Excerpt
GOOD-BYE TO THE AUXILIARY PATROL. I.—THE SHIP.
When it was announced that we were to be paid off and that the gulls and porpoises that help to make the Dogger Bank the really jolly place it is would know us no more, there was, I admit, a certain amount of subdued jubilation on board. It is true that the Mate and the Second Engineer fox-trotted twice round the deck and into the galley, where they upset a ship's tin of gravy; and the story that the Trimmer, his complexion liberally enriched with oil and coaldust, embraced the Lieutenant and excitedly hailed the Skipper by his privy pseudonym of "Plum-face," cannot be lightly discredited; but at the same time I think each one of us felt a certain twinge of regret. Life in the future apart from our trawler seemed impossible, almost absurd. Pacificists must have known a similar feeling on Armistice day.
Although to the outsider one trawler may look very like another, to us who know them personally they differ in character and have their little idiosyncrasies no less than other people. Some are quite surly and obstinate, others good-humoured and light-hearted; where one exhibits all the stately dignity of a College head-porter another may be as skittish and full of fun as a magistrate on the Bench. There was one trawler at our base so vain that they could never get her to enter the lockpits until her decks had been scrubbed and a string of bunting hoisted at the foremast. It is surprising.
Taking her all in all our trawler was a good sort, one of the best. When steaming head to wind in a heavy sea she certainly shipped an amazing quantity of water, and even in a comparative calm she would occasionally fling an odd bucketful or so of North Sea down the neck or into the sea-boots of the unwary; but it was only her sense of fun. She took particular delight in playing it on a new member of the crew; it made him feel at home.
She was not what you would call a really clean ship—as the Skipper said, if you washed your hands one day they were just as bad again the next—but anyone who makes a fuss over a trifle like that is no true-born sailorman. We all loved her and were proud of her speed, for she could make nine knots at a push. Even the Second Engineer, who had been a fireman in the Wilson line, was moved to admit in a moment of admiration that she didn't do so badly for a floating pig-trough, which was no meagre praise from a man with such a past.
She was a touchy ship, quick to resent and avenge a slight on her good name. We had a strange Lieutenant one trip who came from a depot ship at Southampton and wore a monocle. He was rather sore at having to exchange a responsible harbour billet for the command of a mere sea-going trawler, and expressed the opinion that there might be more disgustingly dirty ships afloat than ours, but if so they were not allowed out during official daylight; We felt her quiver from stem to stern with rage. She took her revenge that evening as the Lieutenant was coming aft for tea. It was a floppy sea and he unwisely ventured along the windward side of the casing, and she seized her opportunity....