Posted on 12/01/2013 10:25:43 AM PST by artichokegrower
Earlier in the year, the Ministry of Defense in the United Kingdom modified two of the Naval Toasts following the Loyal Toast in the Royal Navy after centuries of ‘tradition and privilege’. The amendments were necessitated by cultural changes that (slowly) have transpired over the course of centuries to reflect that women have been entering and moving up the ranks of the Navy, whether in the UK or the US and many more, and also women having a more frequent presence in the merchant marine worldwide as well.
The history of the Loyal Toast (‘The King/Queen, God Bless Him/Her!’) is long and its origin is lost in time but its purpose is self-explanatory; since Horatio Nelson’s era, it was common that the Loyal Toast be followed at mess dinners by several toasts that had to be formalized and used on a rotating basis, a separate naval toast for each day of the week:
On Sunday ‘To Absent Friends!’, on Monday ‘To Our Ships at Sea!’, On Tuesday ‘To Our Men!’, and on Wednesday ‘To Ourselves!’ On Thursday ‘To A Bloody War or A Sickly Season!’ On Friday ‘To A Willing Foe and Sea Room!’ and on Saturday ‘To Sweethearts and Wives!’
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
Hear, hear!
Remain clam...
The Marine Corps version is "To our wives and girlfriends (may they never meet)!"
In the modern Navy I suspect that the toast, “Bottoms Up!” may need further qualifications.
<Runs from room>
:)
Thanks for the reminder. I just checked the tide tables and we have some good low tides at a decent hour.
Not naval but, Here’s to us and those like us. Damn few, and most of them are dead.
“To rum, sodomy, and the lash!”
This, no doubt, has a special meaning for alcoholic, gay, sadomaschocists?
“To A Willing Foe And Sea Room!”
I was at The Sea Room in Providence. They water down the drinks. Unfriendliest bartender in town. Called the police on us after we started shooting beer bottles off his head. I only nicked him.
On a serious note, the Article of War that prohibited homosexual conduct and was punishable by death was meant to curb the conduct of officers, not foremast jacks. Officers had the power and the opportunity (private cabins) to sodomize their choice of the many young boys that served on the muster rolls of the Royal Navy. Very few officers were ever hanged for the offense, but they were cashiered from the Navy and never allowed to serve again.
The great danger of the fashion to embrace homosexuals within the military and naval forces of the Western World is that young soldiers and sailors will once again be sexually assaulted by their officers and non commissioned officers. These crimes will be suppressed by the political class as it undermines their social policy. It’s probably already going on.
A willing foe and the weather gage.
Survivors of the gulag would toast...
“To all those still at sea”,
for those still in the system.
” Officers had the power and the opportunity (private cabins) to sodomize their choice of the many young boys that served on the muster rolls of the Royal Navy.”
The cabin boy, the dirty little nipper, had a solution which involved fiberglass (or broken glass). At least according to a completely off-colour song popular in the Canadian military since at least WWI.
The lyrics are completely unsuitable for repeating on this forum; but, you can read them here:
http://www.oocities.org/squadron400/north.htm
Not sung on guest nights, I’m guessing.
Clams have seas? Oyster sure about that?
- Air Force toast
I remember reading in a letter to a British newspaper that it was the legalization of homosexuality that finally ended the tradition of sodomy in the Royal Navy as the buggerers were free to practice their sport ashore. Previously, the writer, a former RN officer, said the young lads had no defense from the predatory Petty Officers who had joined the navy with the express of having their wicked way. He said he well remembered the glassy-eyed look of some young rating after he had been raped and was glad to see the back of the men who did this with the legalization of homosexuality.
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