ABSTRACT
This parody of a popular song of the 1930s sets the scene of Jack's various adventures in this ‘run-ashore’ section. Not surprisingly, most songs in this category involve women in some way or other. One of the exceptions is the following ditty sung by trainee sailors at HMS Raleigh, the shore establishment at Torpoint, Cornwall, around 1959–60. These new recruits, many of them fresh from city backgrounds throughout Britain, looked on their initial posting to this comparatively bleak and remote corner of the realm as a form of banishment. Small wonder that with the advent of weekend or seasonal leave their first concern was not girls but the speediest way to get back to what they regarded as civilisation.
