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"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.

]]> This week Had A Few Good Days http://www.gunplot.net/regoffice/index.php?itemid=5 Tue, 07 Mar 2006 01:21:32 -0600 http://www.gunplot.net/regoffice/index.php?itemid=4 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...... boss) permission to produce the Newspaper Fortnightly or even monthly. By this time I was almost working on the damn thing full time. He refused.

It was at this time I had my own small cocktail refrigerator, complete with wood grain veneer, located right under my desk at my feet in this very small office in the forward part of the Ship.

I was also very good mates with Peter Mayo, the boss of the unofficial chinese laundry who we had embarked in Singapore for the duration of the deployment. Peter made his semi permanent bunk up in the Gun Bay Flat, right opposite me across the Ship's main passageway.

Peter would collect the beer issue on behalf of the Chinese Laundry hands (a considerable amount of tinnies I may add) and give them to me. It was a bonus that the Chinese did not have their cans of beer opened on issue, as we did. I would store these in my cocktail fridge, sit down at my typewriter, drinking cold tinnies writing for the Ship's Paper.

Being very angry about the amount of working hours I was putting in on this damned newspaper, I decided to get my own back and to start my own 'Take The Piss", "Green Rub" cum Gossip Column. I called it "This Week Had A Few Good Days".

It wasn't long before I was daily, deluged with scandal from informers and dobbers from all messes and departments - including the Wardroom.

And the more I had to drink the more my fingers gained momentum with literary assaults upon every member of the ship's company. No one was spared from the pen including the Skipper and most of all LCDR 'Wally On The Piss' Burroughs, the XO. Maybe if I could piss him off enough he may trash the whole idea of a Ship's Newspaper.

On the contrary, he loved it, and so did everyone else onboard. Where before there was apathy now there was an electricty in the air! Every Friday as they lined up at my door, lining the main passage way waiting for me to finish running it off on the old Gestetener, collating it and stapling it and then finally distributing it.

I had made my own bed, it remained in print up until the end of the deployment. It was great for moral on what was a good ship with a damn fine crew.

So there you go - that's why I have commenced the blog, memories of better days. Where are you 'Uncle Ronnie' (CPOFC Ron Cross, the Chief Reg) and Wally On This Piss today? Whatever happened to Peter Mayo. Anyone from Derwent's Trip Up Top in 1978 remember? Post a comment.
]]> This week Had A Few Good Days http://www.gunplot.net/regoffice/index.php?itemid=4 Mon, 06 Mar 2006 07:11:18 -0600 http://www.gunplot.net/regoffice/index.php?itemid=3
The Regulating Office in an Australian Navy DDG was where the Ships Action, Defence, Cruising and day to day administration and organisation was planned and implemented by the 'Chief Regulator'. Usually a Chief Gunnery Sailor and more particulary a Gunnery Fire Control Chief.

It is a common misconception that a Warship's Captain or CO runs the ship on a day to day basis. The Captain is primarily there to 'Fight The Ship In Action' and otherwise he is far too busy to concern himself with day to day ship organisation. This is left to the Executive Officer, more commonly known onboard ships as 'The Jimmy', who then leaves it, in turn, to his 'Chief Regulator'. And that's me!

]]> The Main Notice Board http://www.gunplot.net/regoffice/index.php?itemid=3 Mon, 06 Mar 2006 00:01:55 -0600