Shore leave is the leave that professional sailors get to spend on dry land. It is also known as "liberty" within the United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, and Marine Corps.
During the Age of Sail, shore leave was often abused by the members of the crew, who took it as a prime opportunity to drink in excess, indulge in prostitutes, and desert. Many captains were forced to take on new members of the crew to replace the ones lost due to shore leave. [ citation needed ]
As the Royal Navy prepared for operations in the Pacific Ocean during the final stage of World War II, warships were recognized to be operating far from populated ports. Amenities ships were expected to provide an alternative to shore leave at remote island anchorages without commercial recreation facilities. [1]
The United States Navy has organized a 21st-century liberty and single sailor program for active duty military personnel and their guests 18 years or older. The program provides off-duty recreational opportunities for geographic bachelors and unaccompanied service members from all allied military service branches to enhance the quality of life for these individuals by providing a safe and healthy environment for social, cultural, recreation, athletic and fitness activities. Facilities on naval bases offer free use of internet computers and most locations offer a theater or television lounge area, table tennis and pool tables, and video game systems. Some of these liberty facilities offer full snack bars while most offer a variety of snack items; and all offer package tour information and sign ups to visit nearby sites of interest. [2]
Books, films, and songs about sailors on shore leave include Jean Genet's 1953 novel, Querelle of Brest ; Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's 1949 film musical of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town ; and Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel's 1964 ballad "Amsterdam".
Singer-songwriter Tom Waits wrote a song entitled "Shore Leave" in 1982, and included it on his album of the following year Swordfishtrombones . As well as describing the excesses noted above, it also details the loneliness that many sailors feel when they suddenly find themselves with free time but without loved ones to share it with.
In many science fiction stories in which space travel is depicted, shore leave has the same basic principle but is more metaphorical, as a spacecraft crew does not necessarily disembark to a planetary location with a shoreline. The crew sometimes does not visit a planet at all but instead spend its shore leave on a space station with recreational facilities for crewpersons on leave. Filk musician Leslie Fish recorded a song based on the original Star Trek television series called "Banned from Argo" that detailed the debauchery and chaos caused by the Starfleet crew on shore leave.
In the 1955 film, Mister Roberts , Mr. Roberts (Henry Fonda) is forced to give up his dreams by working out a deal with the ship's tyrannical Captain Morton (James Cagney) to give the crew liberty. However, the crew ends up crashing a party for colonel and raiding an admiral's house, which leads to it getting kicked out the very next morning.
Ship commissioning is the act or ceremony of placing a ship in active service and may be regarded as a particular application of the general concepts and practices of project commissioning. The term is most commonly applied to placing a warship in active duty with its country's military forces. The ceremonies involved are often rooted in centuries-old naval tradition.
USS George Washington (CVN-73) is a United States Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the sixth carrier in the Nimitz class and the fourth US Navy ship named after George Washington, Founding Father, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States. The contract for George Washington was awarded to Newport News Shipbuilding on 27 December 1982. Her keel was laid on 25 August 1986, she was christened on 21 July 1990 by First Lady Barbara Bush, and the vessel was commissioned at Naval Station Norfolk on 4 July 1992.
USS Forrestal (CVA-59), was a supercarrier named after the first United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. Commissioned in 1955, she was the United States' first completed supercarrier, and was the lead ship of her class. The other carriers of her class were USS Saratoga, USS Ranger and USS Independence. She surpassed the World War II Japanese carrier Shinano as the largest carrier yet built, and was the first designed to support jet aircraft.
Impressment, colloquially "the press" or the "press gang", is the enslavement of men into service on a ship by compulsion, with or without notice. European navies of several nations used forced recruitment by various means. The large size of the British Royal Navy in the Age of Sail meant impressment was most commonly associated with Great Britain and Ireland. It was used by the Royal Navy in wartime, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice can be traced back to the time of Edward I of England. The Royal Navy impressed many merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other, mostly European, nations. People liable to impressment were "eligible men of seafaring habits between the ages of 18 and 55 years". Non-seamen were sometimes impressed as well, though rarely. In addition to the Royal Navy's use of impressment, the British Army also experimented with impressment from 1778 to 1780.
The mess is a designated area where military personnel socialize, eat and live. The term is also used to indicate the groups of military personnel who belong to separate messes, such as the officers' mess, the chief petty officer mess, and the enlisted mess. In some civilian societies this military usage has been extended to the eating arrangements of other disciplined services such as fire fighting and police forces.
The Spithead and Nore mutinies were two major mutinies by sailors of the Royal Navy in 1797. They were the first in an increasing series of outbreaks of maritime radicalism in the Atlantic World. Despite their temporal proximity, the mutinies differed in character. The Spithead mutiny was a simple, peaceful, successful strike action to address economic grievances, while the Nore mutiny was a more radical action, articulating political ideals as well, which failed.
The Invergordon Mutiny was an industrial action by around 1,000 sailors in the British Atlantic Fleet that took place on 15–16 September 1931. For two days, ships of the Royal Navy at Invergordon were in open mutiny, in one of the few military strikes in British history.
