Sou Wester

Premature voluntary release, (PVR), it was used in most conversations between recruits, I expect it was because the training was hard and the discipline was probably a new concept to many. PVR was like a tainted way of leaving the navy early, set in by the establishment for the few who just couldn't cope with the life style, for some it was like a hidden trap-door that opened when it was known that they were not going to make it.
We lost several Weegies in the first week, and I must admit I was tempted myself, I remember thinking about all my school friends,unemployed and playing football everyday. It was but a passing phase.
Having learnt on paper how a three in one whaler worked we soon were given the chance to put theory into practice, we were let loose in the confines of Plymouth dockyard. With the possibility of rain we had to wear oil-skin coats and a Fisherman's hat, later in
life I found out the hat was called a sou wester.

We boarded our whalers on the opposite side of the Tamar River, and set off using the boats engine, we went in and about several old frigates that were anchored in the middle of the river, they were in "mothballs", after we all had a shot of going ahead and astern, we then had to put up the mast and sail the whaler, all the words that we had read about in the naval manual were being used, and also many more that certainly were not, however they were being used in a nautical fashion.
We were sailing around, the rain had not arrived as had been predicted, the sun was beating down and there we were all trussed up in oil-skins and life jackets like an advert for the RNLI. Tourist boats were passing us with people in tee shirts and shorts. These boats I later found out were romantically called fanny boats, this had absolutely no relationship to the fanny in a previous post. They waved and smiled but it wasn't hard to imagine what they must have been saying under their breath. We were not allowed to wave back, these tourists were now called civilians, normal people but different, the difference I was not going to learn about for many years.We dropped the sail, and the anchor, we then made the boat ready for it's third mode of transport and finally I got to put my rowlock in a gunwale"out oars", We then pulled together or in fact we didn't do anything of the sort but after some encouraging naval slang we did get under way and we eventually made land with the threat of "no evening meal" hanging over us. All that was missing from my first day at sea was grog and a sea shanty.
In the 1890's the Montague Whaler was adopted by the Royal Navy as a general purpose sea boat being named after Admiral Montague who was responsible for its development. Either 25 or 27ft long they were used throughout the fleet for more than 150 years. They were excellent sea boats and as lifeboats have made voyages of thousands of miles. Naturally the Navy raced them with ferocious competition between ships and shore bases for the trophy in the form of a cockerel, so that the winner could have the accolade of being called the "cock o' the fleet". It wasn't until latterly that an engine was introduced. The Montague has not been manufactured since the 1960's but the design has been used and changed in more recently made boats.The navy now use Rubber or Fibre glass boats.