A return to HMS Ganges

HMS Ganges was a training shore establishment of the Royal Navy, and was active at Shotley Gate in Suffolk until 1976. It trained teenage boys to become professional seamen. The Navy had switched to using iron steam-propelled warships well before 1900, but continued to insist on its youthful intake learning how to manage a wind-driven vessel. So the training laid emphasis on traditional sailing skills, including agility and confidence on tall masts. 

I have been fascinated with HMS Ganges for decades. It's the fascination of the fearful for a place where terrifying things were expected.  What did I fear? Dizzy heights. The nightmare of the tiny platform at the very top of the mast in the parade ground at HMS Ganges, to which a chosen trainee would be sent - the Button Boy - to stand erect in smart Naval fashion, one arm stiffly by his side, the other raised in a formal salute; and below him, arranged in symmetrical order on each horizontal spar, or on the shrouds and ratlines, dozens of other young trainees, all forming the kind of spectacle beloved of training masters, put on for the benefit of important visitors. Each boy trying to quell the natural dread of being far from the ground and highly likely to fall if careless. But the Button Boy most likely of all. 

Here are three pictures, probably taken in 1918, 1925 and the third much later, any time up to the 1970s. 

It's undeniably impressive. I had a good deal to say about it all in my post Ultra vertigo potential: the Button Boy on 29th July 2023. And in my post The boy who fell, published on 29th August 2023, I related how I personally tracked down the grave (at nearby Shotley churchyard) of the only Boy recorded as falling to his death from the mast. The only one the Navy ever admitted to, that is. 

When HMS Ganges closed in 1976, the buildings and grounds were turned over to other official uses. The mast remained, although gradually deteriorating, so that by the time I came to see what was left in July 2023, it had been partially dismantled, and was a sad shadow of its former self, half the height and devoid of rigging. 

The site had been taken over by a private developer, on the basis that the mast would be reinstated in all its former glory. So I resolved to return, to see whether this would happen. I managed it in June this year.

As you enter Shotley Gate, you see the first fruit of the the developer's work. It's clearly intended to be a cut above the ordinary run-of-the-mill building scheme.

Here's some of their online material:

That's meant to be a Button Boy showing the shilling coin he would have received from the commander of HMS Ganges for climbing to the top of the mast and saluting from the tiny platform there, the 'button'. It was a kind of medal for the skill and courage displayed. I can imagine a very daring kind of boy putting themselves forward for that duty. He would get a lot of admiration for it, and it would do him no harm whatever in his future career in the Navy.

I turned into Nelson Avenue, one of the new residential roads, to find out whether the mast could be seen from there, and if so, what state it was in.

It was a large site to develop, containing some old buildings, presumably listed, that might prove difficult to turn into apartments. Such as that long one in the picture just above (although I think it might be used as a sports hall). Now wasn't that the mast behind it? I drove around to what had once been the main gates.

Yes, the mast had been restored to its full height, button included, and with all its rigging. I took a series of telephoto shots, mostly with with my phone.

You can make out the lightning-conductor at the very top that served as a thin handle for the Button Boy to grasp when hauling himself onto the button. He would try to lean against it when standing to attention and making his salute. 

These were, incidentally, evening shots, taken after 8.00pm, with sunset approaching. I think that, considering the diminishing light level, the little Leica and the phone did quite well. 

I was pleased to see that the developer had restored the mast. Although I do not care for the use it was once put to, it is an historic structure that could have been lost, and the historian in me approves of its renaissance. I do wonder, however, who will maintain it in the years to come. Will the new residents have to take turns to mount the rigging to tar and repaint as needed? And who will check the button at the very top?