an era below decks

 

Despite the ephemeral and disappointing nature of the internet, as it mutates into a marketing monster, there is yet history to be found. The past is still present if you know where to look. In Navy archives, a man was described in 1929 as 5’8” tall, with dark hair, a dark complexion and bearing scars below his right eye. Scars not of Heidelberg, but from Hebburn-on-Tyne where he had been born in 1889 to a ship building family. He later lived in Devonport where he married in 1915, moved back to Hebburn, Devonport again and then to Portsmouth. Always an Engine Room Artificer (ERA), his CV could also have included the information below, extrapolating from available, nay legible, records.

By 1929 he was serving on HMS Egmont 2 (Vendetta), in Malta. It was known as a “stone frigate”: a shore base used for such things as training, research or barracks, legal sleight of hand to enable Naval jurisdiction on Terra Firma. The same year he was on another: Victory 2 (no relation to the original HMS Victory). He also served aboard cruiser HMS Curlew. In 1930 he was aboard HMS Concord, the ship by then having been assigned to the Portsmouth Signals School. It had previously taken pianist Paderewski to Gdansk to form the new Poland (1919).  

In 1932 he rejoined Victory 2, and then HMS Osprey, a further stone frigate on Portland. In 1936: he served on one more: the long-standing submarine school of HMS Dolphin. The same year he was posted to HMS Drake 2, a “virtual” ship, a holding position for those in transit. On HMS Malaya, he would have been below the decks which transported the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI into exile during the “Arab Revolt” in Palestine. 

In 1937 it seems he was stationed on the stone frigate of HMS St Angelo, Malta again.The following year it was minesweeper HMS Saltash and Victory 2 again.  In 1939 he was somewhere off Scapa Flow maintaining the engines of HMS Dunedin which was hunting the Scharnhorst. He was pensioned that year. It seems he re-enlisted to join another stone frigate, HMS Eaglet, a command centre in Liverpool. But in 1942 he was invalided out from RN Hospital Haslar in Gosport. Details are unclear.

I’ve known “Amis Reunis”, the “stone boat” at Portmeirion for many years, but have only now learned the meaning of “stone frigates”.  This despite my childhood being a bit more than a stone’s throw from the naval base at Portsmouth. Through my father’s civilian work, I was familiar with some of those above, but without knowing the expression. I also knew nearby  HMS Excellent, HMS Daedalus and HMS Vernon. There are more around the world, HMS Ascension, now Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, just one example.

But who was the ERA? Roderick Grant Young: my maternal grandfather or “Poppy” as we called him. His wife, “Nanny” as we called her, outlived him, so I remember her more clearly. He died in 1961 of pulmonary fibrosis, but not before contributing to some memories I still have, of the family sitting with him in a pub garden when I was maybe four. I remember him enjoying a pint of his habitual “black stuff” while smoking a pipe I think I can still smell. My mother’s recollections in her diaries are similarly patchy, as he had been mostly posted abroad throughout her childhood, including the “Far East”. His apparent return from Yokohama in 1921 may explain the fragile Japanese tea-set I still have, slowly crumbling, like the memories.  Nevertheless this contrasts with his later career mostly spent ashore.  

It's been useful to get to know him a little better, and to record something, even if incomplete, before it is lost in the clouds.

LINKS

Engine room artificer - Wikipedia
Amis Reunis | Portmeirion Village | North Wales
Dueling scar - Wikipedia
Stone frigate - Wikipedia
What time do you call this?
1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine - Wikipedia