Minesweeper Life Cast List HMS FISKERTON
Lieutenant Peter Down - First
Lieutenant
Gunboat Crew
HMS CHAWTON
Everyone who has sailed with
J.J Black, whether as a Lieutenant or an Admiral, will know him as a charismatic
leader. His “eccentricities” generate a strong esprit de corps. There can
also be a certain irritability if things go wrong - but then he was a gunnery
specialist.
At the time Fiskerton was deeply into Nelson’s Navy, probably as a result of a truly awful Hornblower-type film “HMS Defiant” which we had on board. The film featured Alec Guinness as the kindly Captain, a non-flogger, and Dirk Bogard as a thoroughly unpleasant First Lieutenant. For reasons which escaped me as the Jimmy, JJ insisted that the film was an accurate portrait of our little steamer and orders became peppered with “Avast There”s and “Haul Away Handsomely”s. Peter Ford became Lieutenant Ffarquahar, the clean living Second and hero of the piece. “Trusty Boatswains” and “Hearts of Oak , Jack Tars” abounded. Our two Junior Seamen were turned into a saluting gun crew in quasi-period uniform, serving an old Chinese brass cannon which JJ had acquired. The serious and productive
side of these jollies was a tremendous sprit in the boat which offset the
occasional inconveniences of life in a minesweeper.
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