Seventeen — year — old Dan Conley marched among the loose ranks and files of the column. Like those marching with him, he was wondering what lay ahead. Of one thing he had little doubt: in going to sea as a naval officer he had chosen the right career. However, one of his new-entry colleagues was not so convinced about his forthcoming naval vocation and was observed two hours later boarding a taxi at the main college entrance, heading back to civilian life.
The imposing structure of Britannia Royal Naval College stands upon high ground overlooking and dominating the town of Dartmouth and the valley of the Dart. Completed in 1905 at the height of Britain’s imperium, it replaced the old hulks of Her Majesty’s ships Britannia and Hindustan, former ships of the line which had been used to accommodate and train several generations of officer cadets, despite the unhealthy conditions which prevailed aboard these ancient men-of-war. The college owed its existence to Admiral of the Fleet ‘Jacky’ Fisher, who wished to improve the professionalism of the Royal Navy’s officer corps.
Despite Fisher’s high-minded ideal, until 1948 the college had been little more than a public school, admitting fee-paying boys at the age of thirteen. The cadets passed out of the college at sixteen, going to sea in designated warships to complete their basic officer training. Although this had changed by 1963, the college retained a traditional British public school ethos, with all that this entailed by way of ritual and, of course, discipline. Up until the 1948 change to a sixteen-year-old entry, the latter included the administration of physical punishment for serious misdemeanours, the cane being applied in the college gymnasium under the supervision of a medical officer. Although the practice of matching a pair of new entrants in the boxing ring and encouraging them to beat the living daylights out of each other had been abolished, this was a comparatively recent reform. Indeed, the college retained many traditions and customs which were more in keeping with an imperial past, epitomised by the prominent inscription under the main building parapet which confidently declared — ‘It is on the Navy under the good providence of God that our wealth, prosperity and peace depend’. It was soon, however, clear to Conley, among others, that much of the college training was unsuited to a modern navy, especially as that navy took on the challenges of the nuclear age where the age of officer entry would move from the late teens to the early twenties.
At the time, the majority of the college academic staff had not significantly developed their lecturing skills from those of teaching schoolchildren to delivering a graduate-level education. Therefore, whilst there were exceptions, the overall quality of tuition was at best unremarkable. This became particularly true when the young officer returned to the college for his sub lieutenant academic year. For the full career General List executive and supply branches this followed a first year as a cadet in college and a second at sea in the Fleet as a midshipman. The sub lieutenants specialising in engineering had after their midshipman’s time, meanwhile, gone instead to Manadon College, Plymouth, to undertake their degree-level studies, a shift which acknowledged an inherent maturity not provided for their colleagues returning to Dartmouth.
For those returning to Dartmouth, the academic year consisted of indifferent teaching of English, physics, mechanics and mathematics to first-year university level. However, there was little encouragement of logical and challenging analysis, or focus on original thought. In particular, the opportunity was missed to inculcate contemporary naval strategy or the processes of decision-making in the Ministry of Defence. Significantly since it underpinned strategic thinking, curricular naval history was not only limited, but very badly taught, and there was no serious discussion or debate regarding force structures and the strengths and weaknesses of the Royal Navy, particularly in the Second World War. Unlike the United States Navy of the day, the Royal Navy did not take education sufficiently seriously and four decades were to elapse before the first Chief of Naval Staff (First Sea Lord) possessed a degree.
Perhaps more important, few junior officers leaving Dartmouth had an understanding of how the higher echelons of the country’s defence management worked, let alone comprehended the interface between the other armed services, the civil servants and the politicians.
A product of the post-war baby boom, the seventeen-year-old Conley found himself among three hundred cadets. These included a number from Commonwealth and other countries, including Iran, Morocco and the Sudan. Later, on his return to Dartmouth as a sub lieutenant, among the foreign officers were half a dozen fiery individuals from Algeria who claimed they had most recently been Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) guerrillas, who had killed French citizens and should not, therefore, be messed around with. In later years, many of these overseas trainees were to die in civil wars in their respective countries, several of the Iranians being assassinated by their fellow countrymen.
On their first entry the cadets were organised into six junior divisions, each supervised by two divisional officers assisted by a sub lieutenant under training. A divisional chief, normally a retired chief petty officer, looked after their routine requirements and completed the management team of each division. On arrival, each cadet was allocated a bunk in the divisional dormitory, issued with a basic uniform and an all-important pay book which, amongst other detail, required the declaration of ‘smoker’ or ‘non-smoker’. Smokers were entitled to coupons for the monthly purchase of 300 cigarettes especially produced for the Royal Navy and rumoured to consist of the floor sweepings of a well-known tobacco company. These were at a ludicrously low price, yet another hangover from a bygone era, and a benefit which could hardly be considered as conducive to good health. Almost the first lesson the cadets learned was to sign up as smokers in order to acquire the coupons, these being a negotiable currency.
Roughly half of the British cadets were from public-school backgrounds, most of the remainder coming from grammar schools. The General List entrants had been educated to university entrance qualification. There was also a sprinkling of so-called ‘upper yardsmen’, the quaint title for those individuals who, starting out as ratings, possessed outstanding qualities commending their promotion at an early stage in their careers from the lower deck into the General List. The former public schoolboys settled most easily into an existence with which they were already familiar. For many of the others, Conley included, induction was a more painful process as they struggled with the college routines and the very strict discipline which was enforced by all levels of the staff. Punishment for even relatively trivial offences, such as being late for lectures, involved extra drills, physical exertions or tedious changes of uniform. The practice of making recalcitrants run up and down the many steps leading to the River Dart had ended the previous year when an unfortunate youth under punishment had collapsed and died of heart failure.
Seemingly interminable time was spent undertaking training on the parade ground. Even with the Royal Marine Band attached to the college providing stirring martial music, there were those who found drill difficult, while taking charge of a squad and barking orders introduced Conley and many of his peers to a very novel and not entirely comfortable experience. Inculcating a parade-ground voice required in some cases the undertaking of ‘backward shouting’ classes, a public indication of a shortcoming somewhat hard to take. Moreover, much was made of defects in dress, such as wearing gaiters upside down, a mistake the consequences of which Conley afterwards recalled as ‘the biggest humiliation in my entire Service career.’