Up Spirits

Until that fateful day in 1970 when the Royal Navy abolished the rum ration, the one thing that every Royal Navy sailor could rely on was that ‘Up Spirits’ would be piped at approximately 11:45 each day . ‘Tot-time’ was the cue for plenty of banter and lamp-swinging, but also for baffling negotiations as to who might have sippers, wets, gulpers, halfers, sandy bottoms, or their share of ‘Queen’s’. With the same humour, affection and story-telling ability that characterised his earlier naval memoirs, including HMS Ganges Days and HMS Bermuda Days, Peter Broadbent tells the tale of his nine months as an Able Seaman on board HMS Gurkha, touring the Persian Gulf with a few detours to the Seychelles, Kenya and the Mozambique channel. Along the way he coxswains Royal Marines on a RIB to track down smugglers, pits his wits against a line-up of ultra-intelligent dolphins, persuades dozens of girls from a jam factory in Leeds to write to ‘lonely sailors’, is one of the transfer team that initiated the ‘Beira Bucket’ when used to trade its contents for desperately needed toilet paper from HMS Eskimo, and makes it to Gibraltar in time to celebrate England winning the 1966 World Cup.
Ayo Gurkhali!

Keywords: Royal Navy, Able Seamen, sailors, rum, tot, HMS Gurkha, HMS Dryad, Mombasa, Beira, Beira Bucket, Aden, Oman, Beirut, Suez Canal, naval memoir