I was born on 24 February, 1920, at Rockferry, near Liverpool. My father was a Principal Tenor in the Carl Rosa Opera Company and was on tour, at the time, from Covent Garden. My mother, like so many stage wives, moved from lodging to lodging, hoping one day to have a home of her own. I, and Peggy my sister, must have travelled around with our parents for most of the time, but I remember nothing about that.
Eventually it must have been altogether too much for my poor mother, because by 1925 — when I was five and my sister eight — my mother had left my father and faded out of our lives for ever. She probably realised that looking for a new husband would be a full-time job, because she farmed us out to one set of strange foster parents after another — and to separate ones at that. The only time we saw her was when she moved us from one set to another.
But when I had just had my eighth birthday, life unexpectedly took on an entirely new look. My father’s mother took us both under her loving wing and we went to live with her in Croydon.
My father had by this time married one of his leading ladies — a protégée called Rose Hignell. He later gave up the stage because of asthma and started a nursery, overlooking the river Hamble. He was therefore permanently within sight of boats — his main joy — and usually within the sound and sight of aircraft, his other hobby.
While living with Granny in Croydon in her big Victorian house, she taught me to sing. So, on moving south when grandfather died, she had the brilliant idea of sending me, when I was ten, to a voice trial for Winchester Cathedral choir. I was lucky to get into the choir at that age. However, Doctor Prendergast — organist and choirmaster — had a poorish lot to choose from that year, for I was accepted and given a scholarship to the Cathedral School in the Close. Granny listened outside the vestry door during the voice trial and she said that I had been a credit to my father even though I had sung the words of the hymn in the wrong order. So the summer of 1930 marked the beginning of my education at a proper school.
Following some serious trouble involving the Headmaster, no less, the school was immediately closed and refounded from top to bottom in an entirely new building at the opposite end of the Close. It was renamed the Pilgrims’ School. This was because the ‘new’ building, designed by Wren, was attached to the Canterbury Pilgrims’ Barn. It was all set in the most beautiful grounds stretching down to the river at the bottom of the garden and surrounded by ancient buildings and some trees which had been planted by Charles II.
I was, of course, junior boy in the choir to start with and this meant that I had to pump the practice organ for a good deal of the time during choir practice. Our choir practice was held twice a day except Sundays. It took place in the vestry in the Cathedral. Dr. Prendergast and his assistant organist, Miss Hilda Bird, sat at the organ keyboard in the vestry. Opposite stood the twenty choirboys, more or less held upright by six large and ancient wooden lecterns on which they balanced their music and carved their initials.
By the side, in a dark corner, stood us probationers, two fingers stuck in the side of our mouths to keep them wide open when we sang. Behind the choir rose the practice organ itself, a majestic edifice — perhaps by Grindling Gibbons — of polished and carved woodwork, pipes of brass, large square ones of wood, swell boxes, louvres and levers — and all covered with the dust of ages. It reached to the vaulted stone roof and it made a terrific noise at full throttle.
Towards the end of, I believe, Handel’s Halleluja Chorus, Doctor Prendergast shouted “Blow” to the copy boy. Unknown to me, this was the standard way of asking the copy boy to distribute the next bit of music to be practised — by the composer’s name. I naturally thought it was a demand for more wind and I redoubled my efforts. After a few more “Blows” (William Blow, King’s Musician and Cathedral Organist 1669-1702), the copy boy — Rooke by name and Captain of Soccer — finally heard the order and went to look for the music. The last shout from the Doctor coincided with the top A and ‘Full Organ’ of the closing bars of Handel’s Oratorio. Something happened up aloft amongst the organ pipes and a paper aeroplane, dislodged from its ancient hangar by the unaccustomed rush of wind, began a circuit of the vestry. It slowly lost height in a series of graceful fugoids, finally making a perfectly judged approach and touchdown at about middle C on the top manual of Doctor Prendergast’s organ. Could this fine example of man-made airmanship, to such inspiring accompaniment, have kindled in my boyish mind the first appreciation of the art of aviation?
I was beginning to understand, from sailing, how air can lift things and, although it may be soft and invisible, it can yet exert frightening forces when it likes. Sometimes it seemed to me that air took pleasure, almost, in flowing round the natural sweet curves of a seagull, to cradle it gently in its arms. I wondered what it might be whispering as it passed, say, an albatross — a bird so sweetly designed that it scarcely needs to flap its wings once to stay aloft, day after day, in the South Atlantic, and its instinctive knowledge and beneficial use of natural phenomena such as ground effect, thermals, cliff-edge effect and wind shear, which no glider pilot could hope to match. Then, those fighter pilots, the darting swallows, as they plucked their food with superb judgement from the air, insects too small for me to see and flying too quickly for me to follow with my eyes. How rudely must nature’s love affair be broken at Heathrow each morning when man takes to the air in his own creations. Who can blame it if it sometimes plucks them angrily aside and hurls them in pieces to the ground.
