CHAPTER ONE

 

EARLY DAYS

 

Arthur Edward Hanna was born on the 10^th February, 1888, the third child, and second son, of John Charles Hanna, a Colour Sergeant in the Queen’s Regiment, and Elizabeth Hanna (nee Horder). John Charles was acting as Musketry Instructor to the 45^th Battalion, the Somerset Light Infantry at the time and so Arthur was born in Taunton.

 

According to family reminiscences Arthur developed early in his life the independent attitude and happy-go-lucky outlook which distinguished him from the other children. John and Elizabeth Hanna were ambitious for their offspring and planned that Frances, Frank, Walter and Hugh should win scholarships to grammar schools, that the three boys should then enter the Civil Service and that Frances should become a teacher (a profession for which she was singularly unfitted). No plans were made, it seems for the future of Arthur, the free spirit, who was not lacking in intelligence but, perhaps, in application and motivation.

 

Although the births of the four boys were equally spaced at about three year intervals, the strongest relationship developed between the two oldest, Frank and Art (as he came to be called.) “Closer than David and Jonathan were we” Frank wrote, and his reminiscences of childhood are full of stories of the exploits of himself and his young brother. According to my father, Walter, Art was always in trouble at home and one particular story illustrating this was a favourite. Apparently, on this occasion, as a punishment for some mischievous prank, Arthur was given two apples and a piece of stale bread for his supper while the plates of the other children around the table were fully laden. Called upon to say grace (this was a religious family) Art solemnly intoned:

 

“We thank thee, Lord, for this our food,

Two small apples and a piece of wood.

May manna to our souls be given,

I expect I’ll meet this wood in heaven.”

 

When John Charles died in 1900, Frank rejected the future planned for him in the Civil Service and joined the Navy as a Boy Seaman. Why he made this drastic decision is not clear although he may have wished to get away from his authoritarian mother. Arthur was anxious to earn money quickly and, on leaving school, found himself a job for a while with “The Indian Bookstore”. However, on reaching the requisite age of fifteen and a half Art decided to follow Frank’s lead and enlisted in the Royal Navy, despite the comments of his elder brother that it was “a dog’s life.”

 

On 8 November 1904, Arthur joined the Training Ship Impregnable, moored off Mount Wise, Devonport, as a Boy Seaman, 2^nd Class. Impregnable, which was indistinguishable from Nelson’s “wooden walls” except that it had a tiny engine, was built at Pembroke Dock and launched in 1860 as a screw first rate of 110 guns and 4,245 displacement. She had seen little service but had suffered two changes of name before she assumed her training role in 1863.

 

In was the introduction of Continuous Service in place of Impressment in 1852 which led to the introduction of the stationary training ship for the Admiralty could now start to create a permanent peace time navy manned by ratings undertaking to serve for a specific number of years. The first training ship for boys was commissioned at Portsmouth in 1854 and by the time that Arthur joined the Navy fifty years later there were six of these vessels – Boscawen at Portland, Black Prince at Queenstown, Caledonia at Queensferry, Ganges at Harwich and Impregnable and Lion at Devonport – training some 2,000 to 2,500 boys to take their place in the Fleet which was manned by 131,100 officers and men in 1904.

 

By the time that Arthur joined Impregnable, the old wooden stationary training ships were reaching the end of their usefulness. Their raison d’etre had been the facility they provided for sail drill and they were ill fitted to train boys in the weapon technology and methods of ship propulsion used in the modern navy. Moreover, these ships were a health risk for they were damp, could not be heated in winter and were dependent upon candles for lighting. The Secretary of the Admirality speaking in Parliament in 1903 said that the training ships were rotten and insanitary and that many cases of illness and death caused by them had been reported to him. Consequently in that year the Navy Estimates included a sum of £20,000 “for the accommodation on shore for boys’ training establishments at Harwich” and in November 1905, while Art was still training aboard Impregnable, the first boys were placed under instruction ashore at Shotley.

