Brian Wood – Social time on board
Simon: And when you are not doing the work stuff, what was that time like?
Your time off?
Simon: Some sleeping I guess.
Yeah a lot of sleeping if you could ‘cos even when you’re off Watch, there are still jobs to do. Cleaning your own Mess and things like that. Peeling spuds for the Cooks. Every Mess had to prep their own vegetables for the Cooks. There was only 2 Cooks, they couldn’t do it all. There was always something to do. Watch a film if they weren’t in any quiet states, play cards, wander around.
Simon: Was that fun time spending the social time with people?
Yeah, ‘cos I wouldn’t just stick in the Mess. I’d go up to the Sailor’s Mess and play cards up there. They had little competitions and things like that. There was always sort of activities going on you could join in if you wanted to. So, it was long hours. You used to be awake more than you were asleep but when you got the chance to sleep, you slept, or they’d do an exercise. They’d do a Fire Exercise or Flood Exercise …
Simon: What when you’re supposed to be sleeping?
They’d do it in between so every Watch had some sort of exercise, so it wasn’t just your Watch that was being disturbed, so everybody had to keep … you’d get everybody up for Action Stations or whatever, so there was always sometimes it was long hours. When you used to look back, it was sometimes 16, 17-hour days that you were awake, on Watch or doing some task, put it that way. So, when you could sleep, you slept, that’s for sure.