Geoff Brown on Sea Scouts

We went up to what we call Senior Scouts, which was the 15 to 18 bracket, our Group Scout Leader, Peter Eden, was Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve based in Southampton and we had a chance when he took HMS Warsash which was an old coastal minesweeper, very old, when he took that out, occasionally we had a chance to go out as part of the crew on that.

And, we often upset the normal reserve crew because our seamanship skills were better than them.

We used to put the ropes ashore ‘cos we could throw heaving lines and they couldn’t. One of our team used to steer the ship often, because especially out of the Inner Dock at Southampton because it was a bit complicated. There’s no Ocean Village, there’s no Dock gates. At that time, it was kept inside the Dock; Friday nights you had to get it out through a lock, and he did all the steering because he was better than the regular reserve crews.

So yes, we did upset the normal sailors because our seamanship…that was good fun because we used to do sweeping exercises, set out… stuff out over the stern and look for mines and what have you.

We did one sweeping exercise off the French coast in Boulogne and three Mine Sweepers, we were the last one. The idea was if the other two had popped a mine up, the one behind was meant to shoot at it and set it off. We did a straw poll on the Warsash, there was nobody who could actually shoot, so we said, “Hope they don’t pick anything up”, but at the end of that exercise two of us went in and the third one had to go back to London ‘cos there was only an official visit for two. But, that was the good experience.

Another weekend we got as far as Sandown Bay and moored in there. I can remember lunchtime, peeling the potatoes on the sweep deck there watching the pleasure boats coming out from Sandown pier…”trips round the war ships, trips round the war ship”.

We thought we could do a lot of things with these potatoes, there was a few targets out there, but we didn’t dare. But those are the sort …gives you a great experience. But again, it was just shear luck that we had the chance to let us on there…Warsash. We did that for a few years.