Fleet Regattas – Cock of the Fleet

[brisray]

"Go get the Cock by its what nots or do not came back!"

I’ve been putting together I’ve got about the Cock of the Fleet - http://hmsgambia.org/fleet-cock.htm

When the fleet was in port the regattas would be organized, rowing the ship’s boats over a set distance. Smaller ships would field one crew, larger ships, two or more, so, not only would the competition be between the various ships but also among divisions.

The quote comes from Admiral RKS Ghandi as captain of INS Betwa in 1961

The winning ship would be awarded the Cock of the Fleet trophy which was usually displayed on top of ‘B’ turret. But the fun wasn’t over one the races had been run and the trophy won.

Bernard Mouzer, OBE RVM, served on HMS Phoebe during her 1948-1951 commission and sent me the following letter about the 1950 regatta he sent to his wife.

Imagine therefore the consequences when foraging parties from the New Zealand ships come in the black night to pinch our Cock. The wooden one illuminated on B turret. There were also parties from other ships, notably Gambia and Forth. The Captain himself piped "Stand by to Repel Boarders" and when we got up top he was standing on the quarterdeck, drenched to the skin, clad in formal dinner attire, heaving spuds and shouting, "Rally round Phoebes!" All the hoses were going, all the officers were drenched and mostly drunk – spuds, red lead bombs, paint, buckets of gash, and still the Kiwis came. Up the gangway, up the anchor cable, up the booms and in through the ports. They were beaten, drenched, painted and then chucked over the side only to shout back in defiance, "We'll be back you jokers" and back they'd come.

The bridge was teeming with them. One of them was thrown off the flag deck onto an awning and then over the foc'sle. A couple were taken to sick bay but thanks to good providence nobody was seriously hurt. One cheeky b climbed in through a port, put all the plugs in the officers bathroom, turned all the taps on, took all the tap tops off and stowed them in a wine box. All the cabins in that region were flooded. What a laugh! One of them pinched one of the Captain's brass dolphins (huge things) dived over the side with it and put it in his boat as booty. How he managed to swim with it I don't know.

At the height of it all the Captain had "The Cease Fire" sounded and everything stopped as suddenly as it started. A bedraggled officer from another ship still in his formal dinner dress, dragged himself up the gangway from where he had been heaved over the side and said, "Now I can go ahead with the social call I came to pay!" On the other side of the ship, in Hawea's boat a New Zealander in trunks, covered from head to foot in black paint, wiping himself on our tiddly cotton duck gangway screen said, "Three Cheers for Phoebe. We'll be back about three!"
Well not much happened after that except to pick all the blokes out of the water, and this morning we cleared up the mess. There were spuds, red lead, paint and in big black letters painted on the stern, "Gambia."

Phoebe won the Cock in 1950 and Gambia won it in 1954.

Does anyone know about these regattas and what happened to the trophies?

There was a collision involving Phoebe and Gambia in October 1950, but that’s a story for another day.