Jellicoe was fortunate, therefore, in receiving his training on the seasoned oak timbers of a gallant ship in the midst of the waters, instead of in the modern nicely-arranged and hygienic edifice on shore, which was built a few years ago, and which took the place of the ancient Man-o’-War.
Always ready for work or play, he excelled at both, and was popular with everyone. From the very outset of his career he was “marked” as a boy who would achieve something great in the future.
[CHAPTER III]
CADET—MIDSHIPMAN—LIEUTENANT
Jellicoe’s life on H.M.S. Britannia was an interesting and varied one. Probably he looks back on the years spent in what has been aptly called “The Cradle of our Sea Kings” as the best years of his life. He joined at a very interesting period, too, just when the Franco-Prussian War was raging most fiercely.
For a healthy lad life on the Britannia must have been an ideal existence. Of course there were hardships, doubtless greater ones forty years ago than there are now. Hardships find out the weak spots in humanity—mental as well as physical. Hardships make men.
Discipline is strict in the Navy, stricter than in the sister Service, but it is of a different kind. Sailors see life from a quite different standpoint from that from which soldiers look at it. In the old days there was a great deal of brutality in the Navy, but with it, at the same time, a great comradeship—a deep understanding of human nature. To-day brutality has practically disappeared, but the deep understanding of human nature remains, and with it brotherly love.
A sailor’s ship becomes his home, and happy as was young Jellicoe in his father’s house in Southampton, his heart was soon centred in the Britannia and the ever-varying round of work and play which used to keep the cadets busy from morning to night.
Captain W. Graham was in command of the Britannia during the greater part of the period Jellicoe served his apprenticeship to the sea—from 1874 to 1877.