Old Weather Forum

asterix135 wrote:Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:37 pm Not being at all maritime-ly inclined, I'm wondering what info people have about shore leave.

For example, the Patterson just granted leave to her port watch from 1 PM to 11 am the next day. So are these guys expected to find their own lodging on shore for the night? Or do they get to come and go from the ship as desired?

I'm guessing, from some of the disciplinary accounts, that a main focus of shore leave was bars and brothels (the latter potentially providing a place to spend the night), but other than that, and a chance to potentially eat decent food, what else happens on shore leave?

And these guys who return significantly late, what gives? An extended bender? I've had one guy who was noted as having been detained by police on shore, but normally, there's no other explanation.

Anyways, any stories, sources of info etc. would be interesting for me.

Janet Jaguar wrote:Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:32 pm Since as a total landlubber, I know nothing, I searched and found this on Gordon's extensive site Naval-History.net from WW2: http://www.naval-history.net/WW2Memoir- ... wain08.htm

Tegwen wrote:Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:59 pm The ships I am editing are active in the Mesopotamia campaign. The crew also have leave when they are away from the front. There is very little indication of what they get up to on leave in places such as Basra and Fao, although there are often football parties and more occasionally concert parties etc in addition to the leave.

I also edited Odin, and after her time in the Tigris she spent much of it based in Aden and again there was regular leave there. I guess that there would have been more for them to do on their time off in Aden than in Basra!

Hope this helps a little.

K

Thursday Next wrote:Thu Apr 18, 2013 6:15 pm In "Scrimgeour's Small Scribbling Diary 1914-1916" - the diary of a midshipman in the Royal Navy - he mentions that while at Busta Voe in Shetland some of the officers used to do a bit of hunting, shooting and fishing. There wasn't much else to do round there, of course! He also mentions being Officer of the Day when the ship was in Liverpool and how some of those returning from leave at 7am were desperately trying to walk straight!

studentforever wrote:Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:59 pm A few years ago I emerged from the Glasgow Underground and was going off in search of my car when I was tentatively approached by a couple of young men. In excellent but accented English they enquired the whereabouts of George 'V' dock. This dock is almost unused so I queried it and they said they had been on a NATO exercise, their ship had berthed and they had a few hours shore leave.

Their problem was that they had got on the City bus 23 which stopped at Govan instead of the Clydeside 23 which went past the dock. The next one was a 25 minute wait and I was passing the dock entrance so I took a deep breath and offered them a lift. They very politely talked about the fiancee, wife and child for whom they'd been shopping. They also gave me the impression that the Captain had painted Govan in such a lurid light that they were expecting to be assaulted at the least which was why they had approached me, a lone middle-aged woman who was hardly a threat to a couple of young men.

I still regret that a prior engagement prevented me from accepting their invitation to visit the wardroom!

Kevin wrote:Fri Apr 19, 2013 1:55 pm The run of the matter is probably best demonstrated on one hand by the liberality of the definition of 'on ship's business' under Admiralty Law, where a sailor who is injured, pretty much no matter how, is required to be looked after at the ship's expense (includes falling out of second story brothel windows), and on the other by the once widespread network of seamen's church institutes where one could find a clean bed and a wholesome game of checkers. The Seamen's Institute in New York also ran a training program, which is where I did my first radar observer certificate - incidentally taught by the former chief mate of the SS United States.

Kathy wrote:Fri Apr 19, 2013 2:16 pm Sooo...
Is that whole 2nd story thing, um.... ;D

Kevin wrote:Fri Apr 19, 2013 2:58 pm No, no! I've never fallen out of a brothel!

Kevin wrote:Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:02 pm I lived here back in the day: http://seamensnewport.org/

Thursday Next wrote:Sat Apr 20, 2013 4:49 pm What I've always wondered about is when the ship moves berth while part of the crew is on shore leave. I have visions of them going back to where they left it, then having to wander around the docks looking for it. In a port like Glasgow the ship could have been quite some distance away!

Kevin wrote:Sat Apr 20, 2013 5:55 pm Usually there is advance notice of the berthing plan. However, if bad weather comes up a ship may have to move off all of a sudden if the pier is exposed (or if using a launch service and it gets too rough). This happened to me several times in Punta Arenas and you end up scrounging for a hotel room at midnight. Never had a problem in Glasgow. Though I did have an interesting thing happen in a pub just off Queen's Quay - the publican was kind enough to change my shore advance into the local currency as I was on my way into town, but as I was returning to the ship with an armload of 25-year old scotch it occurred to me that he'd done the conversion backward (2 pounds to the dollar). So I stopped back in and fixed it up, so as not to cause a breakdown of the transatlantic 'special relationship' - and was compensated with a free stand from the Guinness tap. Fortunately I could see the ship from there so finding it again was not a problem.

A great jazz musician named Slim Gaillard (aka "McVouty") claimed to have had his own formative experience of shore leave. Although this is disputed, he said he was born in Cuba in 1911 to a Cuban mother and a German father, who was a ship's steward. As Wikipedia describes it,

At the age of twelve, he accompanied his father on a world voyage and was accidentally left behind on the island of Crete. On a television documentary in 1989, he said, "When I was stranded in Crete, I was only twelve years old. I stayed there for four years. I traveled on the boats to Beirut and Syria and I learned to speak the language and the people's way of life." After learning a few words of Greek, he worked on the island "making shoes and hats".  He then joined a ship working the eastern Mediterranean ports, mainly Beirut, where he picked up some knowledge of Arabic.  When he was about 15, he re-crossed the Atlantic, hoping the ship would take him home to Cuba, but it was bound for the U.S. and he ended up in Detroit. He never saw either of his parents again.

I suspect this honed his talent for languages and his instincts for survival.

During the Depression he taught himself to play guitar and piano, playing in cheap night clubs in New York as a "professional amateur." During World War II he piloted B-26 bombers in the Pacific Theater.

After the war he picked up music again, ultimately performing with such luminaries as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton and Dodo Marmosa. He developed his own scat-singing language called "Vout-o-reenee" with which he sang such classics as "The Groove Juice Special (Opera in Vout)," "Serenade to a Poodle," "Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)," and "Cement Mixer (Put-Ti-Put-Ti)."

Such was his talent for dada vocalization that a 1949 performance here in San Francisco earned a mention in Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

“Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing C-Jam blues and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages.”

“Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God! Yes!’ and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.’”

“Finally the set is over…Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody’s head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. ‘Bourbon-orooni—thank-you-ovauti.’”

He wrote jingles for TV commercials, and many of his songs sound like it (do listen if you haven't already!), though they were also successful jazz and blues songs that stand on their own.

He appeared in numerous movies in the 1950s, and In later years he got bit parts on television, including Roots; Mission Impossible; Marcus Welby, M.D.; What's Happening!, and others.

He continued performing into the 1980s and died in 1991 after a bout with cancer.

Obviously he was a very talented guy, but in his repertoire I hear somebody who learned early to please people in order to get along.

Wow! Quite a life, but yes, I wonder if it was a happy life.

Very interesting, thank you!