Topmen are versatile. You see their murals in the paint store right for'ard and their models in the messdeck right aft. You find them working in storerooms, coolrooms, galleys, boat parties, gun mountings and all sorts of unlikely places ashore. You see them diving, sorting mail, running boats and, of course, scrubbing paint, scraping paint, chipping paint and painting paint in the largest area of upperdeck allotted to any division.
We keep the two ends together - and apart. We can safely say that without the bit in the middle the ship could hardly operate at maximum efficiency. We were the originators of two-tone deck colour schemes - which is appropriate as we have three colourful seamen, Green, Brown and Grey. We were first in the field with semi-automatic handraulic mop-squeezers. But we don't want to boast, too much.
Anyway, Topmen have been further south than anybody else this commission, for our messdeck is port side right aft and the ship was swinging to starboard at the most southerly point of the Magellan Strait!
Petty Officer Mills is Divisional PO, and he also found time to be a diver, photographer, and driver too. In fact we can thank him for most of the photographs on this website.
Shed a tear for Able Seaman Davison and Able Seaman Wheeler, bachelors gay. They get spliced in May. But good luck to them all the same. We hope it's a "long splice".
So here we are then, the Top Division from AB Bennet (of colossal seniority) to Ordinary Seaman Wilson (of immense juniority): we wish everyone a good leave and pleasant memories of the commission, and remind ourselves in our next job to "Stay on Top".
Divisional Officer
Lieutenant C H Layman
Of Stann Creek Fame.
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