 

Arthur’s training in1904 was as tough as Frank’s had been in 1901, but there were significant differences. Frank had been trained exclusively in the old “mast and yards” tradition – daily sail drill had been the most important mode of instruction and his boys’ service had been concluded with a six week period in the sailing brig Seaflower. But in 1902 the reforming Admiral Sir John Fisher was appointed 2^nd Sea Lord (in charge of personnel) and very soon he was questioning why a boy destined to serve in steam ships should be trained in the ways of sail. After a stern fight with the traditionalists a fresh set of Training Regulations were promulgated in February, 1904, under which sail drill and the sailing brigs were abandoned for ever. Under the new scheme a Boy Seaman, 2^nd Class, would receive seven months instruction in preliminary seamanship and physical education before, on being rated 1^st Class, he underwent five weeks mechanical and three months gunnery training. At the conclusion of these courses a boy would be drafted to a cruiser attached to the training ship or, as the scheme finally developed, forming part of a properly constituted Training Squadron.

 

Until 1903, food aboard the training shop was rough and scarce but in that year a new ration scale was adopted by which undreamed of items such as jam, preserved vegetables, condensed milk and coffee made their appearance and soft bread replaced ship’s biscuit. But it was not until 1905 that General Messing was adopted in training ships. Before that a boy, appointed “cook of the mess’ for the day, prepared the meals which were then taken down to the galley to be cooked or, as the old joke had it “given their time”.

 

Despite the differences in their training schedules both Frank and Arthur were submitted to the same daily routine. The boys rose at 5.30 am and scrubbed decks until breakfast was served at 7 am. This operation was carried out in bare feet, no matter how cold the weather, and in fact boots and socks were only work on Sundays or when ashore. After breakfast instruction began with sail drill in Frank’s case or physical education in Art’s which, there being no gymnasium aboard, consisted on exercises on deck sometimes using bar bells, dumb bells or Indian clubs. Divisions, followed by a short church service were held at 8.45 am after which Art would have received instruction in the mysteries of compass and helm, lead and line, anchor work, and wire splicing, sometimes using the models of battleships, cruisers and destroyers which had replaced the sailing ship models familiar to Frank. The main meal of the day was served at noon and then instruction in seamanship, including boatwork, continued until 4 pm when tea made its appearance. After tea, if the weather allowed, the boys were landed twice a week for organised games but, naturally, the opportunities for this type of recreation were very limited in winter particularly as daylight saving was not introduced until the Great War. If not ashore the boys provided their own forms of recreation until a rudimentary supper was served at 7 pm. “Lights out” was sounded at 8.30 pm.

 

Although Impregnable carried a Head Schoolmaster and the Chaplain doubled as a Naval Instructor, schooling played a minor part on the overall plan for a maximum of two afternoons a week were devoted to English and Arithmetic. A small number of the brighter boys attended Advanced Classes in the “Dog Watches” but these were not popular at the end of an exhausting day.

 

Discipline was very strict in Impregnable, as in the other training ships, and there were not many days when the boys were not paraded on the upper deck before dinner to “Witness Punishment”, this being one of the rare occasions when the lads saw the Captain, T.M. Jerram. Minor misdemeanours (having a chin stay missing on the cap, having a button off the trousers, being slack in falling in) were punished by six or nine strokes of the cane which was whipped at both ends to prevent it splitting. While lashed to a cross of hammocks, the offending boy was beaten on the buttocks which were protected only by thin duck trousers. So common was this form of punishment that the boys treated it as one of the accepted irritations of life and we may be sure that Arthur was whipped as often as any of his shipmates. Informal corporal punishment was administered by the petty officers who each carried a “stonichee”, a short ropes end, with which to flick or slash the slow mover for all movements aboard were carried out “at the rush.”

