Author's Preface
In March of 2000 I wrote my first story for Nifty. It was, in my opinion, amateurish and lacked detail and colour. Over the course of the years this story has always bothered me, and I wanted to return to it and see if I could do better. What will follow is the result.
To readers of the "Aurora" Series, this rewrite will be familiar, and evoke memories of the later series. In many ways it is a "prequel" to the Aurora Series. Some of the characters will be familiar, and lend depth to the same characters as described in "Aurora". Some of the characters will be strangers, and remain so.
I hope that the following story will please you all. If it doesn't, I am sure I will hear about it! Comments may be addressed to me at my home address: paradegi@rogers.com
The opening chapter does not contain any sexual references or descriptions, but I must observe the usual so here goes:
"A Sailor's Tale" is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2006 by John Ellison
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
WARNING: This story contains graphic depictions of sex between consenting adult males and/or teenage males. Please do not continue reading if you are offended by this genre of erotic literature, if you are underage or if this type of story is illegal where you live.
A Sailor's Tale
By John Ellison
Chapter One
More years ago than I care to admit, I was a sailor in the Canadian Navy, serving in what was laughingly called a ship. She was broad, fat, and loose in the stays as the old song went, but beloved by the Navy as a training platform for reserves.
The ship had been built originally as an auxiliary, a "gate vessel" to open and close the gates in the anti-submarine nets that would protect Canada's harbours in Halifax, Saint John, Saint John's, Vancouver and Esquimalt. She was one of a class of six steel-hulled, sturdy, multi-purpose vessels that seemed to all who sailed in them to be damned near indestructible, despite the ineptness and inexperience of the crews that manned them.
Every one of the Gate Vessels - there were six of them, each named after one of the gates that pierced the walls of the ancient city of Quebec - was as ugly as sin, but they were all stern, sturdy iron-hulled boats that handled well in any sea. They were never used for their original purpose, anti-submarine nets having no place in what was called the Cold War. The boats were instead used exclusively as training platforms for Naval Reservists. They survived fog in the Great Lakes, a gale or six in the Bay of Fundy, and more collisions than their designers ever imagined.
Over the course of their careers of thirty or more years the boats had, collectively, rammed, or had rammed into, each other, the Ammunition Jetty in Halifax, the Ballantyne Pier in Vancouver and, on one memorable voyage on Lake Ontario, HMCS Port St Louis was attempting to come alongside the government jetty in Port Colborne in a dense fog. She found, instead, the public jetty, hitting it bow on at a rate of knots. Aside from a few popped rivets and a large, bow-like dent in the prow, the ship sailed on proudly, and after only a day in the Port Colborne shipyard chugged off to serve another 20 years or so. They were the same, only different. Built to a design of a Nova Scotia deep-sea trawler, they were ugly, utilitarian vessels with bits added, or removed, whenever the training regimes changed. Three had their anchor and cable gear on the tall focsle; three had the gear under the focsle. They all had the same box-like deckhouses and minimal crew accommodation. On a good day the single screw could make 11 knots.
They were sturdy little ships that could, and did, sail in any weather. Their engines were as indestructible as their hulls - they never broke down, and chugged along with aplomb, taking the worst that their inexperienced crews threw at them. Dented, ill painted, they presented all the grace and presence of a dray horse in a world of thoroughbreds. The sailors who sailed in the sleek 280-class destroyers and the "Steamers" (as the older destroyers and destroyer escorts were called) sneeringly referred to the Gate Boats as "Pig Boats". Later, in a fit of boredom and having run out of new skin books to read (or being unable to turn the pages in the ones he had) an enterprising stoker designed a crest for the little ships: a gold pig on a blue background, surrounded by the motto: "Pride, Integrity, Guts". The motto summed up the inverse pride of the Reservists who sailed in them.
On the 4th of May 1910, the Naval Service Bill received Royal assent and the "The Naval Service of Canada" was born. As the bill establishing what was soon to become The Royal Canadian Navy proclaimed that the Command in Chief was vested in the King (at the time, Edward VII, who was dying) it was not until the 30th of January 1911 that King George V gave permission for the Canadian Naval Service to change its name to "Royal Canadian Navy". This meant that all ships in service would now be "His Majesty's Canadian Ship" - HMCS - and this applied to all vessels and shore based establishments.
Of course being sailors, the matelots also added their own take and when the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) was established in 1923, the Companies and Half Companies of RCNVR were called "Saturday Night Sailors", although none to my knowledge paraded on the weekend!
