Arrival at Akbar

I was born in Cardiff, Wales, September 16th 1932, within a pebble’s toss of the salt sea called Tiger Bay. My father Bill Mudd was in the Merchant Navy, and shipboard visits and trips abroad kept a nice tang of Stockholm Tar and ozone on the air of the home kitchen.

His personal gifts were always exotic and plentiful, brought from distant places by a loving Dad. Things like a miniature New York City cop’s uniform, and real leather boxing gloves and a heavy bag, roller and ice skates (we seldom saw any ice in winter); western rigs; a complete set of silk Arab robes for a small Emir; a beautifully yellow canary that died of psitticosis after some months; a foot scooter; and a grand electrical Rolls Royce model toy car for running around the garden, et cetera.

By the age of thirteen I knew all the bends and hitches, could box the compass fluently, splice rope, and rig a painter’s stage at least. Being sent to The Akbar as ‘beyond parental control’ as a result of a virulent seafaring wanderlust that led me to take a Pier Head Jump on a fishing trawler at the age of fourteen, dressed in cricket flannels and blazer, was intended for punishment. It was to turn out to be a great blessing to me, as it was to teach me early about some useful realities of nautical life.

Arriving at the southern hill-top edge of the Wirral, at Heswall, above the old Akbar establishment, looking due south, standing beside the building I was to come to know as Sick Berth, my attention was first drawn to the broad mud-banked expanse of the river Dee estuary, with the purple mountains of my country Wales on the far shore. Chester lay upstream to our east, and vague coasters were moving slowly along the Welsh coast, coming as my escort said ‘probably from Port Sunlight’.

The ship HNTS, Heswall Naval Training Ship, the shore establishment of HMS Akbar, lay below, a huge two-story Victorian stone oblong of military-style buildings built around a broad, long deck. I am minded of a later description of the buildings later by an English master writing in the school broadsheet ‘reminiscent of the buildings of Torre Annunciata or His Majesty’s Prison at Brixton, South-West One…’

At the western (forward) end lay the Drill Hall and Gymnasium buildings, known as ‘the pointy end’. To the south lay Division Two and Division Four, above an instruction room called The Games Room, which contained no hint of any game whatever, and the Boot Room the Port Watch, containing showers, basins, and heating areas. It was also the site of all caning punishments. North side, nearest to our viewpoint, lay Division One and Division Three, the Starboard Watch with the solitary Confinement Block and its bare cells attached. At the eastern end (the Poop), were the Quarterdeck and Halfdeck with the administration offices, Deputy Commander’s house and office, Captain’s Office, and the Officers’ Mess.

At Akbar, if you thought you knew what was going on in administrator’s minds, inscrutable as mandarins, you ‘knew what was coming down the chute’ or ‘had the full Poop’ on everything. You were a Wise Guy and possibly, if you could run a black market in smokes, a Baron and a Hard Man.

Akbar Report

To the east of the school’s front façade, standing alone, was the full-rigged, lovingly cared-for mast of a seventy-six gunner man’o’war with strong shrouds, and rising on the air, the clattering sound of hundreds of metal-shod boots, bosun’s whistles and barking drill voices hung on the air, and here and there boys in naval rig and shorts doubled to and fro in charge of senior boy petty officers.

On a playing field east of the mast, boys played various sports, while a group below worked on the rig of a life-boat at the side of a small pond, operating davits.

My overall impression at the time was one of awe at the general atmosphere of order and sheer organization, made evident by what I could hear and see. It excited me, because I had a very boot-in-the-butt disciplined up-bringing, and wanted to learn everything about being a seaman in order to get out on the bosom of the waves as soon as possible.

When I walked downhill, there was no fear in my step. I could not wait for the adventure that clearly awaited me, this new experience: not knowing yet that Akbar had the reputation of being the toughest school ever existing in the British Empire, but I was to find out about that. Akbar was about to undertake a
series of developmental changes, and I was there to witness that they were mainly due to the unceasing civilizing efforts of one person – Lt.Commander Martin Johnson, R.N.V.R., whose wartime specialty was the defusing of German sea-mines, whose life’s vocation was the development of human character.

His motto?

c + t = CT‘A little care and a little trust equals Character Training’

Completed Sunday February 5 2006.

Into the Inferno:

It soon became clear to anyone committed to Akbar that there was no lying around, lounging, sitting, standing still nor walking in that world. There was only running, shouting, polishing, shining, fighting, training, training, training, with crashing boots, to an aural cacophony of boys trying to keep up with the demands of their Petty Officers and Leading Hands.

It was the way the Navy’s Hearts of Oak were seasoned, and it worked.