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I do not wish to make an issue of this, and would not otherwise have mentioned it. However, as I have been challenged, and in high places, to prove that every word in the three-word
title of my book is accurate, as otherwise it would be misleading, I have included here an extract from the Naval Chronicle that was sent to me by a retired naval officer about a hanging for sodomy - see SODOMY - A HANGING. I shall reproduce it as an appendix to any second edition of the book.
For the same reason, and reluctantly, I would also draw
the attention of readers to this front page head-line article in The Times of Thursday 31 October 2002:-
“A secret clamp-down on homosexuality in the Fleet was ordered in the late sixties after officials discovered that half of all sailors had indulged in gay acts and that no ship was immune from the risk of blackmail.
“The problem was highlighted in 1969 when scores of sexually explicit photographs of British sailors were found in a flat in Bermuda. More than 400 sailors had been involved in "gross indecency" there, and the names of the men and their ships were written on the pictures.
“At the same time, more and more drunken sailors were being lured into having sex with catamites, men masquerading as beautiful women, in Singapore.
'The security concerns which will revive old 'hello sailor' jokes and Sir Winston Churchill's assertion that naval life was 'rum, sodomy and the lash' are disclosed in documents released by the Public Record Office yesterday under the 30-year rule. They say that homosexuals were at risk of being blackmailed because of disgusting, infamous or immoral acts that they would want to keep hidden.
“Admiral Sir John Bush, the Commander-in Chief of the Western Fleet, responded by writing to all commanding officers, ordering them to stamp out this vice. 'There is,regrettably, ample evidence that homosexual practices are rife in the Fleet', he wrote in November 1969. 'It can be assumed that the cases that come to official notice are but a small proportion of those who indulge in these practices'.”
The scale of the problem had been outlined a year earlier in Captain Donald MacIntyre's Report on Homosexuality in the Royal Navy. That claimed that there was a risk of discharging on security grounds a “considerable number of men who were otherwise loyal. Senior naval officers have told me that they reckon that at least 50 per cent of the Fleet have sinned homosexually at some time in their naval service life”.
The article went on to explain the perceived security threat and stated that a large number of naval ratings went to a male brothel in Bermuda where they were lavishly entertained and given presents in return for sexual favours, giving rise to fears of blackmail if the pictures were obtained by a foreign
power. The case led to at least 40 sailors being discharged.
Naval friends tell me that homosexuality is jocularly called “the golden rivet” that holds the Navy together!