After the war the shore establishments were rechristened - HMCS York, HMCS Donnacona, HMCS Star and so on. They were given the Battle Honours of the ships they were named for and housed in a variety of buildings, some purpose built, some in any available armoury space. The Reserve Division in Winnipeg, HMCS Chippewa, was housed for years in the old Winnipeg Winter Club, until it burned down in the 1990s and was replaced by a particularly ugly "Reserve Pattern" building. The Division boasted a swimming pool and gained a modicum of notoriety in that it is the only Naval Reserve unit remembered in song, at least its pool. "The pool at Chippewa" will be remembered whenever the old RCNVR march, "Wavy Navy" is sung.
It therefore stands to reason that these "barracks", built of brick and stone, were immediately dubbed HMCS Neversail or, in the case of the barracks that housed the Naval Cadets attending the Royal Military College, "The Stone Frigate".
As for the Gate Boats, given their usual scruffy appearance, and the popular misconception that they "handled like pigs in any kind of a sea", which they didn't - they handled quite well, thank you, only slowly - it therefore seems logical that they were dubbed "Pig Boats".
After 1969, when Unification laid a heavy unwanted hand on the Navy, the vessels and Reserve Units were allowed to keep their HMCS status. Everything else became "CFB", Canadian Forces Base.
My ship, HMCS Porte du Roi, was part of a three ship "squadron", the mainstay of the Small Boat Unit (Pacific), and was tied alongside the jetty in the dockyard of HMCS Naden, the sprawling, British built dockyard that served as home to the ships of Maritime Command (Pacific).
With the Unification of the Canadian Military, HMCS Naden had been renamed CFB Esquimalt, although the Victoria Naval Division kept its designation. The older hands, with typical aplomb and disdain for anything that came out of Ottawa, ignored the CFB crap and continued to call the base Naden.
Naden was a typical naval dockyard with neat streets and two parade squares. Except for Nelles Block, which was institutional modern, and the Barracks, the other accommodation block, which was built in the Edwardian style, the buildings were mostly sturdy, brick, Victorian structures. These included the Headquarters Building (the Head Shed), the Royal Canadian Naval Hospital (RCNH), machine shops, drill sheds and stores buildings. As required by The Articles of War, provisions had been made for the spiritual welfare of the sailors. Pride of place had gone to the Established (Anglican) Church in St. Peter's (called the "Blue Jackets" Church). For the Roman Catholics, whose practice of their religion had been guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, there was a chapel. All the others - Presbyterians, Baptists, Evangelicals, Calithumpians, Anabaptists and Druids, called "Fancy Religions" - were on their own.
For entertainment there were the Messes, strictly segregated by rank. The Wardroom for the officers was a handsome, richly appointed building, with a wonderful view of Royal Roads. There was a Petty Officers Mess, a large, ramshackle building but because of age and general deterioration was always on the verge of condemnation and closed more often that it was open.
Outside the main gate was the Chiefs Mess, a well built, handsome brick and stucco structure, well maintained and set in the middle of a emerald, smooth, manicured, well-kept lawn. Down Esquimalt Road, was the Pacific Fleet Club, although everybody called it the Junior Rates (JR's) Mess. It was a modern building, built on the rocky beach overlooking the water, and from the terraces and windows of the lounges (there were two) drinkers had a stunning view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the distant shores of Washington State.
For the less discriminating there was the Hug and Slug, the local Legion, or several taverns, all within beer glass throwing distance, and where the women and the booze were cheap. Downtown Victoria offered more esoteric drinking spots, although these were never advertised and anyone who went into them never admitted to it. These were the gay bars, where a guy so inclined could drink and dance the night away, and where every stall in the men's room had a glory hole. By and large life was good. This was La-La Land, where the sun always shone, and where everybody was laid back. The pay was the shits but we had plenty of free time to play. And everybody played. There really wasn't all that much else to do, especially during the winter months.
The big ships, the destroyers, were more often than not tied alongside. Money was tight, and the Liberal government wasn't about to increase the budget any time soon. Two Restigouche class destroyers, HMC Ships Columbia and Chaudiere, had been recently paid off and were officially designated the "Reserve Fleet". The two were permanently moored to buoys in the harbour. They would later be sunk, in 1992, to form an artificial reef off Kunechin Point. Although designated training platforms for gunnery (now called Weapons Surface) and seamanship training, such as lowering and raising the sea boat, or painting ship, they were more often than not the subject of "rabbit" hunts. Whenever the Stores Depot could not, or would not supply certain parts, or the part needed was obsolete, one or the other of these destroyers were visited. Had there ever been a war I doubt the old things could have made it to the first harbour buoy.
The other destroyers in the Squadron were almost as derelict. They would day steam, sometimes motor on down to San Diego, or San Francisco, but rarely any further. Such was the inactivity of the Pacific squadron and since the ships rarely left the sight of land, the "real" East Coast sailors denigrated anyone assigned to Esquimalt as a "Sandy Bottom Sailor".
