And their RN counterparts, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy....

Urban Myth.

No such characters ever existed in Captain Pugwash.

The Cabin Boy was Tom, the Seamen were Barnabas (replaced by Jonah in the later series) and Willy.

Thank you ....yes I knew, and it also served as a mildly smutty attempt at humour.

Nope. It's an Urban Myth that was originally published in the Guardian in 1991.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ca...uble-meanings/

A serious point arises from a fairly trivial and rather silly matter here. In recent years some quite famous people have being going to prison on the strength of what people "distinctly remember" about events 30, 40 50 years ago. People's memories are notoriously faulty (I know mine is) as is jayteeto's apparently!

I rather thought that was it ;)

Heard at the guard house - Guard challenges a man in civvies who replies "Wing Commander Cuming"! Guard - "Thanks mate, I'll keep an eye out for him!"....followed by a 'bring your hat' with the guard commander!

..which is precisely why, before asserting that Staines, Bates and Roger were shipmates of Captain Pugwash, I asked Mr Google for an opinion. He noted, as others have done above, that there were no such characters on Cap'n P's foredeck. And that in fact, after The Sunday Correspondent (and The Guardian) claimed otherwise, author John Ryan successfully sued both papers.

Color remake from the 1970s - only B&W when I was a kid in the early 1960s - and not even any TV at all for BAOR brats !