting and bubbling, like some malevolent geyser in the volcanic Icelandic wastes. Alas, although the pan emptied, that was only half the battle: the heads would not flush. Try as I might, I could not draw in fresh sea water to usher the effluent to its final resting place. I sighed. Philosophically, I washed my hands and girded my loins for yet Another Job on the Boat, this one before breakfast. Of course, you could reasonably ask why I had not used the lavatories ashore in the marina, as normal, instead of the cramped and fickle heads onboard; the answer was that the rain was coming down in stair rods in a semi horizontal direction and I was disinclined to make the journey. To continue the story, you will be relieved to know that it has a happy ending. Nestling in my “come in handy” box was a complete sea toilet repair kit with all the replacement parts needed. Sleeves rolled up, shoes and socks removed, rubber gloves on and disinfectant on standby, I took the heads apart and replaced all of the rubber ‘O’ rings and noisome non-return valves, the disintegration of the latter being the cause of the problem. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail the whole contraption was back together and working a treat, which is what I received from my grateful wife in the form of a delicious breakfast. Boating life: you can’t beat it.
Matters sewage and sewerage first featured in my professional life when I worked in the Ministry of Defence design division responsible for developing sewage treatment plants (STP) for the Royal Navy. Under the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) regulations all ships except warships have to be fitted with an approved STP or holding tank. Before that, ships simply pumped the stuff over the side as they had done for centuries. Warships are excluded from the IMO regulations but most, if not all, navies comply for the simple reason that, without an STP, a visiting warship would not be permitted in most ports. Having been built in the 1960s, my last steamer did not have an STP, but we overcame the problem in some foreign ports by rationing the heads onboard, the ubiquitous use of wooden bungs and rags, and diverting our sewage into shoreside bowsers or lighters alongside. I remember that we used the latter solution in Naples, an arrangement that cost the Crown a considerable sum of money, and watched the sewage barge take its load just beyond the harbour bar, where it dumped it in the Mediterranean. Actually, the infinite volume of the sea and the chlorine in seawater (and all those mackerel) process sewage naturally in quite a short time, but that does not mean we would like to swim next to the stuff. When I was a boy I could stand on a hill by the harbour mouth and watch the brown stain of effluent from the River Tyne spreading out from the two piers a mile out to sea at ebb tide, but we still swam from the beaches and here I am today. Mind you, at that time the River Tyne itself would not support life and, if you fell into the river, you had to have all manner of vaccinations as a matter of urgency. Thankfully, the Tyne and all other British rivers are no longer routinely contaminated by sewage, and aquatic life has returned extensively. Sewage in inland waterways and rivers would be a major problem because the effluent extracts oxygen from the water as it breaks down and the oxygen-depleted water will not the support plants or fish. I could go on and describe how most STPs work…it’s quite interesting…no? All right. So there you are: a potted history of all things sewage.
We are back on the boat, snuggled down as the wind throws us against the pontoon and the rain comes down mightily. By the middle of May, Britain had received 91% of its normal quota of rain for that month, so we are on track to break the record for rainfall set in 1967. Was it only a month ago that I wrote that the earth was as hard as iron and crying out for rain? Clearly, the cries have been answered. Amazingly, given this very inclement weather, we managed to take the boat away from her berth the other day and even managed a trip at sea. There was a brief lull in the weather system on Friday and we took advantage of it. The original plan was simply to give the engines a work out: to get them up to operating temperature and to set the propellers turning. We only took APPLETON RUM down to the harbour mouth as part of that plan and, in passing, to assess the sea state beyond the bar. To our surprise, not only was the swell quite benign, but the sun also took the opportunity to say hello. So away we went, course south-by-west, heading for the Skerries Shoal, three miles off Slapton Sands in Start Bay. Gradually I brought up the speed: our stern went down, our bows lifted up and soon we were “on the plane” and creaming along at fourteen knots. Behind us our wake curled upwards and outwards in furrows of green sea and cream foam: APPLETON RUM was alive. Given our previous adventures recounted on these pages, you will be surprised to read that we did not encounter heavy swell, did not pitch and roll, throwing kettles, books and wives in all directions; we were steady as a rock and going some. Alas, heavy showers and the next weather system were forecast for noon, so we thought it prudent to turn at the Skerries Buoy and return to the river, but it had been fun while it lasted. We have remained alongside every since, the wind gusting to Force 5 and the showers blasting the windows like a fire hose. Life on the water is not like life at home: all the elements manifest themselves at a higher level. Boats travelling up the river – even small outboard-powered dinghies – create significant wash that rolls us around, even when alongside. Largely unencumbered by any major land mass or buildings, the south westerly wind whips up the River Dart or down Mill Creek, tugging the boat against her warps and bouncing her off her fenders. The warps creek in their cleats, creating a constant background noise by night and by day. Then there is the moaning of wind in the rigging of sailing craft in the marina and the tink-tink-tink of halliards hitting metal masts; the moaning sounds like music or children’s voices, or perhaps it is a banshee, haunting us with the ghosts of drowned mariners. And as for the rain, well, given our exposure the stuff comes down in sheets and you can see squalls coming from half a mile away. Fortunately, we have all the kit for when we are outside: the salopettes, the seaboots, the waterproof foul weather jackets with hood and high collar, the automatic life jackets. The only downside of that kit is that it takes ten minutes to put it on and ten minutes to take it off; that and the fact that, as soon as you get it all on then, as sure as eggs are eggs, your body develops an urge to pass water and all the impedimenta have to come off again. Jane’s gear is stylish and slimming, comprising a white top with royal blue facings, fetching fluorescent hood and matching royal blue salopettes (no seaboots – cannot find any for her diddy feet); mine is all-over bright orange so that, when fully kitted out, I look like an advertisement for John West Kipper Fillets and walk like a Michelin man. Still, at least I look the part and am dry. Snug as bugs in a rug, we are, and greatly relieved that we are not out at sea in this lot.
