I know many of you guys did your sea training at Vindicatrix but I did mine at Gravesend. It was a fine school with good instructors who gave us lots of good laughs, unfortunately I can’t remember the name of our instructor but he came from somewhere down south and had a great sense of humour, we used to do our rowing in a whale-boat out on the Thames and that was always a lot of fun. We had a canteen, or Mess as we called it, you could get pop or crisps and there was a piano in there where we had communal sing along, a hit song was a Guy Mitchell classic, “The Roving Kind” and we sang that with gusto, afterall we were young seamen who would soon be out there calming the angry sea, at least that’s how we thought of ourselves.
The Roving Kind-Click

Like you Tony , i never went to Vindi. Went to the Cardiff school ,home every night to mums cooking, nice warm comfortable bed, couple of quid in your pocket each week- plus bus fares. One instructor MR Coward, hard as nails but fair and a good man, on average 4 to 6 trainees and maybe somebody doing a refresher before sitting thier EDH or lifeboat tickets. No flash whalers for us we had a 4 ton lifeboat to paddle. bit hard with only 4 crew but we did it. the hard part was when Mr Coward wanted to go water sking We used to race Reardon Smiths cadets in thier whaler and we always beat them, our reward was for an early finish that day

Outward Bound Sea School at Aberdovey. Modelled on Kurt Hahn's Gordonstoun with the same spartan regime, and
great emphasis on sports and rigorous physical activity to instill confidence and a will to survive. Lawrence Holt
felt deeply about the wartime loss of life among the youngest members of the MN, and what seemed to be their
lack of stamina or resolve to survive, and got the idea of training young lads for the rigours of war. He called
upon Hahn to set up such a school and Aberdovey was the result of it. Holt, by the way, was the head of the
Blue Funnel Line, and that company continued to send boys there after the war had ended. The instructors were
mostly shore people looking after the track and field stuff, assisted by deck officers seconded to the school, and
seamanship was entirely in the hands of the Blue Flu officers. Because of the few boys intent on following the sea,
courses were filled by boys from employers such as Fry's and other big businesses.

A school friend of mine got a job at John Lewis department store in Liverpool after leaving school and they sent him on a course to Aberdovey - Outward Bound Sea School and he thoroughly enjoyed it. Didn't get him to sea though! He got a job as a bus conductor and then into long distance lorry driving where he remained for the rest of his working life. The last time I saw John was in '74, I was in the Boundery pub in Dovecot and there was a big to-do, someone had all the blokes baled up in the gents toilet; it was John, he reckoned someone drank his pint, so he was going to sort them all out.

I have actually witnessed guys walking back out the gates after just arriving to start there training why? The first port of call once through the famous gates, was sweeney todd, crew cut for all .They were afraid to loose there golden locks i wonder how many regreted it, Regards terry.

Was just having a laugh about that Ted as I wonder how many would give their eye teeth to be able to have a hair cut now.

There was a few empty bunks the next day after joining the vindi in 54, I know I never regretted shipping out near 40 years, but those guys who nevr stuck it proberly ended up in Khaki then some job they hated, thats when the real haircuts came in no choice then.

Like Samsette I went to Aberdovey sea school before going to sea with Blue Funnel. I was there in 1952 and still have the Log book which we had to keep with all our daily activities in it. Happy days.

Alec.