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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

HMS Impregnable circa 1913.


Peter J

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When ratings joined HMS Impregnable Training Establishment, Devonport at the begining of the C20th, (circa 1913), would they have been berthed aboard HMS Impregnable or on another vessel or perhaps put up somewhere ashore?

Also, was HMS Impregnable the only ship where they would have received training or would there have been other craft there at that time, upon which they would have been coached in other fields?

If so, would anybody know which ships might have been used there at that time?

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Hello Peter - and welcome to the Forum.

Can't answer your questions with any authority, so won't try, but there's a few on the Forum who can :)

But I've found this site useful and informative. Particularly interesting is the 1896 Windsor Magazine article "How Blue-Jackets are Trained". A bit before the time you're interested in but I reckon a lot of what it describes was still in place.

Regards

Jim

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Hello Peter - and welcome to the Forum.

Can't answer your questions with any authority, so won't try, but there's a few on the Forum who can  :)

But I've found this site useful and informative.  Particularly interesting is the 1896 Windsor Magazine article "How Blue-Jackets are Trained".  A bit before the time you're interested in but I reckon a lot of what it describes was still in place.

Regards

Jim

Jim,

Thanks for that. I read the article and found it to be really informative. I've also read a piece by a Harry Cutler, who was at HMS Impregnable in 1921, so somewhere between the two articles lies roughly what I'm looking for. I was just hoping one of you cats could nail the finer details for me.

Thanks again.

Regards, PJ.

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PJ

Glad you found it useful. Hopefully some of the forum's RN experts will pick up on this thread and be able to give you more details.

Good luck,

Jim

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Peter

I work away form home, and therefore my books, however I may be able to help when I get home at the week-end as I have a book written by a sailor who served on HMS Tiger. There is a chapter relating to his training on entry to the navy pre-1914 which may provided the added detail you need. I will check and post asap.

Dave

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Probably he would have been quartered on Impregnable but would have gone on courses ashore.

I don't have books on pre-1914 training now, but it went something like this:

A man who was recruited did basic training of the traditional sort and was then sent to a ship with some notionof whatever speciality he was going in for.

He would live on the ship and would be a run around for the rest of his mess i.e. would have to take the food to be cooked (messes at that time didn't cook their own food in their own oven, but were given their own ingredients that were prepared by the mess cook and his forced assistant - and the cook could be forced as well! and it then went to a central oven to be cooked. Runabout then had to collect the food and bring it to the mess to be eaten. he then did whatever cleaning up had to be done. Once he was rated ordinary seaman - most of these were teenagers - a dish cloth was hung up for him and the next recruit took over).

In between times he would be training on the ship and would be going on courses ashore as well. On completion of his training he would probably be rated AB and would be eligible for promotion.

He could then be posted either to another ship or to a shore establishment or to the manning port as what is now known as 'spare' crew. And there he did more training (especially in how to skive professionally) and awaited a posting to another ship.

It was a pretty rough and ready system and still had a big hangover from sailing days when there was literally only one way to learn and that was to do it again and again. There was little need on a sailing ship for classroom theory.

The very young on the ships. I think the under 16s lived in the messes (there was nowhere else to live) but were fed separately from the MEN with special rations. Most of them prayed for the day that they would mess with everyone else.

Hope this helps. As I said it may be wrong in a few details, but overall it is what happened (and this right into the 1930s).

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