Duties of a Captain’s Secretary
Heroes Remember
Duties of a Captain’s Secretary
I was sitting in the captain's office, the captain's sec was a
Lt commander, very senior who, because the captains in the RN,
particularly a senior captain like H.R.G. Kinahan who this chap
was, brought their secretary with them, but he hadn't been on
leave for several years or for at least a year, so he went off on
three week's leave. So I was with him a couple of weeks, he left
me for three weeks as captain's sec, acting, probationary,
unpaid what have you, and I, but I said, the captain was pretty
good but he was, he expected more than, than I was able to offer
I'm sure. But I did that for three weeks and then I, the sec came
back and quite a while after he said, he told me that,
"I'm still finding mistakes you made." But, anyway, I was in the
captain's office and then you had that strange system which the
RCN kept going right through the war pretty well, at least the
first part of it, of having to get a ledger certificate to keep
accounts, it was all that, you had to do it for two quarters.
So I moved from the captain's office to the pay office, and I was
keeping a ledger there of officers and marines and certain people
under the watchful eye of a chief petty, of a chief writer.
I remember having great difficulty with pounds, shillings and
pence. I always kidded the chief writer with, "How many are in
what?" But anyway that went on for quite a while, well I was
there until, I think my note I have, there until the middle of
November. The ship itself worked up at Scapa Flow and we had a,
we went up from, from Newcastle to Rosyth and they finished
fitting out over several weeks and then we went up to Scapa
and we joined all the other battleships and
cruisers that were up there.
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