HMS Ganges Mast

HMS GANGES MAST

Animated Compulsory Route Climb

Written by Godfrey Dykes

© RN Communications Branch Museum/Library

Note on the left hand side the word TOP. The top is a working area and is therefore a flat deck space. It has a two trap doors built into it which are lockable from above one on each side to receive men climbing either of two sets of ratlines. It has ratlines and shrouds connected to it. For this evolution the trap door is shut and locked on the climbing up side but open on the downward going side.
Boys climb outside and over the Futtock Shrouds pulling themselves onto the top using the base of the Top Mast Shrouds. They then walk across the top deck and lower themselves through the trap door (or hatch) onto the ratlines leading to the deck (parade ground) below.
For those with no head for heights, mounting the top deck space after a long climb up the ratlines, and to say the very least, a scary navigation over the RIGHT HAND Futtock Shrouds in this example (see right hand side of diagram and note that there is a left and right hand Futtock but only one is used for this Ganges compulsory drill), one is at just over 60 feet high: the truck is at 142 feet high.
The reason why the mast is such a predominant establishment icon is the navigation over the proverbial and rightly feared DEVILS ELBOW. As the climber (remember back in those days, HSE meant "Hell Shit Evolution" before somebody coined the expression 'Health and Safety Executive') and there were no safety features of any sort - YES, LITERALLY.
It was down to ones own sense of pride that if other boys could do it and you couldn't, life for you wouldn't be worth living and only the strongest of characters could have coped with the 24 hour a day of ridicule. Incidentally, there was no pass or fail, no rescrubs, but the pressure was such that there were no refusals either! What worried me at that time and has ever since, was that we were told by our instructor that tomorrow morning, at this time, we would be marched to the base of the mast and there we would do our introductory and compulsory mast climb. Note the singular connotation, for indeed we could, and many did, continue our fifteen month schooling and professional branch training without ever again touching the mast. It wasn't a part of our training schedules or curriculum, and any further involvement with the mast was purely voluntary and done in our leisure time. For me it was a no brainer for better by half, the sports pitches were the big attraction and also water polo which was one of my enjoyment at Shotley.
The mast stood as a challenge, but I always countenanced the proverb that pride comes before a fall, and those getting too comfortable on such a potential harmful tool as that mast were asking for trouble. Good that it was that my fears and inhibitions were proved wrong for an incident on the mast was, believe it or not, the least recorded event of all occurence in HMS Ganges.
I like to console myself thinking, and probably correctly, that the mast users were perhaps not as ambitious or as adventurers as some, including me, thought, and that running about in all weathers, getting thoroughly wet through, muddied and knocked about in a game of rugger was not for them, where far more sports injuries were recorded leading to a sizeable phalanx of the brown canvas shoe brigade. During instructional time boys wore boots and gaiters, but injured boys were excused these and wore a sailors suit with naval slippers which was the pet name for issued brown canvas shoes worn in messes outside instructional periods.

Imagine if you can, that you are 60 foot in the sky climbing hand over hand with a slight lean forward so head before feet so to speak, and a massive structure which is the CROSS JACK YARDARM looms menacing close to your right hand side, and just ahead of you see a watershed giving an option of continuing ahead on ratlines or changing direction completely to a new set of climbing frames. There is no first option because the trap door ahead is well and truly shut and locked! So it demands a complete realignment and orientation of the body to now adopt a position where one starts to lay down as though preparing for bed and you continue climbing, feet and hands up a ladder hanging in free space set at 45 degrees with you looking up at the sky. At this point your centre of gravity has shifted and your bodily weight is now on your hands and arms as you struggle to find a footing for your disengaged feet. The onus is on you to pull with all your might your hapless body over a elbow shaped ridge which is the extremities of the wooden deck of the top, and frankly, although you have command of your upper body no longer now looking at the sky but along the deck area, your legs, thighs downwards are crying out for an anchor, a sure place to be and from which to spring forward, and remember at this vulnerable time you are hanging outside the parameters of the mast and its structure, desperately wanting to grab the base of the top mast shrouds to heave yourself back in command of all your body towards the safety of the upright rigging and the mast itself. Once you have achieved that and you are standing upright again dearly hanging to that upper mast rigging, you can safety manoeuvre off that rigging and step down on to the top deck itself with the view of the open trapdoor beckoning downwards and to safety. I doubt if any boy stepping off that last downward ratline onto the parade ground, didn't experience the rubber leg syndrome accompanied albeit temporarily with the shakes. Very soon afterwards the sensation of achievement pumps adrenalin round the body, and you find yourself looking into the eyes of your peers looking for and getting a mutual well done, we've done it, and the body has quite literally taken the first step from boyhood to manhood, but with still many challenges and achievement to come.

