“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... ... Navy. Naval reservists of the RFR and RNSR are permitted to continue to wear their moustaches while performing their short periods of naval training (RFR seven days every other year: RNSR twenty days each year) but not when called up for service. Royal Marines may wear moustaches, but not beards except in extreme climatic conditions or for medical reasons”.

Growing a beard is a unique naval tradition that dates back at least two centuries during the days of wooden ships, when fresh water for washing and shaving was in short supply. In Australia, following in the Royal Navy tradition, the Royal Australian Navy also allows "full sets" (beards and moustaches together) but not beards or moustaches on their own.

I my case I was a young lad of 15½ years when I joined Pussers and had a face as smooth as a baby’s bottom. However as per Naval Regulations, I was by Naval law, required to be clean shaven daily by 0800. 0900 If I were a Morning Watchman. Whether I needed it or not! Fortunately right up until the time of my Mid 20’s I could still escape all but the most close inspection should I being running adrift and miss a day.

I am thankful for my Naval training in giving me the personal ability to be able to do more than one thing at a time. For almost my entire life I have shaved under the shower, without a mirror! Carried out with alacrity by an acute sense of touch perfected over time. Please don’t tell the Dusty’s on the Vaps!

A sailor wishing to ‘Cease Shaving’ would first of all have to submit an Offical ‘Request Form’ through his proper Divisional Channels to do so. This request would finally go to the XO for approval. Approval may or may not be given at the XO’s discretion. For example, should you have been like I was at 16 the XO would not want to waste his time on what was such an impossible mission.

Once the request was approved the ‘Beard Grower’ would automatically have his Leave (Liberty) stopped until such time as the beard was grown sufficiently enough to look ‘decent’ and neat enough to step ashore again. (Of course this was in the days when sailors wore uniform ashore on Liberty and not civilian clothing, hence the need not to appear ‘scruffy’, unkempt and unseamanlike.

This necessitated having a ‘Beard Review’, personally conducted, once again by the Executive Officer, usually 2 weeks after the initial approval had been given. The XO would myopically inspect the requestman’s attempt at growing a ‘Set’ and pass judgement. “Shave Off” or “Approved”. The decision was final. If the order to ‘Shave Off’ was given the Beard Grower would be marched smartly from the XOs cabin and more or less straight to the showers to ‘Shave Off’. If the request and beard was approved then the Sailors Leave would be reinstated and his Short Leave or Watch and Station Card returned to him. In borderline cases the Sailor could be given an extension by the XO, but his leave would remain not good in the meantime.

Some of the more hirsute sailors onboard, those that would have looked more at home in the mountain jungles of Zaire, Rwanda, or Uganda did not always have to wait the mandatory two weeks for their leave to be reinstated. One mate of mine, a Steward by the name of ‘Paddy’ Parkhill would have been stepping ashore within a few days of his initial request his beard and body hair grew so rapidly! All that was needed was a word to the Coxswain asking if he could be reviewed early. Most reasonable XOs and Coxswains would allow this.

When Australian Warships would deploy from Australian waters the XO would be bombarded with requests from home port natives now wishing to cease shaving and grow a ‘set’. If the ship was going to be at sea for two weeks or more, before reaching the first Port, then why not? You can’t lose what you haven’t got. This trend would be so common that the ship would more than likely hold an onboard Beard Growing Competition. Basically it was a race to see who could grow a decent Set in the shortest amount of time. The winner receiving a couple of free beer issues or a cake etc. However, many like myself would use it as an excuse to have a ‘week off’ from shaving. A luxury sometimes in the military.

Some sailors went their entire careers wearing a ‘set’ and there were many stories of young children whose father’s almost scared them to death after paying off out of the mob and finally shaving off! Young children freaking out over their ‘new look’ father, who had never seen them before without a ‘set’.

Likewise when you got finally tired of picking bits of food out of your whiskers or continually wiping the froth from beers from it and decided to ‘Shave Off’ you would also have to put in a Request Form to ‘Resume Shaving’ – This was referred to as ‘Shaving Off’, which was also sailors Jargon used as an exclamation, as in ‘What the Hell!” However, the process was rarely as ‘formal’ as the one required to Cease Shaving.

Some more trivia about hair……

The pigtail went out of fashion ashore about 1785. When worn by a seaman it was the hall mark of the Navyman, and the Merchant Service did not affect the style at all. Tails were worn long when ashore, but Clubbed when on board, or when working. The pigtails took a great deal of tying and adjustment, and particular shipmates would perform the office for each other— hence the term 'Tie mates' or 'Tie and Tie and damn all favours'.

Pressed men being generally infested and lousy, were close cropped on arrival, and so a good tail came to be the mark of a clean well disciplined man, and finally became a symbol of professional pride and the sign of a staid hand.

In the days when hirsute appendages to the face were popular, and when the art of naval gunnery consisted mostly of cutlass drill, burnishing the ready use shot, and putting the quarterly practice allowance down the ash chute, to save dirtying the guns, a favourite saying was ‘Attitude is the art of gunnery, and whiskers make the man.