A boatswain's call, pipe, or bosun's whistle is a pipe or a non-diaphragm type whistle used on naval ships by a boatswain.
A depot ship is an auxiliary ship used as a mobile or fixed base for submarines, destroyers, minesweepers, fast attack craft, landing craft, or other small ships with similarly limited space for maintenance equipment and crew dining, berthing and relaxation. Depot ships may be identified as tenders in American English. Depot ships may be specifically designed for their purpose or be converted from another purpose.
NRP Afonso de Albuquerque was a warship of the Portuguese Navy, named after the 16th-century Portuguese navigator Afonso de Albuquerque. She was destroyed in combat on 18 December 1961, defending Portuguese interests in Goa against the Indian Armed Forces Liberation of Goa.
Naval Training Center San Diego (1923–1997) is a former United States Navy base located at the north end of San Diego Bay, commonly known as "boot camp". The Naval Training Center site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and many of the individual structures are designated as historic by the city of San Diego.
During April 1947, the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) experienced a series of non-violent mutinies amongst the enlisted sailors of four ships and two shore bases. Over 20% of the RNZN's enlisted personnel were punished or discharged for their involvement. The main cause was the poor rates of pay compared to the rest of the New Zealand Defence Force and equivalent civilian wages, exacerbated by the release of a long overdue government review which failed to address the issue. Sailors saw the new pay rates as still inferior to the other branches of the military, with the increases being consumed by taxes, inflation, and the cancellation of allowances and benefits. The poor living and working conditions aboard RNZN ships was another issue, compounded by sailors having no effective way to make dissatisfaction known to the higher ranks. Dissatisfaction with peacetime duties and opportunities also contributed, with many sailors locked into enlistment periods of up to 12 years, and demobilisation efforts prioritising those enlisted specifically for the duration of World War II.
The Bahia incident was a naval skirmish fought in late 1864 during the American Civil War. A Confederate navy warship was captured by a Union warship in the Port of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The engagement resulted in a United States victory, but also sparked an incident between the United States and Brazil, over the American violation of Brazil's neutrality by illegally attacking a vessel in a Brazilian harbor.
The Battle of Iquique was a naval engagement on 21 May 1879, during the War of the Pacific, where a Chilean corvette commanded by Arturo Prat Chacón faced a Peruvian ironclad under Miguel Grau Seminario. The battle occurred off the port of Iquique, Peru, and ended with the sinking of the Chilean wooden corvette Esmeralda by the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar after four hours of combat, marking a victory for Peru.
The Revolt of the Lash was a naval mutiny in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in late November 1910. It was the direct result of the use of whips ("lashes") by white naval officers when punishing Afro-Brazilian and mixed-race enlisted sailors.
The Raid on Genoa was a minor naval engagement fought in the harbour of the Italian city of Genoa during the first year of the French Revolutionary Wars. French Republican forces in the Mediterranean, under pressure from Austrian and Spanish armies, Royalist uprisings and British blockade had suffered the loss of their principal naval base and the fleet stationed there when British forces under Lord Hood seized Toulon at the invitation of the city's Royalist faction. The survivors of the French fleet were scattered across the Mediterranean, several sheltering in neutral Italian harbours, including the frigates Modeste at Genoa and Impérieuse at Leghorn.
An amenities ship is a ship outfitted with recreational facilities as part of a mobile naval base. Amenities ships included movie theaters and canteens staffed by mercantile crews of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary service. These ships were intended to provide a place where British Pacific Fleet personnel could relax between operations.
A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship.
The Stop Our Ship (SOS) movement, a component of the overall civilian and GI movements against the Vietnam War, was directed towards and developed on board U.S. Navy ships, particularly aircraft carriers heading to Southeast Asia. It was concentrated on and around major U.S. Naval stations and ships on the West Coast from mid-1970 to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, and at its height involved tens of thousands of antiwar civilians, military personnel and veterans. It was sparked by the tactical shift of U.S. combat operations in Southeast Asia from the ground to the air. As the ground war stalemated and Army grunts increasingly refused to fight or resisted the war in various other ways, the U.S. “turned increasingly to air bombardment”. By 1972 there were twice as many Seventh Fleet aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin as previously and the antiwar movement, which was at its height in the U.S. and worldwide, became a significant factor in the Navy. While no ships were actually prevented from returning to war, the campaigns, combined with the broad antiwar and rebellious sentiment of the times, stirred up substantial difficulties for the Navy, including active duty sailors refusing to sail with their ships, circulating petitions and antiwar propaganda on board, disobeying orders, and committing sabotage, as well as persistent civilian antiwar activity in support of dissident sailors. Several ship combat missions were postponed or altered and one ship was delayed by a combination of a civilian blockade and crewmen jumping overboard.
This glossary of nautical terms is an alphabetical listing of terms and expressions connected with ships, shipping, seamanship and navigation on water. Some remain current, while many date from the 17th to 19th centuries. The word nautical derives from the Latin nauticus, from Greek nautikos, from nautēs: "sailor", from naus: "ship".