One Christmas, at the Pilgrims’ School, one of the masters decided to invite parents from far and near to see us do a few scenes from Macbeth. I started off at rehearsals as Lady Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene. However, as we were very busy choirboys, most of us had little spare time and the master asked for rehearsals at awkward times. One of his sudden requests coincided with my determination to get steam-up in my steam engine. It had just been repaired by the school gardener for 1/6d (7½p) and I was looking forward to seeing it working again. Steam engines included many of the things that I liked doing, such as striking matches, messing about with meths and seeing the blue flame spread everywhere. Then there was filling the boiler with water and the pleasure of hearing it splutter and hiss just before it suddenly blew off steam from its purposely over-pressurised safety valve. The master in charge of Macbeth did not appreciate this scientific cliff-hanging at all, and would pick just such a moment to say, “Come on, Crosley, I hope you’ve remembered your lines”.
As a result, on such occasions, I made a particularly emotional and vicious Lady Macbeth and actually got congratulated sometimes. However, the part itself was so far removed from even the furthest flight of my imagination that I made no real effort to learn the lines or remember the meticulous exhortations of the master as he strove for perfection.
So, after forgetting my lines for the umpteenth time and laughing when I dropped the candle, I was taken off the part of Lady Macbeth and was offered the lesser part of Macbeth himself, in the second witches’ scene. Having been bequeathed a sword, a shield and some armour from Jack Graham — the outgoing Macbeth — I would have been an idiot not to accept. As this part seemed to need no acting ability — being conducted in almost pitch darkness — and the lines seemed to be less illogical and easier to remember than Lady Macbeth’s, I managed to stay the course. Graham, as Lady Macbeth, brought the house down. But I was not cut out for the stage, I would have to think about joining the Navy or something.
At about this time, as a belated birthday present, I was taken up in a DH (Cirrus) Moth by my father. He was a member of the Hampshire Aeroplane Club at Eastleigh. He did the slowest slow roll, with me clutching the sides of the front cockpit, that had ever been attempted. The engine stopped, I hung on to my straps listening to the sound of wind in the rigging wires and wondering whether I would ever like flying again. But by the time I had landed a quarter of an hour later, I could hardly wait to have a go myself. I longed to be able to frighten my own passengers. However I would have to learn how to drive a car first. This I did by practising on my father’s 1925 ‘Bullnose’ Morris, used for carting manure around the nursery. As it only had back wheel brakes, it was marvellous for practising ground loops in the mud.
Living so near Calshot and right opposite Hamble airfield, the sky buzzed with aircraft all day long. Some were flying boats. In the summer I could watch them from our boat in the Solent. They came over and landed a few yards away, showing off to the ‘J.’ Class racing yachts, sometimes with the King at the helm of Britannia. It looked terrific fun, and the fact that they were being paid for doing it completed the heavenly picture. They splashed around throughout the summer months, their crews waving at us as they passed, the hulls of their Saro Clouds glistening with the water running off them as they rose with a roar from the white-flecked water. They looked so masterful, skilful, and brave in their leather flying jackets and helmets. and were obviously officers. The Training Ship Mercury in the Hamble, run by C. B. Fry and his famous wife, lay near our moorings and such was the Spartan life the boy sailors led, I determined, if I ever joined the Navy, that I would be an officer, for the life of a rating seemed too hard.
The Schneider Trophy races then took place in the Solent. The last two series of races were based at Calshot. We naturally took a ringside seat in our boat. The red, blue and green seaplanes thrashed off in a cloud of spray and disappeared in the direction of Ryde, to reappear from the Portsmouth direction in one or two minutes at speeds of up to 350 miles an hour, and in vertical banked turns only a few feet from the sea.
Of course, the British won the Schneider Trophy. We took such things for granted. No one could beat the British at anything in those days — or so we thought. However, by 1931, government money for such semi-military things was scarce. So we were all delighted — and so was the RAF and the race committee — when we heard one morning that a Lady Houston, OBE, would ‘defray the cost of Britain competing’ from the vast wealth left her by her third husband, Sir Robert Houston, when he died in 1924. Far more important than the eventual winning of the trophy and the world’s speed record was the fact that the Rolls-Royce and Supermarine teams — the latter under a genius called R. J. Mitchell CBE, — were kept in being. So that, when war seemed inevitable in 1938/9 we had the Merlin engine (its supercharger design being a direct ‘production’ model of that in the Buzzard) and, of course, Mitchell’s Spitfire, which used much of the experience gained in the further development of the 1931 winner — the S6B.
