This is a cold, grey afternoon at HMS Ganges on a Sunday early in 1972 and I stand before the mast. One hundred and forty three feet of shining white timber, contrasted against the grey winter sky, points ominously to the heavens. It is no longer raining but the rigging still drips as though it is. I have been on this mast before but never to the very top. Today would be different as I can see no point in having this challenge in front of me and not rising to it. Perhaps it’s in the blood as my two grandfathers both served here early in the 1900s at a time when daily mast training was compulsory. They would have been familiar with its ratlines and spars far more than I’ll ever be.
The mast was formerly of HMS Cordelia, a corvette that had paid off in Portsmouth in 1900. In 1907 the foremast was acquired and towed by sea from Sheerness in Kent to Shotley Pier in Suffolk. Once there it was hauled in sections up a sharp slope to the parade field by boys of the camp over the course of five long hours. In time it was fully rigged and ready for training.
Sixty-five years after that I set foot on the first of the ratlines and look up to see if I can see the top and my goal but even when I lean far back it is difficult to see the button. So with a steady step I start my ascent hand over hand, foot over foot. As I pass through the aperture in the safety net I reflect that if I was to fall from the top of the mast the net would probably not save me even if I was to hit it. Boys climbing this mast use no safety equipment, no lines, no harnesses, no helmets.
In the history of HMS Ganges only one boy was recorded as having fallen from the mast and died. On Saturday 6th October 1928 Boy Second Class Alfred Hickman fell whilst trying to pull himself onto the button at the top of the mast. He slipped and grasped at a rope but was carried wide of the net and, with his hand badly burned as the rope slid through it, he let go and fell to the ground and was killed. He was 15 years and 9 months old, an orphan, who now lies in the graveyard at Shotley Church.
The safety net is now below me and I can see above the first of the yards – the Coarse Sail Yard – from which the largest sail on the mast would have hung. A few feet further up is the first platform, the main top, with a “Lover’s Hole” on the port side and another to starboard. These are small trap doors which provide an easy and safe route up onto the platform. No self-respecting boy ever goes through these but instead takes the more difficult and hazardous way around the “Devil’s Elbow”, where the ratlines incline outwards from the mast to the outer edge of the platform. This is where I am now climbing at 45 degrees, halfway to being horizontal, and if my feet slip I’ll be hanging in the air 60 feet up. My grip is good and moments later I have scrambled around the edge of the main top and am on my way up to the next yard-arm, the Top Sail Yard. Here I decide to take an excursion out along the yard. Stepping on to it I sidle carefully out along its length until I am close to the end. In the days of sail hard, dangerous work would have been done here hauling sails up by hand and securing them. I return to the centre to resume my ascent towards the next platform, the Half Moon.
Once safely on this crescent I am over 100 feet up and have an excellent view all around. HMS Ganges is spread before me and I am higher than anything else. In front of me the vast expanse of the parade ground with the Petty Officer’s Mess at the far end next to the swimming pool. To my left the Main Gate, the NAAFI, the galley and dining hall, Nelson Hall and the Gunnery Office. Just to my right I see a couple of boys going into Rodney Division where my mess is and more going into the Blue Mansions beyond. They look like ants.
It is winter and my hands are cold and wet from the climb and I still have further to go. I turn once more to the mast and the way up now lies with Jacob’s Ladder, two vertical strands of wire with wooden rungs on which to step. Just twelve inches wide this seems very narrow when you are this high and it twists and moves just enough to make you catch your breath. The Top Gallant Yard, the last of the three yards on this mast, is by my head as I ascend towards the cow horns – a two-foot steel bar protruding from each side of the mast. There is enough room for a boy to stand on each side now but when this mast was in use on a ship this is where the Royal Yard and the highest sail on the foremast would have been.
I stand on the bar which digs uncomfortably into my plimsolls and loop my arm round the mast as there’s nothing else to hold on to. One hundred and thirty feet below me life goes on as normal. Tiny people scurry around silently from building to building and nobody appears to look up and see me.
I breathe deeply with my heart pounding in my chest as I look up at the button. It’s perhaps just 15 feet above me now but it is a very unforgiving distance indeed. There are no more ratlines or ladders to help me. The only way up is the way that all who have done this before me have done it, including the unfortunate Alfred Hickman, and that is to shin up it. Come on! I’ve shinned up enough lamp posts in the past – this is just a bit higher. How hard can it be? I turn into the mast and embrace it with both arms, my nose touching the cold wet paintwork as the raindrops still clinging to the surface from the earlier shower soak through my shirt. One more deep breath, a hop and I’m off and shinning up that last bit. The button is just above my head, I can reach the stays to give me a better grip and I’m pulling myself up and grabbing the lightning conductor. A final effort and I am sat on the button.
There are higher places that people climb but not in Suffolk, England and I can see for miles and miles to Harwich, Felixstowe, Ipswich and beyond. It’s only 143 and a quarter feet high but I’m 15 years old, lord of all I survey and I am truly sitting on top of the world.