“Are you growing a set son, or did you just forget to shave this morning?”

"Permission to Grow, Sir" or “Permission to cease shaving Sir?”

The traditional forms of request for permission to grow a beard in the Navy. A ‘Set’ is Navy Jargon for beard. To ‘Grow a set’ is to grow a beard and in Her Majestiy’s ships this consisted of a Full Beard and Moustache. Neither one without the other.

"Wearing of Moustaches" Article 1105 of the Queens Regulations and Admiralty Instructions forbids the wearing of moustaches without beards by officers and men of the Royal...

As a Leading Seaman Fire Control and the Armaments Office (or XO's Writer) in HMAS DERWENT in 1978 one of my duties was to produce the weekly ship's newspaper whilst we were on our 6 month Far East Deployment.

It took off like a rocket and for the first couple of weeks I had no end of articles pouring in. But like every new toy the novelty wore off quickly. Friday mornings would find me furiously writing my own copy to provide enough material just to keep the Newspaper going. I requested from the Executive Officer (my head of department and...