Stand By! Naval Sketches and Stories

E-text prepared by Al Haines
Transcriber's note:
Taffrail is the pseudonym of Henry Taprell Dorling.
The book from which this etext was prepared was missing the leaf containing pages 41 and 42.
Naval Sketches and Stories
Author of Carry On! Pincher Martin O.D., Etc.
London C. Arthur Pearson, Limited Henrietta Street, W.C. 1916
It seems almost unnecessary to remark that the characters and ships figuring in the sketches throughout this book are entirely fictitious.
Bunting, The Acting Sub, Our Happy Home, The Lost Sheep, The 'Muckle Flugga' Hussars, and The Mother Ship appeared in the Daily Mail , and The 'Pirates' in the Weekly Despatch . They are here reprinted, with minor alterations, by kind permission of the Editors.
1916.
He was a very junior young officer indeed when the powers that be first gladdened his heart and ruined his clothes by sending him to a destroyer. A mere sub-lieutenant with (acting) after his name, which, as any proper sub will tell you, is a sign of extreme juniority. Moreover, the single gold stripe on his monkey jacket was still suspiciously new and terribly untarnished.
Not so very long before he had been a snotty (midshipman) in a battleship, a mere dog's body, who had to obey the orders of almost every officer in the ship except those few who happened to be junior to him. It is true that he exercised his authority and a severe discipline on those midshipmen who had the misfortune to be a year or so younger than himself, and that he expressed a lordly contempt for the assistant clerk. But he lived in the gun-room, slept in a hammock, kept all his worldly possessions in a sea-chest, and bathed and dressed in the company of fifteen other boisterous young gentlemen.