"HIGH NOON" on the WALKERTON - By Dave Walker (Ex-MEM1) D178218X

The thing that sticks with me the most about life on the Walkerton was the fairly relaxed relationship between "all" of the ranks. Maybe it was because you just had to cut the lads a bit of "slack" cooped up on that small boat, which would bob like a cork in the smallest of "Roughers". It wasn't unusual for the lads to go a bit Stir Crazy.

Fads to relieve the tension where regular, like the time we all bought Catapults. We found the best ammo was deck bolts and after a week at sea the Engineers store was completely cleared out of deck bolts, and all the plates where loose in the Engine Room. After that the catapults where confiscated and thrown over the side by the COB.

But the Fad I'll always remember, is on a long stint on Salmon Patrol off the coast of Ireland. The the 'dipstick' in charge of the projector hadn't changed the movies and the only decent one on board was the "Clint" movie: "The Outlaw Josie Wales" which we watched every night for a month. After about a fortnight of this, somebody (must have been a Seaman) (Why ? - Ed) started a pretend gun fight using his fingers as a gun. This caught on and at the next refuel stop, at the Isle of Man, we all raided the local Toy Shop and bought Cap guns,' three foot' wide foam Cowboy hats and about fifty quids worth of caps each!!. After that you couldn't go on the upper deck without being "Ambushed". We even wore our Cowboy hats and gun belts on Boardings.

But it never dawned on any of us how much we'd "lost it" this time until we pulled into a small Scottish fishing village for an 'over-nighter' and saw the looks on the faces of the locals at the sight of Her Majesty's Ship Walkerton, manned  by the entire cast of "Blazing Saddles".