basic training badges

NOTE: THESE PICTURES ARE NOT THUMBNAILS. THEY CAN NOT BE INCREASED IN SIZE.

Badges of HMS Ganges.

1. Advanced Class boy. Awarded to a boy who had shown above average ability in school work. Sewn onto the uniform and worn on the right upper sleeve on all uniforms. Being an AC boy meant that you would be selected for the communications branch, where training was for 15 months, from aged 15 years 3 months to 16½. It was the second promotion whilst at Ganges, the first being a Boy 2nd class, followed by this academic award, then Boy 1st class, and finally, ready for sea, Boy Telegraphist [in my case]. If you were below average or on the border line, you would become known as a General Class [GC] boy, and your fate would be to become a seaman. Seamen boys stayed at Ganges for 12 months, so went to sea earlier than we did. Most of us hated that extra 3 months at Ganges, but when we got to sea, we realised that we had got the better of the two deals.

2. Leading Boy - {see note at end of 4 below}. Leading boys were chosen from the class and wore white coloured gaiters: ours were kahki coloured. He also wore a small stripe [smaller than a proper sailors good conduct stripe]. It was his job to make sure that we got from place to place on time, and in an orderly manner. I always saw it as a most unattractive job, and anyway, it broke all the rules of Ganges where it was wise to keep your head down. My instructor, PO Telegraphist Stan Sydes, told me that I would make a good Leading Boy were I not so shy, and I, plus others, were to have a supervised 'out coming' to develope us for the job. Little did he know [or perhaps he did] that I wasn't as shy as I made out, and Ganges was tough enough without volunteering for extra stress under a spotlight. Nothing came of this 'coming out'.

3. PO Boy - {see note at end of 4 below}. A Petty Officer boy was a promotion up from being an outstanding Leading boy, and whilst every class had a leading boy, there was only one Petty Officer Boy per division: a division was approximately 6 messes with two classes in each mess. He was quite an important boy with enough power to upset your life if you tried to make it an issue. Both Leading boys and Petty Officer boys were on-course boys, and on completion of their training, they went off to sea with their class mates [or class enemies, depending]!

4. Instructor Boy. Power indeed! Such a boy was chosen after he had proved his worth as an outstanding Petty Officer boy. After his training time was completed, he would stay on in Ganges for a few more months, where he would assist the training staff in the New Entry Division across in the Annexe and in the Main establishment itself. As I recall there were only a very small number of them [about eight] and they strutted about the place as though they had been in the Navy all their lives. They had great authority and we boys called them Sir, just like we called any of our instructional staff, and of course, members of the ships company.

NOTE: Research shows that when Ganges regained it's primary status of training boy's for the fleet, which occurred after the second world war, it adopted a modus operandi which was virtually the same as the routines, organisation and administration which the pre-war Ganges had been so successful in building. In 1937 for example, Ganges had 5 instructor boy's in the Main and 6 in the Annexe. There were 21 P.O., boy's and 62 leading boy's. The divisions and their names in 1937 continued on into the post 1945 period and to my certain knowledge Blake, Drake, Benbow, Hawke, Collingwood, Rodney, Grenville, and Anson, eight in all, were still going strong in 1953. In 1937, there were 49 messes [same as post-war] and one can assume approximately 2000 boy's being trained for a large pre-war and post-war fleet - see my page, under NAVY THINGS, specifically the size of the navy in 1950 by clicking here THE NAVY AND ITS CHANGES DURING MY 30 YEAR CAREER 1953

5. Boy marksman and Boy Coxswain. Aspiring to be either of these was good fun, the latter depending upon the time of year, and best in the summer months. Most of the boy Coxswains came from the seaman classes but there were a couple of communication boys amongst their ranks. Once qualified, a boy Coxswain could take a boat away from the jetty into the river with the minimum of supervision.

As the name says, the sleeve badge of a Petty Officer artificer Apprentice whilst under training.