Christmas away from home in the Royal Navy is part of the job and if you spend enough time at sea, it’s something you end up doing many times. It invokes a mix of feelings. On the one hand, you are away from your family and loved ones. On the other, you’re with your other, slightly strange, sailor family. You become adept at making the most of it.
Traditions have emerged over time. Secret Santa is well known in the civilian world but the Royal Navy version has a special edge to it. I can only think of a couple of examples that are publishable. A Minewarfare rating who’d lost his thumb in an accident at sea receiving a pair of gloves with a thumb snipped off is one. The second in command receiving a baseball cap marked ‘Captain’ was a slightly more nuanced other. Thinking back, most would see you fired the next day if you tried them in a civilian organisation.
Another tradition is that the officers prepare and serve Christmas lunch for the ship’s company. The general idea is to give the chefs a break from their brutal early-to-late duty cycle. The reality is that none of the officers really know how to use the galley without injuring themselves – it’s one of the most dangerous places in the ship – or how to mass-cater without poisoning everyone, and the chefs still have to do breakfast and supper and that overlaps, and the officers make a mess and break things. The chefs generally minimise these problems by doing a lot of pre-prep, so the food in reality is partly officer-prepared at best. It’s hard to say if it even really helps at all, but the thought is there.
Much depends on where you are in the world. The Christmas I spent alongside in Rio de Janeiro was somewhat different to the one I spent in Belfast. I only had one actually at sea – most of the time, in most of the Navy, you can persuade your operational commander to let you into harbour for a day or so.
This year the Gulf based ships, one frigate and two minehunters, will be away from home, but they are nicely accommodated there in Bahrain and will find making the best of it comparatively easy. HMS Protector, our sole and hard-worked icebreaker, has just sailed through Patagonia – an unforgiving environment. I spent Christmas down there alongside in Punta Arenas as captain of her predecessor and we did well enough. The Chileans were superbly welcoming and we found a log cabin for our lunch that provided some refuge from the incessant gales. Like embassy staff, headquarters teams overseas, emergency services or thousands of others who find themselves at work on Christmas Day, we could at least phone home.
Christmas away from home in the Royal Navy is part of the job and if you spend enough time at sea, it’s something you end up doing many times. It invokes a mix of feelings. On the one hand, you are away from your family and loved ones. On the other, you’re with your other, slightly strange, sailor family. You become adept at making the most of it.
Traditions have emerged over time. Secret Santa is well known in the civilian world but the Royal Navy version has a special edge to it. I can only think of a couple of examples that are publishable. A Minewarfare rating who’d lost his thumb in an accident at sea receiving a pair of gloves with a thumb snipped off is one. The second in command receiving a baseball cap marked ‘Captain’ was a slightly more nuanced other. Thinking back, most would see you fired the next day if you tried them in a civilian organisation.
Another tradition is that the officers prepare and serve Christmas lunch for the ship’s company. The general idea is to give the chefs a break from their brutal early-to-late duty cycle. The reality is that none of the officers really know how to use the galley without injuring themselves – it’s one of the most dangerous places in the ship – or how to mass-cater without poisoning everyone, and the chefs still have to do breakfast and supper and that overlaps, and the officers make a mess and break things. The chefs generally minimise these problems by doing a lot of pre-prep, so the food in reality is partly officer-prepared at best. It’s hard to say if it even really helps at all, but the thought is there.
Much depends on where you are in the world. The Christmas I spent alongside in Rio de Janeiro was somewhat different to the one I spent in Belfast. I only had one actually at sea – most of the time, in most of the Navy, you can persuade your operational commander to let you into harbour for a day or so.
This year the Gulf based ships, one frigate and two minehunters, will be away from home, but they are nicely accommodated there in Bahrain and will find making the best of it comparatively easy. HMS Protector, our sole and hard-worked icebreaker, has just sailed through Patagonia – an unforgiving environment. I spent Christmas down there alongside in Punta Arenas as captain of her predecessor and we did well enough. The Chileans were superbly welcoming and we found a log cabin for our lunch that provided some refuge from the incessant gales. Like embassy staff, headquarters teams overseas, emergency services or thousands of others who find themselves at work on Christmas Day, we could at least phone home.