 

Although sailing training was officially abandoned in 1903, one sop to the traditionalists was offered in the new Training Regulations, for it was laid down that all Boys’ Training Establishments should have “a mast erected…to accustom boys to go aloft”. Thus the old Impregnable retained her masts, in cut down form, and every morning, Art had to climb the ratlines and descend, barefoot, at full speed with the threat of the “stonichee” urging him on.

 

With his seven months seamanship and physical training behind him Art no became a Boy Seaman, Ist Class, with the right to wear a proper sailor’s hat sporting the ribbon marked “HMS Impregnable” instead of the soft serge model with the plain cap tally the “nozzers” (new boys) wore. Also he could don the uniform trousers without the large patch in the seat which indentified the 2^nd Class Boy. If Arthur was like most of the other newly created 1^st Class Boys he donated the extra 1d a day he earned (he was now paid 7d per diem instead of 6d) to Jack Ward, The Lighthouse, Walthamstow, whose agents in Devonport supplied “tiddley suits” at ten shillings a time which had jumpers cut far lower in the chest and bell bottoms cut far wider than the official regulations permitted.

 

Arthur still lived aboard the Impregnable during the next stage of his training, with the most irksome rules slightly eased as befitted his new status, but the instruction in mechanics and gunnery was still given in the two tenders, old hulks, moored close at hand. Like all the other lads, Arthur only had Sunday afternoons to himself for during Thursday’s “make and mend” there was much sewing and stitching to be done as well as the laundering of clothes and hammocks, for which a minute ration of water was allowed, Because living conditions aboard were almost intolerable in the depths of winter, even for hardened boys, one month’s leave was given at Christmas time and a fortnight’s freedom was also allowed in the summer.

 

Before enlisting Arthur had attended Band of Hope meetings at his parents insistence (he was ejected on at least one occasion for guffawing at the wrong time) and it may well have been during his time at Plymouth that he joined the Royal Navy Temperance Society. The first of Miss Agnes Weston’s Sailors Homes had been established, surrounded by licensed premises, immediately outside the dockyard gates in Fore Street, Devonport, and this was an active recruiting centre for the Society and a favoured port of call for the ever hungry Impregnables who relished the free buns and mugs of tea. Miss Weston was one of the formidable body of Victorian, Christian, reforming maiden ladies, but unlike some of her kind, she had a warm and generous personality and a tolerance of the shortcomings of the erring human male. No one who came to “Aggie’s” was compelled to attend the frequent church services, and no sailor, however drunk, was ever turned away from the cosy “pub without drink”. From the outset Aggie had been concerned with the moral health of the Impregnable boys who, once they emerged from the dockyard, were immediately subjected to the awful temptations of Fore Street, and she made every effort to encourage the boys to use her establishment on their Sunday “runs ashore”. Arthur always wore his R.N.T.S. medals – presumably they were awarded for the lenth of time the recipient had been “on the wagon” – and, as Frank wrote, “this required a great deal of pluck”, although one has the suspicion that they sometimes provided the provocation for the fights which Art enjoyed for, according to his brother “he was an excellent boxer and an even better scrapper.”

 

Arthur’s time in Impregnable finally came to an end on 6^th January, 1906, when he, at last, “went to sea” in the St. George, a First Class Protected Cruiser ( the classification indicated that the ship ahd armoured sides), which had been built by Earle of Hull, in 1893. The ship displaced 7,700 tons and was capable of a top speed of 19 knots. The engines were, of course, coal fired which meant that at regular intervals fresh supplies had to be taken in – a difficult and messy operation in which every single member of the crew had to play a part.