This diagram of the Ganges Mast shows the mandatory route over which ALL BOYS must climb at least once during their training there, but many go over the route more than once. NO BOY unless he is part of a volunteer team of the ceremonial mast manning group is forced into climbing higher, and there is an air of ambivalence by the Ganges training staff as regards the climbing policy. Some boys were known to have mounted the button at the Truck and when not that, the highest parts immediately below the Truck: incidentally none of these adventurers could claim to be a "button boy" although the scourge of the mast per se was that countless boys over the years have told porky-pies about their exploits on the mast It is manifest that the lack of accidents and injury on the mast keeps the pointer on the ambivalence scale hard over to laissez-faire i.e. let the boys get on with it! In the three Boys Training Manuals I own, namely BR697 of 1911, 1937 and 1952 the truth about the Ganges mast shouts and is self evident. BR 697 Boys' Training Instructions. There were three versions which were relevant right up to 1956. The first was 1911, the second 1937 and the third 1952. There is a marked degree in difference reflecting the change in attitudes towards excessive/oppressive discipline as the years went by. Two more versions were rolled out, one in 1957 and one in 1966 but this time as the "JUNIORS Training Instructions". The 1957 version, in fairness, didn't differ too much from the 1952 version but the 1966 version did, and reflected the mellowing attitudes towards discipline showing more leniency than the previously mentioned four Instruction Manuals. I also have the Admiralty Orders-in-Council 1864-1938 in which there are many fascinating edicts from on high. These eventually became published as BR 773A and ran from Volume 1 to Volume 15, although the time when the Ganges (1821) was been prepared for service at Falmouth (1864 - on station in 1866) is covered by Volume 3 onwards. In addition BR 1992 (Divisional Officers handbook 1952) and BR 2074 (Naval Prize Manual) all help to understand the processes which moulded us (you and I) into the men we are today ! At no stage in any of the documents, is the matter of mast training raised, meaning that the Admiralty did not officially recognise it and had no point of view and that becomes increasingly obvious the deeper one reads into my many Ganges web pages!

Once opened, look to the bottom of the mast to the right hand side ratlines and then follow the route by watching the red dot ascend and descend over the route. One more thing. It is obvious to most that a tall mast has a physical top and a bottom. That in tall masts criteria is a no no, for as I have said the top of a tall mast is called the truck. From the diagram and clearly shown, look at the huge difference between the height of the Truck and the height of The Top. It was always true that boys were ordered over the mast meaning the route shown here and not to be taken literally over the truck, and as shown we climbed from the parade ground level to the TOP and back down, the top being appreciably less that half way up the mast overall. In very simple terms your screen image is 6" and from parade ground to top it is 2½" and from top to truck it is a further 3½" approximately.

I leave you with one fact about HMS Ganges and its mast. The stories about it abound and because they are so frequent, so absurd, utterly outlandish, Walter Mitty'ish, and pathetically childish, that whenever I think about those lamp-swinging tales the more I believe HMS Ganges should have been renamed HMS APOCRYPHAL - the word is a perfect fit, because the Mast is HMS Ganges, and were it to be taken away from Shotley, what would be left would render Shotley Gate even more unattractive, were that possible?