Ah ... happy, carefree days

Although this photo is dated 1953, it was actually taken in 1956.

Nigel had drawn my attention to a website for Merchant Navy training, on which was the Dolphin Training Ship at Leith. I had glanced at it but saw that none of the dates for the photographs coincided with my training on the Dolphin, so did not look at them closely.

At Beth and Nick's wedding, if you remember, we took a flat in the old bonded warehouses at Leith, and I told you that it was right next to where the Dolphin use to lie.

Anyway, I looked more closely at two of the photos the other day and suddenly realised that I recognised some of the boys ... and gradually, I found that I could recognise them all and remember their characters. Especially the one at the desk nearest the camera ... me!
I was a very young 16 over 50 years ago!

In another photo on the Dolphin looking up the basin to a little bridge, is Nigel (in 1953/54). he is at the back to the immediate left (as we look) of the flagpole. I think I was better looking than him at 16!

Looking at these two photos brought back a little story to mind. Every morning we used to race two lumbering old lifeboats (3 oars a side and a coxswain at the helm) to the end of the dock and back ... through that little opening under the bridge where there was not room for two lifeboats abreast. Oh what fun we all had (when it was our turn to be coxswain) trying to get our nose in that opening first and the fights that erupted when we got jammed side by side in the middle! The man in charge of the Dolphin was Captain Tait (who is the older man standing at the front in Nigel's photo) and sometimes he used to watch us out of a porthole where he thought we could not see him.

You can imagine that when we were rowing we did not always obey whoever was the coxswain. One day, when I was coxswain, the guy at the desk beside me in the photo ... who was much bigger than he looks there ... started playing up. I saw Captain Tait at the porthole out of the corner of my eye and made just enough of a gesture to this guy to let him know that the Captain was watching (without letting the Captain know I saw him). Then I shouted at the guy in my best 'commanding' voice, to sit down and row. With much muttering and threats under his breath he just had to sit down and apparently obey me.

He beat me up later but I got 'good at taking command' on my end of year report ... and it was worth it.

On another occasion I got knocked out by an oar, and on another I fell into the dock from the top of the steps down to the boats ... just missing them as I hit the water!

Ah, happy, carefree days!

By a strange coincidence the guy who is supposed to have taken the photo (with me in it) is a guy called Derek Blair. We recently emailed each other (as I wanted a photo of the Dolphin for the emigrant book ... so many Shetlanders were there before going to sea and moving away from Shetland) and discovered that he had relieved me on a ship in 1958 (I was going in leave and he was joining the ship). We can't remember each other (what does that say!) but we must have met and chatted: he's now in Tasmania.

Just a bit of fun.