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The ships, Saguenay and St. Laurent were on a port visit to Liverpool, England in the fall of 1973 or 1974 – I can’t remember which, but the date is not important. I was on HMCS Saguenay. The visit lasted about five days and during shore leave one night my pals and I visited the Cavern – the place where the Beatles started their rise to fame and fortune.
We were berthed at a pier on the downtown waterfront – Saguenay was alongside the jetty and St. Laurent was tied up alongside (outboard of) her.
The squadron Padre came up with an idea to host a party for Liverpool’s under-privileged children on the flight decks of each ship. There’d be hot dogs and cold drinks served, and we’d show cartoons in the hangars of each ship. The Padre had made arrangements with the resident Canadian liaison officer who recruited the children from a local inner city school.
Upon hearing about the party in advance, four of us – Wayne Robertson, Steve Goodchild, Gary Peverell and I – volunteered to act as clowns. The Padre and Executive Officer (XO) thought that it was a good idea, but suggested that we go ashore and rent costumes rather than fabricate makeshift ones. The XO told us to bill the Supply Officer for the rental fees. With that, we went ashore on the morning of the big event and rented some pretty fancy costumes. The old ladies at the costume shop were just as enthusiastic about the affair and we were, and therefore went all out to kit us up properly.
We arrived back onboard with about an hour to spare, just enough time to get dressed up in our fancy costumes before the arrival of our honoured guests – the children and their mothers.
At 1300 hrs, the little urchins and their depressing looking mothers arrived. The Padre was at the gangway head to greet them and direct them to the flight decks of each ship. The plan was to have two parties going on in unison on flight decks of each ship. On the Saguenay, we clowns met our little guests on the flight deck while carrying out a little slapstick humour.
There was a problem however. The children on the St. Laurent looked next door (the flight decks were only eight feet apart) at the party on the Saguenay and felt short changed, as there were no clowns at their party. Within twenty minutes, all the children from the St. Laurent party had filed back across the gangway and joined our party. We were swarmed with screaming little rug rats and their downtrodden mothers.
Anyway, we carried on. We showed the cartoons first and then served the hotdogs and drinks. This took about an hour and a half. Just about the time when it was time for them to leave, it seemed as if there was a hidden signal to the children from one of the mothers, because all a once, the children dispersed in all directions. They went on a looting spree below decks. Nowhere was beyond their reach. They went into every cafeteria and every messdeck looting as they proceeded. The Captain’s steward even encountered one kid going through the Old Man’s personal belongings in the innermost reaches of his cabin. The spree lasted about forty-five minutes, and no one seemed capable of stopping it; there had to be two hundred of the little monsters.
The cafeterias were stripped bare of all condiments – ketchup, relish, peanut butter, even serviette dispensers and salt/pepper dispensers – anything that was attractive and moveable. Fortunately, sailors that hadn’t gone ashore chased the little pack rats out of the mess decks and set up sentries on cameras, boots and a whole lot of other stuff would have been looted. So, most of the loot was food-related. Towards the end, mothers carried cases of bread on their shoulders across the gangway.
The Padre was at his wits end as there were local media onboard to cover the event. He wouldn’t allow anyone to snatch stuff back as they crossed the gangway with our rations because he thought the press might come out with a story with the headline: ‘Canadian Sailors snatch food from needy children,’ with a photo of the same. |
