The Royals and the Navies

Or because it was really cool to have the suit and the association when Navies have cruised incessantly throughout history, but Armies sit uselessly in barracks until an excuse for war is found.

Yes, that's why I was in the Navy :wink:

You must be from a really, really small royal house, Walter--you were an ordinary seaman, weren't you?

Well, very, very small indeed.

But I've been a warrant officer, and was on duty as first officer and captain of a warship.

(Okay, captain only for a reserve ubit, a 'minor mior landing craft' with a crew of three, and first officer of a LCM [crew of 13!!!].

And I didn't marry in uniform (actually, I wasn't seen in uniform ever outsite of military boundaries - besides in the first few weeks, when we weren't allowed to wear civil clothes when going home :wink: )

Gilbert and Sullivan have international appeal--even to the royals.

I believe Prince Philip has strong views on the superiority of the navy--that's three floating royals right there.

i remember not wanting to dress up as a child when visiting relatives ... but when i was allowed to wear 'the sailor suit' (matrosen anzug) i could be ready in no time at all ! of course, even at a young age i had already decided not to be a sailor-boy for long(in hamburg the junior sailors -schiffsjungen- were called 'moses' - don't ask me why). not only was i gong to be a captain but a 'commodore' ! this must have been about 1936-37 when the german liner 'bremen' rescued the crew of a freighter, and the 'bremen' was under the command of a 'commodore' - well, nothing else would do for me ! hbg

'Moses' goes back to the baby Moses in the bible.

Btw, hamburger, you certainly know that a Moses in particular had had the duty to feed and take care of the 'bilgenschwein' :wink:

walter, i have a general idea, but i am no longer able to get itdirectly from the source-- only from memory.

my grandfather joined the royal navy during wwII. he was attending trinity college in dublin when the war broke out. he was an american, he was a snob, and if he was going to enlist he was going to do it as stylishly and elitely as possible.

as children, when we visited him, we were subjected to the most formal dinners, they went on for hours. any child-like utterance was quickly extinguished with a barb, and for the most part we were ignored by him.

it is interesting to me that he ever returned to the u.s. he was so much more comfortable with the tight-lipped, stiff-upper lip brits. nonetheless, he lived his days out in the u.s., with his framed commendation from the king, for honorable service, hanging in the entry way to his home.

"All the nice girls, love a sailor
All the nice girls love a tar
Because there's something
About a sailor
That reminds them of their pa...."

Which is to say, Moses, as in found in the papyrus reeds in a basket? As in, sailors so young they are babies?

mctag : "All the nice girls, love a sailor" - perhaps that's why i loved the sailor suit - memory is beginning to fade ... 'Moses goes back to the baby Moses in the bible. ' ... but how did he get from the bilble into the "christliche seefahrt" , perhaps he wanted to become a 'commodore' too ? walter: i remember the 'bilgenschwein' from luckner's book 'seeteufel'. we had the original version at home and a few years ago i managed to pick up another one in a little bookshop for a few deutschmarks. i still read a chapter or two sometimes. hbg

here is what i found on a website :" Der Schiffsjunge wurde an Bord nach alter Tradition Moses genannt, weil der aus dem alten Ägypten stammende Führer des Volkes Israel als Kleinkind in einem Schilfkörbchen auf dem Nil schwimmend als jüngster Fahrensmann galt. " ... as walter said, the jungest sailor was seen as moses swimming in the reed-basket on the nile. another site mentions that 'moses' on the old fishing-boats (heringslogger) had the duty of saying the evening prayers onboard. hbg

That's a nice story, Hamburger, about the ship's boy saying evening prayers on the fishing boats.

Now here's another song for you:

Now Moses was found in the stream
Yes, Moses was found in the stream
When old Pharaoh's daughter
Went down to the water
She found him, she said, in the stream...

Seems that the term Moses gave some confusions during the Nazi time, as you may read yourself, following this link [for various reasons, I'm not copying it - it's mentioned in the lower third]
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/annemariepurnell/can4a.html

That's hilarious Walter (in a sick kind of way) . . . if i recall correctly, Raeder refused to turn over Jewish naval officers to the Nazis, and refused to order the use of the "Hitler salute." The Moses thing must have made them deeply suspicious . . .