The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
The drills consist of practice with great guns, rifle, pistol, and cutlass
exercises. “Efficient” volunteers are entitled to a badge, while men
returned five times as efficient may wear one star, and those returned ten
times two stars, above said badge. Every volunteer must attend at least
two drills a month, until he has obtained the standard of an “efficient.”
When on actual service, the Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers will receive
the same pay, allowances, and victuals as those of relative rank in the
navy, and when embarked on any of Her Majesty’s ships for more than
forty-eight hours, in practice, will either be victualled or receive a
money compensation. The cruises in gun-boats, &c., usually last ten days,
and the vessel visits many of the Channel ports, &c., more especially off
points where gun practice is practicable. A volunteer wounded, either on
drill or in actual service, is entitled to the same compensation as any
seaman in the navy would be under similar circumstances, and if killed his
widow (if any) to the same gratuities out of the Greenwich Hospital Funds
as would a Royal Navy seaman’s widow. Members who are able to take
advantage of the cruise in gun-boats must have attended drill regularly
for three months previously. It must be remembered that each man costs the
Government from £8 to £10 for the first year, in the expenses incurred in
great gun and other practice; and it is therefore made a point of honour
to those joining that they will devote sufficient time to their drills to
make themselves thoroughly efficient.
The London Naval Artillery Volunteers have a fine vessel, the _President_,
now in the West India Docks, on which to exercise, while to accustom them
to living on board ship, the old _Rainbow_, off Temple Pier, is open to
them, under certain conditions, as a place of residence. A number avail
themselves of this: sleep on board in hammocks, and contribute their quota
of the mess expenses. The writer is the last to decry other manly
exercises, such as cricket, foot-ball, racing, or pedestrianism, but naval
volunteering has the advantage of not merely comprising a series of manly
exercises, but in being directly practical and specially health-giving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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