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| 8th Mar 2004 | This is one of my few genuine letters. We were given a Cyalume light stick when we were sailing with the Navy. It was given to us as a safety item but, when the bend came to the snap, it didn't work. |  View large |
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Dear Sir,
I recently had the, some may say dubious, honour of testing the sewage on board an Australian warship; the HMAS Labuan. I suspect “Labuan” is an aboriginal word for shoebox, as the vessel was a landing craft, not noted for its sleek lines and winged keels.
As a private contractor on the vessel I was given all due instruction on safety vests, assembly points, life rafts, warning pipes, the need to keep the fluids up and all the other general perils that make life so interesting on a ship at sea. My father, cynic and ex RAN, tells me that the only differences between jail and the navy is that you meet better people in jail, your cells are bigger in jail and the chance of drowning is more remote.
He was wrong about the people but I tend to agree on the other two.
To minimise the chance of drowning, the coxswain, Syd Hilton*, presented me with a Cyalume Safety Lightstick with strict instructions to carry it all times. And, never having put 'keen amateur shark bait' on my resumŽ, I was more than willing to comply. Most days, when Syd found me playing around in the bowels of the ship, he would ask as to whether I was carrying the stick; always one to obey orders I replied with a razor-sharp, pressed and creased “Yes-sah! ”.
Some days later, my navy work done, I was back home telling my sons graphic and enthralling tales of derringdo at sea in my relentless pursuit of the great brown and blind mullet and I remembered the stick.
“Here” said I, “they gave me this to save me if I fell overboard at night. Watch! ” I unwrapped the stick and bent it, breaking the inner glass tube as directed and shook it.
Nothing.
The liquid was a deep yellow. If it had come near my sewage I would have suggested that its owner needed rehydration but did it glow? Nope. Not a glimmer.
Even the glorious leaders of the Coalition of the Willing could scrape together more wattage than that thing put out. Collectively, admittedly, but more none the less.
There are guys back on the HMAS Labuan who think that the stick is a safety device.
If they fall overboard, what should they do? Poke the sharks in the eye with it?
Yours safely back on dry land,
J. Cosmo Newbery.
* Well, actually his name was not Sydney but he was born the same year as the Sydney Hilton was bombed and, well, navy folk have this thing about nicknames....