A trooper in the Household Cavalry has been convicted of sexual assault by court martial and sentenced to two months in army prison. His crime was pinching the bottoms of two fellow (female) soldiers, as a prank, while on parade; he claimed that he had done it to “lighten the mood”. It was a daft thing to do, but it is amazing how this relatively trivial, though unwelcome, activity has been escalated. It is like one of those irregular verbs: I pinch her bottom, you grope her, he sexual assaults her. The response seems a bit over-the-top to me, but then I often forget that I am living in 2021, as did that trooper, along with the fact that he is living in a society that – rightly – regards that sort of behaviour against women to be totally unacceptable. In mitigation, I think he was genuinely skylarking and his action might just as easily have been against a fellow male soldier: it is the sort of thing that a band of brothers does to lighten the mood. But he really was very silly. The bit that truly astonished me about the whole thing, however, was that the female soldiers who (correctly) complained, stated that they were “traumatised and almost in tears” because of the incident. Good grief. They are soldiers. If they were were traumatised by having their bottoms pinched in public – probably by a friend or, at least a member of the same company whom they knew – then heaven knows how they will cope in combat. How Britain’s enemies must tremble.
On the subject of Covid, all talk is on the latest bogeyman, the Indian variant. This joins the previous bogeymen, the Kent variant, the Brazilian variant and the South African variant in the long list that the government and the media have used to terrify us. Soon to come are the Moldavian variant, the Transylvanian variant and the Venusian variant ad infinitum. Certainly, India is suffering very badly from Covid 19, particularly in Delhi where the hospitals have been overwhelmed, and the Indian variant is said to be particularly infectious – just like the Kent variant was and so on. However, one must take into account the fact that the population of India is measured in billions, not millions, that it has a high rate of poverty and millions of homeless preventing the country from locking down, and that it does not have an extensive health infrastructure. There is also a high degree of ignorance in the population and a reluctance to be inoculated (the Indian prime minister has advocated the application of urine and cow dung to combat the disease). All the current scientific advice in Britain indicates that, provided we have been vaccinated, we should be able to resist this latest variant. At the moment, the UK statistics continue to show a fall in hospital admissions and deaths as part of a continuing trend; positive test results have increased slightly, but the low fatalities suggest that our resistance is good. As I write, weekly deaths attributable to Covid in the UK stand at 72, dropping at 9%; hospital admissions at 103 dropping at 1%. 69% of the British population have received at least one dose of vaccine. The rate of inoculation is to be increased in the UK and the gap between the first and second doses is to be reduced in order to increase immunity.
On the home front, Britain passes yet another milestone in the move to come out of lockdown tomorrow, Monday 17 May. After that, we can entertain friends indoors for the first time in many months. Up to six people can also go inside a pub, restaurant or indoor event and – to quote the prime minister – we can hug each other again. I don’t know where all this hugging and kissing business came from; it is not something I indulge in greatly, except with the memsahib – and that only on high days or birthdays; it is treated with suspicion if I act amorously with her at any other time. Certainly I do not extend the practice to members of the same sex. I think it all started when we started to do the Sign of Peace in church, businesses started calling us by our Christian names, waiters started addressing us with, “Hi guys”, and Mr Anthony Blair (“call me Tony”) became prime minister; it is yet another nail in the coffin of civilised British behaviour. And, by the way, who is the prime minister to say when we can or cannot hug each other? It is almost tempting to start the practice out of sheer imbuggerance.
The sun has come out from behind a cloud. We are still bouncing around, but that little ray of sunshine seems to make the wind more bearable somehow. Jane has complained about having to provide tea, twice, while I have been writing to you good people and – further – I have been ordered to go outside and repair a rainwater leak somewhere in poor old APPLETON RUM’s structure. Oh yes, and the gas has just run out and I have to change over bottles. To quote the brave and late Captain “Titus” Oates,
“I am just going outside and may be some time”.
16 May 2021
PS. The sun went in and a squall hit me when I was half way through the job. I was soaked. By way of apology, the sun came out again just as I finished. Hurrah for the life of a sailor.
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 