Up Spirits

Until that fateful day in 1970 when the Royal Navy abolished the rum ration, the one thing that every Royal Navy sailor could rely on was that Up Spirits' would be piped at approximately 11:45 each day . Tot-time' was the cue for plenty of banter and lamp-swinging, but also for baffling negotiations as to who might have sippers, wets, gulpers, halfers, sandy bottoms, or their share of Queen's'. With the same humour, affection and story-telling ability that characterised his earlier naval memoirs