Geoff Brown on Sea Scouts

Well, then we were still based at Cross Street. We didn’t have any boats, again, we used to occasionally borrow the boat from the Sea Rangers which was the female part of the sort of upper teenagers, but we didn’t really do much boating at all.

Our training was sea orientated, we learned … did a lot of seamanship but without going afloat, except on Red Funnel. A fun thing we used to do with Red Funnel, the old Ferries they used to use a heaving line, which is the light rope, to throw that ashore and then put the main mooring line on.

Well, they used to take the heaving line off and just coil it up on the deck.

It’s got a big monkey’s fist on the end, which is just like a big knot, for weight. When they come to tie it on at Southampton there’s a ‘monkeys fist’ in both ends. ‘Cos we used to put one in it; that confused them somewhat.

That was our trick on that one.