The Story of the "Britannia" / The training ship for naval cadets. With some account of previous methods of naval education, and of the new scheme of 1903.

by Edward Phillips Statham

One of the most important events was the establishment of the Britannia Magazine, in February, 1884, and its raison d’être, together with the hopes and fears of the editor, are clearly set forth in the opening article as follows:—

We are going to have a magazine. Certainly! Every flourishing body has its organ. We have opinions far too good to be limited to sanctuary chairs, far too noble to be confined to the narrow limits of the messroom. Why should we not bring them out to the world?

But first, who will read our magazine? The fellows! Yes, of course, we expect every cadet to have a copy, even if it means one visit less to a certain pink house. The officers? Yes, perhaps, if we do not write about them. Some of the fellows at sea? Yes, we hope so, if there is plenty about the games, boats, and beagles. Parents, brothers and sisters? Yes, we should not wonder; but perhaps for that we ought to put in every fellow’s name as very much distinguished for something, as the family will not care for the number in which “Bobbie’s” name does not appear.

And who are to be our writers? Why, ourselves, of course. We want to write, and hope we shall not be considered too ambitious. But if some of our officers will help us with one of the yarns they occasionally spin, we shall be only too glad to print it. It will give an air of respectability to our efforts.

At the same time, we would ask the kind indulgence of our readers, our elder readers, and our officers. Boys will be boys, and we hope our seniors will remember that we are only boys, and that our magazine is written for boys. Though they may very likely think most of it weak, still we ask them not to be too hard upon us, nor to run our paper down too mercilessly:

“Be to our faults a little blind.”

True, there are plenty of other papers, but we want one for ourselves. And if our correspondents were not using their pens for us, they would probably be cowering over a lantern reading a novel; or their spirits, instead of leaking through their pens, might be after some perilous skylarking. If they find our magazine too feeble altogether for their taste, we would ask them to help us with an occasional article, and so to raise our standard of literature, and help us to improve our writing.

A BEAGLE MEET.
Photo: Smale & Son, Dartmouth.

Well, then, what will our paper be filled with? There will be news, of course—plenty of it, and of the best kind. No murders and horrors—that is not news—but reports of games, racket matches, runs with the beagles, sports of all kinds; authentic reports, where the right fellows win, not the people that the reporters choose to make win the day after. What we want to know and remember is which watch is the strongest, who plays the best hand at rackets, makes the biggest score at cricket, and is in at the kill.

There is not a school in England that has such a variety of sports. Why, we want a whole Bell’s Life to ourselves. We thank the newspapers very much for occasionally noticing our athletics and our regattas. We want to see them in full. The news may be of merely personal interest, but that is just what we want. This is our magazine!

But, of course, we must have some politics. Boys are hot politicians. We don’t care about long debates in Parliament, but we can tell you who is right and who is wrong. We know that well enough. Our line of politics may be described as strongly loyal; it is our duty, of course, to support the Government of the time, because they support us. But—well, murder will out—boys always were Conservatives. They can’t help it. They are made so. We know that you, at any rate, Mr. Gladstone, will pardon us graciously when we say, as we must, that the sooner the great Conservative reaction takes place the better we shall be pleased.

THE KENNEL.
Photo: W. M. Crockett, Plymouth.

In such fashion is the Britannia Magazine introduced to its public. The editorial arrangements are probably unique, the commander, and subsequently one of the lieutenants, being editor ex officio. Sometimes an individual of a literary turn of mind would join the ship, and take it on for the pure joy of scribbling; but this only made the difficulty of obtaining volunteers more apparent when he left. It was, in fact, the old story: everybody likes to read a light and amusing periodical, but few care about assisting to run it, unless, of course, there are emoluments attached to the office; so the purely honorary editor had the onus of selecting the most suitable compositions presented for each number; and sometimes, like Oliver Twist, he had to ask for more; while of him was expected an able and well-written summary of news, etc., every time.

On some occasions he was compelled to have recourse to the time-honoured subterfuge of devoting considerable space to a wail over the dearth of material; a process which does not bear repeating too frequently. Some people always commence their letters in this fashion, and get comfortably over the first page before they start, as it were.

One always looks with some suspicion—such is the frailty of editorial and other samples of human nature!—on an item headed “a positive fact”; or, still worse, with an asterisk, and “fact” tersely inserted as a footnote.

The following appears with these credentials in the Britannia Magazine:—

Two countrymen were heard discussing a cadet who was swaggering in his brand-new uniform: “What is he, Bill?” “Don’t you know? ’E’s the new telegraph boy!” (Exit cadet.)