Way aloft on a mast
The mast-manning was a feature of parents’ day when 75 boys scaled the mast with the button boy perched on the top with just a lightning conductor to grip between his knees.
The first time you heard the instructor order ‘first six, way aloft’ put the fear of God into most, including me!
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Hide AdAt the Royal Tournament held at Earls Court, London, in 1964 the spectacle of mast-manning was re-enacted in the arena. Twenty-one junior ratings from HMS Dryad, Southwick, and HMS Mercury near Petersfield with no doubt some ex-Ganges and St Vincent boys among them, volunteered to climb the makeshift mast.
It had been built by Accles and Pollock of Birmingham and was 80ft high. The rigging was supplied by Portsmouth dockyard and Bertram Mills Circus provided ideas and ingenuity for its construction.
Having climbed the Ganges’s mast many times I knew how safe it was being rigid and set into the ground.
But the thought of climbing that shaking and swaying makeshift mast held in place by a few stays would worry me no end. Full credit to these lads.