Flag away

[Lou Barron]

I like that idea Brenda hope that you and Peter are keeping well .Do you intend going to the Liverpool meet up I am sure you would enjoy meeting some of those people

[j.sabourn]

Re Navy and Merchant signals... Navy Talk.. SN Stop immediately, do not Scuttle, do not lower boats, do not use wireless, or I shall open fire. Was this in our flag hoists. ???? JS

[Braid Anderson]

#5...If I'd hoisted flags unfurled as a cadet, the Mate would have had me scrubbing the wheelhouse floor for a week!

[Ivan Cloherty]

#34 Hope you didn't hoist the Red Duster in a ball.

As for others well if you'd ever hoisted a fleet of flags in a ball and broken them out whilst steaming into a head wind, either you or the halyard would have carried away. Single flag instructions when in convoy were hoisted in a ball because they were 'immediate' signals these were normally proceeded by a 3-5 flag hoist giving the instruction to be carried out on the breaking out of the single flag . Hoisting a fleet of flags gave the other vessels time to look in their convoy instruction books for the correct pages as they saw the flags being hoisted, There's a reason for everything.

As for cleaning the wheelhouse ('floor!!!!') deck for a week that was our first job 'every' morning, even on old trampers the wheelhouse deck was cleaned daily, the rest of the ship may have been crap but the wheelhouse was the tabernacle

[cappy]

#5...If I'd hoisted flags unfurled as a cadet, the Mate would have had me scrubbing the wheelhouse floor for a week!

....did you clean the ceiling as well lol cappy

[robpage]

D--khead ! I cannot remember the proper spelling Cappy , might be Deckhead

[Captain Kong]

On the Good Hope Castle in 1959, all hands decided to call everything as they do shore side.
The Floor, inside and outside the deck became the ground,, the walls instead of bulkhead and the ceiling instead of the deckhead. The messroom was the cafe, and so on. I guess it amused us at the time.
strangely enough, the ceiling on a ship is on the deck at the bottom of the cargo hold.
Cheers
Brian

[Braid Anderson]

#35...Actually Ivan, what you did was make sure the hoist was up tight, then loop the double halyard round the after rail of the forecastle, before tugging on the lower one. Then, as the flags unfurled, you tightened the loose one round the rail and made it fast. You had to be quick, but it worked. As for the wheelhouse 'floor', we cadets always called it that. Maybe because it was a wheel 'house'!! Every other floor was a deck.

[cappy]

#35...Actually Ivan, what you did was make sure the hoist was up tight, then loop the double halyard round the after rail of the forecastle, before tugging on the lower one. Then, as the flags unfurled, you tightened the loose one round the rail and made it fast. You had to be quick, but it worked. As for the wheelhouse 'floor', we cadets always called it that. Maybe because it was a wheel 'house'!! Every other floor was a deck.

........thats an interesting comment braid ......not hard to understand ....but i think you may have a job to convince some old timers on the site ....who were always called apprentices in the earlier days .....but cadets in a later time.....regards cappy

[Braid Anderson]

Hi Cappy, we had both, Deck Apprentices and Navigating Cadets. I was a Navigating Cadet, and was never indentured. That's why I was able to resign in writing.