~ Chapter Seventeen ~
The Boy Sailor

At fifteen, Tom was still a boy when he joined the Royal Navy in June 1915, signing on for the minimum period of twelve years.  Better known as “the dozen”, that period did not include time served before the age of eighteen, which meant that Tom would be thirty before his engagement ended.

            On the day of his enlistment, Tom’s occupation was described as an errand boy and his height was recorded as 5 feet 3½ inches.  Some ten years later, in December 1925, he had grown to 5 feet 6 inches, probably a common height for many East Kent Gisby men both then and now.

            Tom began his naval career at HMS Ganges in Shotley on the Sussex coast.  This was the shore training establishment for boy entrants into the Royal Navy.  It aimed over a period of about a year to turn the boys into highly skilled, disciplined sailors.  Its regime was notoriously harsh, however, as is evident in these extracts from The Legend of HMS Ganges, the famous poem by the naval historian, John Douglas:
“Do just as you are told, lad, make do with what you got!
Obey the orders, Boy! No ‘ifs’ or ‘buts!’”
Ganges discipline was ‘hot’, and some went ‘on the trot’,
But they dragged ’em back and lashed ’em with twelve ‘cuts’. 

Ganges motto states at length, that “Wisdom, it is strength!”
Is there one of you who wouldn't go again?
Tho’ you flogged us an’ you flayed us, by the livin’ God what made us;
You took us on as boys – and made us men!
            Tom survived eight months of “Ganges discipline”, during which period his rating rose from Boy Second Class to Boy First Class to Signal Boy.  Then he spent another year training at Chatham Dockyard in Kent before he was ready at the age of seventeen to be part of a ship’s company and go to sea.

            In March 1917, at the height of the Great War, he joined his first ship, the Dreadnought battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, which at that time was based with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in the remote Orkney Islands of Scotland.  The Queen Elizabeth had already been in action, having taken part in the Dardanelles naval campaign against the Turks in March 1915.  Although she narrowly missed the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 due to being in dock for maintenance, her most memorable role was still to come.

            It was on board the Queen Elizabeth, at the head of the Grand Fleet in the Firth of Forth in Scotland, that the terms of surrender of the German High Seas Fleet were presented to Admiral Von Reuter on 21st November 1918.  The following description of the surrender was posted from the ship by the special correspondent of The Times of London:
Losing its Soul
Surrender of German Navy
The sun has just gone down on the most wonderful day in all the long history of war by sea. A great navy, once proud in its young strength and in its high Imperial mission, gave, this morning, into ignominious captivity, more than three score of its biggest and best ships. The finest vessels in the German Fleet, fashioned at heavy cost in taxes and debt, to be alike the symbol and the engine of Germany's world ambitions, have surrendered themselves, as hostages to the Allies.

             Even as I write the captive ships lie but a few miles away in British waters, “fast bound in misery and iron”, the tragic semblance of a navy which lost its soul. History tells of many a good ship which struck its flag under the stress of battle. History tells also of ships which faced destruction rather than surrender. Research may reveal cases in which a group of ships surrendered as it were in cold blood without the striking of a blow. But the annals of naval warfare hold no parallel to the memorable event which it has been my privilege to witness to-day. It was the passing of a whole fleet, and it marked the final and ignoble abandonment of a vainglorious challenge to the naval supremacy of Britain. Never has pageant so majestically demonstrated the might of Britain's Navy. The Dominions of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand had their places in the spectacle. American and French warships too were there. But above all else this was the day of the British Nay, the supreme reward of unceasing vigilance and unrelenting noiseless pressure on the vitals of Germany.

             It was generally known that by the terms of the armistice the German ships were to be unarmed and manned only by navigating crews, but the navy does not believe in taking unnecessary chances. Treachery was not expected, but all was ready to blow the German ships out of the water should any trick be attempted.
The Enemy Sighted
             According to programme, the First Light Cruiser Squadron was due to meet the German Fleet at 10 minutes after 9 o'clock, but the position of greatest honour was to be filled by the Cardiff, of the Sixth Light Cruiser Squadron, for she was ‘to direct the movements of the German main force and order them to proceed, if possible, at a speed of twelve knots’. About 8 o'clock the sun showed its rim through a rift in the slate-grey clouds, and here and there in the sky the greyness of lead melted into light shades of blue and brick red, but a haze still hung over the water and confined the vision to, perhaps, five or six miles.

