By way of conclusion here is a little naval comedy. A minor unit of
His Majesty's Navy was undergoing the process known as "fitting
out." Her commander, one of the many good sportsmen who have placed
their personal services and such seamanship as they have acquired as
amateur yachtsmen and sailors at the disposal of the Admiralty, arrived
one morning to find a score or two of dockyard workmen on board, all
busy (in theory) with the multifarious tasks awaiting completion. In
practice, something like half the number were, if not idle, at least
less occupied than the immediate requirements of the vessel seemed to
warrant.
The commander, being in private life a business man of considerable
energy, with a habit of getting things done, regarded the scene with
considerable disfavour, and set himself at once to remedy the state
of affairs. But the dockyard workman is an individual with very
definite ideas of his own as to how a job should be done, and a fixed
determination to do it that way unless thwarted by an authority which
he dare not evade.
Finding orders, though respectfully received, were inadequate to the
occasion, the commander tried reason and persuasion. But though the
latter was carried to the point of cajolery the result was the same.
Baffled in the exercise of his own authority and a trifle nettled in
consequence, the energetic lieutenant determined upon a desperate
expedient. In his best sarcastic vein he wrote out a signal and
requested its transmission to the flag-captain. The officer in whose
discretion it lay to forward or suppress the message being likewise an
amateur, not yet too deeply imbued with a respect for conventions, the
signal was duly made. It was to the following effect:--
"SUBMITTED: That as there are at present forty workmen on No. 001, of
which number half are seated permanently on the ship's rail, a further
working party be at once sent down to strengthen the stanchions, which
will otherwise collapse under the strain."
Within half an hour a party of workmen reported themselves at No. 001
and gravely proceeded to strengthen the stanchions! Protests were
unavailing: the men had their orders, and with bolts, rivets, rods, and
who shall say what other contraptions, they proceeded to carry them out
with a thoroughness almost menacing.
The commanding officer of No. 001 delights to tell this story to his
friends as a shining example of the crass ineptitude of which the
official mind, even in the Navy, is sometimes capable. It may be so;
but his friends, observing those admirably buttressed stanchions, and
noting the considerable inconvenience to which their immovable presence
permanently condemns the maker of that rash signal, sometimes wonder
whether the laugh is altogether on the latter's side.
Lieutenant X---- looks forward to some future day when he may meet
the flag-captain in person, and there is no doubt he already has a
very good notion of what he then intends to say. But suppose he should
be greeted, before ever he can introduce the topic himself, with the
genial inquiry, "And how are your stanchions lasting?"
They have a way of their own in the Navy.