31st July 1970 was the day the Royal Navy lost it’s hardest fought battle in history.

The Tot was issued for the last time, except for very special occasions.

For the tars who were in the Andrew at that time it was a most distressing day.
I was killick of the stokers mess onboard HMS Zulu in Rosyth that day and after the rum issue and the Queens had been passed round for the final time, we took the Rum Fanny and hacksawed the bottom off it and took it to a jeweller's in Dunfermline who had previously agreed to cut medallions out of the aluminium bottom and engrave them for each ‘G’ member on the stoker’s mess.

The jeweller engraved the front with the message:

IN MEMORY OF
THE LAST TOT
31st. July 1970

And the rear was engraved with:

HMS ZULU
And the name and rank of each member.

He drilled them and supplied a link and a silver chain for each disc and charged £5 per medal.
We could not really wear them round our neck for long because the disc was ally and you got a black patch on your chest. But it was a keepsake.

We had 18 made, 16 for the members and two spare but I do not know what happened to any of the others.

The Jack Dusty was quite upset when I returned the rum fanny to slops to get it off my slop chit. He didn’t believe where the bottom had gone when he lifted the lid and saw that it was missing. I put the blame down to the strength of the Navy Neaters rum.

This may sound a load of rubbish to the people who were not in the Royal Navy but should bring back a few memories for some of the old salts on here.

I intended posting this last year for the 40th anniversary but was unable to get on line in hospital.

dave

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You can always tell a Yorkshireman,
But you cannot tell him much.

Thanks for that Dave, I'm not an old salt but little pieces of history like that are quite fascinating anyway, especially those with such a good provenance.

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One day it will all be firewood.

As above, good to hear the history that otherwise we would never hear about.

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Nick

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