             Half past 8 came and with it the report that the German Fleet had been sighted by our destroyers. An hour passed and the sun, rising in the heavens, began to tinge the sky with gold. Presently three four or five miles away on our starboard bow there came into view   a ‘sausage’ balloon towed by the Cardiff. At first it was a mere faint speck in a grey mist, with a slight smoke trail stretching out below. Then behind the Cardiff there emerged from the murk the first of the German ships. At three miles range they appeared to be little more than slowly moving silhouettes. On coming abreast of the German Fleet the British Fleet turned by squadrons, 16 points outwards, wheeling, that is to say, back on its own track, retaining positions on both sides of the Germans to escort them to their anchorage. The order of squadrons as already given for the northern and southern lines was thus reversed.   

             Between the lines came the Germans, led by the Cardiff, and looking for all the world like a school of leviathans led by a minnow. Over them flew a British naval airship. First came the battle   cruisers headed by the Seydlitz, a ship which carries the scars of the Dogger Bank battle of January, 1915. The Moltke and the Hindenburg followed, then the Derfflinger, also badly battered in the Dogger Bank engagement, and finally the Von Der Tann, which, ac- cording to reports, suffered heavily in the   naval air raid on Cuxhaven. On either side moved the Fearless and the Blonde in their former stations. The nine battleships followed at interval of three cables. The five ships of the Kaiser class came first, then the Bayern, and then the three Königs, but in what order within the classes could not be told. A mile and a half astern was the King Orry, and again at the same interval the Phaeton, of the First light Cruisers, The Castor, flying the pennant of Commodore Tweedie, Commodore of Flotillas, led the 50 German destroyers, surrounded by nearly 150 British.
Encased by the British
The other heavy ships of the Grand Fleet had left the flagship well behind when the German and British destroyers came out of the mist. In ordered array, flotilla on flotilla moved across the sea, the Germans completely encased by the British. So vast was the area they covered that both the head and the rear of the columns stretched away into the haze and were lost to sight. The eye could not count them. They were in themselves a tremendous armada. All

this time the great captive fleet and the greater fleet which encircled it were moving slowly – almost at a funeral pace and certainly not at the 12 knots stipulated by Admiral Meurer – towards the anchorage appointed for the Germans off May Island, the rocky island which stands in the middle of the Firth of Forth, some miles eastward of the bridge. Presently the German ships came to rest, and it was seen that on every side of them were their British warders. Then the main body of the Grand Fleet made its way back to the stations from which it started in the early hours of the morning. As the Queen Elizabeth steamed along the lines to her mooring she was cheered again and again by the men who crowded the decks of the ships she leads. The day came to a peculiarly fitting close. 
German Flag Hauled Down
             About an hour before noon the Commander-in Chief issued the following signal to the fleet, and it was received beyond doubt by the Germans: “The German flag will be hauled down at sunset to-day Thursday, and will not be hoisted again without permission.”

             At 1 o'clock all hands in the Queen Elizabeth were piped aft. They had assembled, and were waiting perhaps for a speech, when suddenly the bugle rang out marking sunset. Instantly all turned to the flag and saluted. The next minute cheers for the Commander-in- Chief were called for, and given with deafening heartiness. Admiral Beatty acknowledged the tribute with a “Thank you” and added, “I always told you they would have to come out.” Then the ship's company went back to their duties. In the meantime the Germans in the 71 ships, which lay out of sight in the mist, had undergone the mortification of seeing their flag hauled down, perhaps never to be hoisted again.
            Young Tom Gisby, now an Ordinary Signalman, was an eyewitness to that momentous event and probably cheered Admiral Beatty along with the rest of the ratings.  Tom may also have been a witness to another momentous, though significantly less jubilant, event the following June, when the German Fleet, interned in Gutter Sound at Scapa Flow after the surrender, was scuttled by Admiral Von Reuter’s men under the noses of their British captors.

            Like both his older brothers, Tom would have been awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal for his service during the Great War.  In addition, he was paid a War Gratuity by the Royal Navy.

            The War may well have been over, but for nineteen year-old Tom there was still a long way to go before his “dozen” was up.