Fighter Aces of the RAF in the Battle of Britain by Philip Kaplan

Author:Philip Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783409020
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2013-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

In addition to the emphasis on discipline, life aboard the Botha in the two-year curriculum stressed mathematics, a subject in which Sailor was admittedly deficient, and science, along with seamanship, gunnery, signalling, and drill. He learned about navigation with logs, chart work, the sextant, Mercator’s and plane sailings, magnetism, meteorology, latitude by meridian altitude, longitude by chronometer, and he gained a lot of experience manning skiffs and cutters that plied between the ship and shore, sailing and rowing. His favourite subject was, of course, gunnery, which included rifle and pistol firing, stripping and mounting a gun, tracing a gun circuit, sight setting, and a working knowledge of explosives. He was required to scrub the decks and wash his own clothes and dishes after meals. Fortunately for cadets who came in later years to the Botha, such traditions as the bullying and harassment had been ended.

In time Sailor passed out of the Botha cadet programme with a clean record and a First Extra certificate in seamanship. Eight months later he took up a position as a cadet aboard the Sandown Castle, of the Union-Castle Line, headed for New York on his first voyage.

His training ship, the Botha, has long since lain in twenty-five fathoms of water nine miles off the Roman Rock Lighthouse, where she sank after receiving twenty-four shells from the Scala battery above Simonstown, probably a fitting end for a vessel remembered by its cadets for so many years of harsh discipline.

Sailor would spend nine years at sea plying the lanes between the old world and the east coast ports of America, especially that of New York City. In 1921 two American women, Katherine Mayo and Moyca Newell, joined forces to reciprocate for the kind hospitality shown American soldiers in Britain during the war years of 1917 – 18. They reasoned: ‘British merchant ships in peacetime spend more time in New York harbour than in any other port in the world, many of them carrying cadet officers in their crews, lonely young men mostly without friends in New York, with little or no knowledge of the city ...’ so the two women decided to create a cozy, home-like club, free of rules and always open to the British cadets aged between sixteen and twenty, to come in, make friends, play cards, meet and dance with young American girls from good homes and find an American ‘mother figure’ to confide in if they wished to do so. They tried to make it the sort of place that the mothers of the young men would be comfortable having their sons visit. One woman who worked in the club remembered Sailor as rather shy, though always popular and having many friends. Sailor spent much of his leave time there at the British Apprentice Club on West 23rd Street near the Chelsea Hotel. One of the hostesses recalled:

He was very blond with a young, almost girlish face and had a shy, diffident manner. When introductions were taking place, he was usually hidden behind a group of other boys and you sometimes overlooked him altogether.

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