WATTS NAVAL SCHOOL .

The gymnasium at Watts

There is no doubt that the Barnados sea schools were very good and very successful. On the discipline front the procedure at Russell Cotes and then Parkstone as it became was the usual defaulters' report and then between three and six 'cuts' in the gymnasium over the horse, in private but with the inflicting Petty Officer plus three officers. No ritual or special dress and executed very formally and properly. At Watts up to 1926 it was done with trousers off and the boy strapped over a four-legged horse and biting on a lump of cloth, and always with either the entire school or the defaulter's division mustered to witness it. Afterwards it was over either naval shorts or P.E. shorts in the gym. Cdr 'Flogger' Campbell was in charge between 1934 and 1940, and then back again in 1943 following a war wound. The wound did not appear to impede the movement of his right arm! He usually meted out the canings himself in his own study, and there were reported instances of it being on the bare. Campbell was dismissed in 1946 . The reason was the result of 37 boys enjoying a mass absconding, which was more for devilry and a bit of apple-scrumping than anything else. The less resolute came back within an hour or so and were locked in a basement cellar. It took two days for the remainder to be brought back. It seems that Campbell held the equivalent of a court martial and every boy was sentenced to 12 cuts of the cane. The canings took over two hours to complete, done in the basement cellar with the vaulting horse taken there complete with canvas strappings. The boys were caned on their bare backsides and it was said that their yelps could be heard in the classrooms. Two boys, on being released, ran off again and when caught by the police one of them revealed the state of his buttocks. A police doctor was brought in and then a complaint went to Barnados. Campbell retired on grounds of 'ill health' shortly afterwards. That is the only known instance of abuse at Watts, otherwise the discipline was very strict but fairly imposed.

 

Watts boys leaving for Canada after their training to join the Canadian Navy