With Our Fighting Men: The story of their faith, courage, endurance in the Great WarSellers, William E.
History
With Our Fighting Men: The story of their faith, courage, endurance in the Great War
Sellers, William E.
Great Britain. Army -- Military life; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
The naval chaplain as a rule is an entirely different type of man from
his brother in the Army. He is monarch of all he surveys. He has to
face no competition in his work. He partakes of the freedom of the
sea. For the most part he is a right down good fellow, but, so far as
I can judge, he has not the type of spirituality of which we see so
much in the Army. He is all sorts of things rolled into
one--sea-lawyer, letter-writer, story-teller, lecturer, schoolmaster,
game-director, and a host of other things beside. He must be
absolutely sincere if he is to be any good at all, for he never gets
away from the busy life of the ship, and he of all men "cannot be
hid." Often he is the friend and counsellor of the men, sharing their
joys and sorrows. He is the go-between for officers and men, and if he
be efficient--and an inefficient man could hardly remain long on
board--he makes himself indispensable.
Of course he shares all the dangers of the ship, and to-day if a ship
be beaten it is also sunk. Never were the dangers of the sea so great.
Dangers _on_ the sea, _under_ the sea, _over_ the sea, crowd around.
He never knows when or how suddenly the end may come, and it behoves
him to be ready, and brave. We are told that, when the three cruisers
were torpedoed in the North Sea, the Rev. E.G. Uphill Robson, chaplain
of the _Aboukir_, went down cheering the men he loved so well. The
Rev. A.H.J. Pitts, the chaplain of the _Good Hope_, died bravely with
Sir Christopher Cradock. A petty officer who knew him in another ship
says, "With him compulsory church was quite unnecessary. Nobody in the
ship would be absent from the service if he could possibly manage to
get there."
One of the most terrible catastrophes of the war was the blowing up of
the _Bulwark_ in Sheerness Harbour. The Rev. G.H. Hewetson, the
chaplain, was on board and perished with the rest. He had only been
married a few months.
"Only the other week," wrote a correspondent of the _Church Family
Newspaper_, "I met a stoker, who told me he, Mr. Hewetson, held
meetings for men every evening in his cabin, and he was constantly at
their elbow when spells from duty would permit, guiding them in 'the
things that matter.' It was also my privilege to know him as chaplain
to the Royal Naval Barracks, Portsmouth, during his stay of nearly
three years, which terminated with his taking up duties on the
_Bulwark_ at the outbreak of war. He was a man of God, also a
sportsman of the highest tone, being an expert fencer, a runner-up in
the Army and Navy championships at Olympia two seasons ago. He was a
man of some literary ability, for which the Chaplain of the Fleet made
him editor of the _Church Pennant_, _i.e._ the Church magazine of the
Navy. Mr. Hewetson was an earnest believer in individual methods, and
invariably worked sixteen hours a day, visiting all recruits,
detention quarters, sick bay, and held no fewer than five services on
Sundays."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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