 

In 1905, with Art in Impregnable, an integrated squadron of ships had been formed to introduce to a life at sea, and the ways of the Navy afloat, the boys of the stationary training ship, the direct entry boys (who were entered between the ages of 16 and three quarters and 18 years) and the officer cadets of Dartmouth. Thus the St. George and Edgar (training ship boys), Hawke (direct entry boys), Isis and Highflyer (naval cadets) were brought together, designated the 4^th Cruiser Squadron and despatched for duty on the North America and West Indies Station “and for a particular service”, this last archaic phrase indicating that for training functions – the “particular Service” in this instance – as opposed to ordinary operational requirements, the squadron was under the direct control of the Admiralty rather than the local Commander-in-Chief. Lieutenant A.B. Cunningham who, at a later date, was to be Art’s commanding officer in the destroyer Scorpion and who ended his career as Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, was appointed to Hawke in 1905 and enjoyed his training responsibilities immensely. In fact he recommended that every Lieutenant should have a spell in the Training Squadron for “to teach one had to learn”.

 

The permanent, skeleton ship’s company of St.George were assisted in their tasks by the boys, each of whom was allocated to one of four divisions. Each division, commanded by a Lieutenant, consisted of about 70 boys, and one of the Divisional Lieutenants, excused watchkeeping while at sea, was placed in overall charge of training. In St. George, Art was introduced to the fierce competitive system upon which the efficiency of the Navy was supposed to rest. Unquestioning obedience and instant reaction was the aim and so in coaling ship, gunnery, boat sailing and pulling, football, athletics, swimming and in every other possible activity, division was pitted against division, ship against ship and, when opportunity arose, squadron against squadron and Fleet against Fleet. Discipline was strict in the Training Squadron and , to protect their moral wellbeing, the boys were forbidden to mix with the adult members of the ship’s company, or even to speak to them. Arthur had his eighteenth birthday aboard St. George and this was quite a momentous occasion for him for he was automatically rated Ordinary Seaman and he had to confirm formally in writing the promise he had made on entering the Navy as boy seaman that he would serve for 12 years from that date. On 10^th  February, 1906, Arthur’s pay was raised to 1s. 3d. a day and doubtless from that point on the traditional phrase “Roll on my twelve” rose as readily to his lips in difficult times as it did to thousands of other sailors down the years.

 

For much of the time the squadron operated together as a unit but there were also opportunities for individual ships to proceed independently and “show the flag” throughout the area. Like most of his countrymen, Arthur had no experience of foreign lands so he must have relished the blue skies and tropical climate of the region while the delights of the exotic West Indian ports may have reconciled him, in part at least, to the constant drilling, cleaning and painting and the everlasting disciplined activity of the Training Cruiser. But this was only a passing glimpse of foreign lands, for, after four months, St George and Art returned to England, Ordinary Seaman Arthur Hanna being discharged to the “stone frigate” Victory, the official name of the Royal Naval Barracks at Portsmouth which, In September, 1906, were barely three years old.

 

When Continuous Service was adopted in 1852, it was decided that shore accommodation should be provided to house a permanent reserve of men to be drafted to ships as they came into commissions. However, nothing was done to meet this need for 27 years when, in 1879, the first naval barracks were constructed at Devonport. After another hiatus of twenty years the building began in Portsmouth, in 1899, of a large establishment, which when it was completed four years later, covered an area of 69 acres. So it was, in the autumn of 1903, that 4,000 sailors, hitherto accommodated in hulks in the harbour, marched out of the dockyard gates, through cheering crowds, to their new home. At this time Nelson’s old flagship was rotting away in the harbour and, there being no plans for her restoration, it was thought that she could not survive for much longer. To preserve the glorious name in the Naval List, therefore, the new barracks was christened “Victory” at the direct behest of the King. With the completion ot barracks at Chatham, also in 1903, the last link in a chain was forged and a system of manning the fleet was adopted which persisted until World War II. Under this scheme, each man was allocated a “Home Port”, Portsmouth, Chatham or Devonport, and here his service record was kept and it was to the barracks in this town that he returned when not at sea or under training elsewhere. Every seagoing vessel was manned exclusively from one Home Port and soon a fierce loyalty developed so that a “Chats” (Chatham) ship would not give way easily in competition with a “Pompey” (Portsmouth) or “Guz” (Devonport) manned vessel.