HMS Mercury in Winter

Written by Godfrey Dykes

© RN Communications Branch Museum/Library

The Winter weather at HMS Mercury could be absolutely atrocious. I can remember the Winter of 1947 helping to dig out the family home up in the Yorkshire Dales. As was so often the case back then, the North, Devon and Kent seemed to get the worst of the weather, but in 1947 everybody got it and for weeks upon weeks upon weeks. Here we have just two stories written as poems, one by a person with the initial of R.S., and one by J.W. which we are sure stands for Jenny Wren.


Weather wizard, Put out paw, Noticed blizzard, Promised thaw. Good intention, Keen to please, Didn’t mention, Record freeze. British winter, Out of place, Straight from Interstellar space. Inmates stop in, Queues to see, Shocking drop in Mercury. Touching zero, (Absolute), Shades of Nero!, Lucky brute. Transport trouble, Ten feet drifts, Don your double, Arctic shifts.	Snowed up lorry, Bus in hedge, Very sorry, Come by sledge. Way on easel, Schoolie slid, Pop went diesel, Bang went grid. Barrackmaster, (Cheerful bloke), Fresh disaster, No more coke. Huts of Nissen, Cold as death, Come and listen, Hold your breath. Distant cursing, Driving test, Hands are nursing, Frozen feet. Wrens in nylons, Feel the draught, Ice-bound pylons, Fore and aft.	Shinwell calling, Power gone, Phone Lines Falling, One by One. Teleprinter, Dead and cold, (Normal winter – Good as gold). Direful outcome, Signal station, Quite without, Communication. Someone musing, In the snow, Thinks of using, Radio. (Not a bad one – That idea!) Sets? we had one, Somewhere here. Takes a glance, at Lease-and-Lends, From out transatlantic friends.	Ponders shyly, Latest shipment, Tons of highly, Priced equipment. Faint hope dying, No juice yet, What price trying, Batt’ry set? Try it, then a Make and Mend, No antenna, on the end. Not a feather, in his hat, Clerk of weather, On the mat. Desecrating, Golden rule, Isolating, Signal School.

Written by somebody with the initials R.S. in February 1947, one of the coldest UK Winters on record

This one is a spoof on a tune/song of a popular radio programme of those days called "Much Binding in the Marsh"

THOUGHTS OF A WREN IN HER BATH

Leydene, February, 1947.
(with apologies)

At Much Sliding in the Slush,
Mercury is nearly out of action.
At Much Sligind in the Slush,
Everyone is driven to distraction.
Miles and miles of icicles are weighing down the wires,
Coal is short, and lights are cut, not stoking up the fires,
We're all browned off, or rather blued, and dripping till it tires,
At Much Sliding in the Slush.

At Much Sliding in the Slush,
We're due today to go on our vacation.
At Much Sliding in the Slush,
In this we'll never make the Railway Station,
The Transport's off, the trains can't run, we'll have to face the facts,
And stagger back to Camp again, and once more hoist our slacks,
And spend our 48 in bed with bottles at our backs,
At Much Sliding in the Slush.

J.W.