When my voice broke at the age of 14, it was decided that all my father could afford was to send me to a day school, King Edward VI at Southampton. I lived at our new house, ‘Broomhill’, at Sarisbury Green and caught the Bursledon Flyer to school each day.
The train dated from about 1910 and it took an hour to accomplish about five miles as the crow flies. It included in its journey every hamlet and village for miles around as it wound its wheezy way, like a damp catherine wheel, out of Bursledon and in the general direction of Southampton.
My hobby was, of course, boats and boatbuilding. I added to my stock of brass screws for the boat that I happened to be building at the time by unscrewing these from the carriages. Brass screws were both expensive and essential, and the Southern Railway used hundreds of them.
I came back a few years after leaving school and I sat in the same carriages. The same screws were still missing. I mentioned this to the stationmaster — by this time employed by British Rail. He was very reassuring and told me that the carriages had been going since he was a boy and would last for ever, with or without screws.
As I walked home each night from Bursledon station up to Sarisbury Green, Moody’s boatyard was on the way. I was naturally unable to resist the temptation of a sail in my boat during the summer, particularly when the tide was high and the wind blew softly. Moody’s also allowed me to watch their shipwright apprentices in the boatbuilding sheds. They used beautiful woods — oak, Burmese teak, silver spruce, American elm, pitchpine from Norway and mahogany from the Philippines. They were building yachts to last 100 years.
With all these attractions to take me away from schoolwork it was surprising that I passed the School Certificate with a ‘possible’ of six distinctions. My father was sufficiently impressed to allow me to take the examination for ‘Special Entry’ to the Royal Navy, at the age of 17½.
About two years later I sat the exam at Burlington House in Bond Street, a very frightening experience for a country boy. I was told by nearly everyone who had had anything to do with the Navy that the interview was by far the most important part of the exam. A quarter of the marks were given for it and as boys failed to get in by as little as a single mark sometimes, I would do well to find out what the questions at the interview might be, and what the correct answers were. As these answers were based on custom rather than logic, I was advised to find a Naval Officer who had had the experience.
One said he failed probably because he didn’t know the number of the taxi that brought him to the Admiralty. Another said that I must be prepared for, and not be afraid of, a line of about 20 Admirals staring at me across the interview table at a range of a few inches, all with earwhiskers and all with gimlet eyes. One or the other of these fearsome creatures could then open fire with questions such as; “What’s wrong with me, young man?” One of my advisers said that he had passed because he had cleverly noticed that one of the Admiral’s shirt buttons was undone, below his stiff, winged collar. He said he got a verbal pat on the back from the Admiral for this fine piece of observation.
I felt thoroughly inadequate as I knocked on the high mahogany door of the interview room in the Old Admiralty Building. It was 5th November 1937.
I looked up. I could see opposite a huge oil painting of what looked like Admiral Byng just before he was shot for ‘failing to do his utmost’ to capture Minorca. I certainly did my utmost, but I tended to be too honest in my answers and I forgot all the trick replies that I had learned. But I was glad when the subject turned to sailing, for it was obvious they knew little about it and were pleased to find someone who did. Then we talked about cricket, another subject I was interested in. I was beginning to think that I was doing quite well. Then I ruined it all by two answers that must have given them the impression that I was, at the very least, a Fletcher Christian, if not a red-hot Communist. They asked me with whom I sided in the Spanish Civil War that was going on at the time. Instead of answering as I was advised to do: “I’m glad you asked me that question sir, for it was worrying me,” I said: “I stick up for the Government side of course, Sir.” As this was in the hands of the Communists, and they were fighting the Fascists, my answer was bound to be wrong whichever way I answered.
I made a complete porridge of the next question as well. One Admiral, who had been silently weighing me up from short range throughout the inquisition, now asked: “And what books have you read on the Royal Navy, young man?”
This was another loaded question. At first I could only remember such schoolboy authors as Percy F. Westerman. In his books, a Sub-Lieutenant hero straight from Dartmouth did very dashing things indeed — usually in destroyers — and the RN always won — even the Battle of Jutland. So I skilfully chose another author. The only one I could remember was Admiral Sir Barry Domville, Bart. How was I to know he was the Naval equivalent of the Red Dean of Canterbury?
Later, when I mentioned that I had chosen him as my Naval author, my friends in the Service shook their heads. So did Their Lordships. I failed to get in by 13 marks out of 1600 — or seven places in the order. Forty-five were accepted into the Navy from about 1000 who took the exam that November.
So I joined the Metropolitan Police instead.