As CFB Esquimalt was a training base, the busiest part of our year was the summer months. During the summer training season, which ran from April to September, we were busy training Reserve New Entries, budding boatswains, eager engineers and impossibly fresh-cheeked, barely pubescent officer cadets. Our training schedule was heavy and we were usually in port only long enough to store ship and embark a new crew.
In the winter months, however, much of the time we stayed tied up along side and only sailed on the week ends, when the Reserves came on board for sea training exercises.
The weather was always sunny and, truth be told, the crew spent most of their time at tanning stations. The boat required very little in the way of maintenance; with Reserves on board almost every weekend, cleaning was a snap. We usually worked until noon, doing whatever had to be done, and then took the rest of the day off. Since we worked the weekends, every weekend, we figured we were even with the RCN.
"We", I should explain, were the permanent force crew of two officers, a Chief Petty Officer, two Petty Officers and five ratings (me included). As the Chief Boatswains Mate, or "Buffer", I was responsible for keeping the rust at bay, making sure that the upper deck fittings worked, and the deck hands sober. We chipped, painted, greased machinery, counted sheets and pillowcases, and basically maintained the ship. The "Chief", who was the Engineer, and one of the Petty Officers, also an engineer, looked after the engine and the steering gear, while the other Petty Officer, the Coxswain, looked after the paperwork. Looking back, there was actually a lot of ship to maintain. Originally built to accommodate three officers and thirty men, HMCS Porte du Roi had been refitted and modified, and while she outwardly maintained her original profile, she could now accommodate five officers, eight officer cadets, six Chiefs and Petty officers, and 28 ratings. The Commanding Officer had his own cabin, heads, and washplace directly abaft the wheelhouse and radio shack.
The officers shared two small, two-berth cabins below, and shared a washplace, which was in the deckhouse, which also contained the galley, and the "Wardroom", a miniscule little compartment. The officer cadets were housed in a recent addition to the deckhouse, the Doghouse, which projected forward onto the well deck. Here four cadets could live in minimal comfort. The other four lived in squalor in a "Mess" cobbled together with plywood sheets and two-by-fours on the starboard side of the main cafeteria, which took up about a third of the space below decks. The Chiefs and Petty Officers had their own small mess, also on the starboard side, forward of the bulkhead that separated the hands' berthing deck from the cafeteria.
I couldn't complain about the accommodations. The crew all got along, we had plenty of space for the five of us, and the cook was not too bad - at least he hadn't poisoned anybody that we knew of. My only complaint was that in order to shave and shower we had to go up the ladder from our mess deck, to the main deck and into the forecastle where the heads and washplaces shared space with the paint locker, Boatswain Stores and the Ship's Canteen. Our washplace, which was on the starboard side, had two showers and two sinks. The portside washplace, reserved for the Chief and Petty officers, had one shower and one sink. Both compartments were cramped and always seemed to smell of mildew. Fortunately there were no women on board so it wasn't too embarrassing walking across the well deck wearing nothing but a towel.
All in all, living on board was not all that bad. Once I had sounded "Pipe Down" on my Boatswains call, the crew usually scattered. The Commanding Officer, Chief and the Petty Officers all lived ashore, so I didn't have them to worry about. The Junior Rates usually took off to the nearest beach. If I wanted a drink I had the keys to the JR's Mess Spirit Locker, and the Chiefs Mess fridge. Booze was duty free, and we worked on the honour system, ten cents a double, 50 cents for a can of Coke or whatever to cut the liquor. I could read, sleep, watch television, or a video, and generally enjoy myself.
If I was feeling adventuresome, the Fleet Club was a five-minute walk from the main gate. Victoria was a short bus ride away. We were paid twice a month. Throw in a little sex and hell - life was good. Good, that is, if you were heterosexual, and fancied quiff. The Fleet Club was an ideal cruising spot for straight guys. Many of the civilian employees were women, most of them young, pretty, and available. They had privileges at the club and every Friday and Saturday night there was entertainment of some kind going on. From the Monday morning gossip all the nice girls loved a sailor, at least until midnight.
For those who wanted a different kind of entertainment the Fleet Club was the last place to go cruising. It was far too dangerous! Rumour had it that SIU - the Special Investigations Unit - of the Military Police had plants, handsome young agents who hung around the Fleet Club heads, pretending to be available. A favourite ploy was for the agent to stand in front of the urinal, with his trousers open, and his dick out, slowly stroking himself. Any matelot dumb enough to look, or show the slightest interest, was promptly given a one-way ride to the SIU building, a grim, low, foreboding structure that even the Buildings Maintenance Staff avoided.
That is not to say, however, that illicit, forbidden sex did not go on. It did, and in some very surprising places.
To Be Continued In Chapter 2