Corvettes!

Whilst holding, awaiting a forecasting course, aged 22, I was posted to one of our weather ships, believed to be converted corvettes, wandering around a mythical spot in the Atlantic. Said to roll on a lawn, said to be aground on the bottles and cans, said to be crewed by reprobates, drunkards and those of unclean thoughts.
And I was to be Senior Met Man. At 22, unable to grow a beard.
I have never moved so fast to call in favours in my life, and successfully sloped shoulders to become computer programmer and operator, gopher and bagman to the Chief Forecast Research Officer.
Alls well that ends well.

https://www.weatherships.com/home-page

Read all about them!

Thanks, I thought it was a familiar account.
Mog, thankyou by the way. 👍

Still trying to decide whether that narrowed or broadened the pool of prospective crew members....:D

To help LB decide whether he made the right decision all those years ago, both in terms of the crews, and the work and conditions in which they operated, may I suggest that he has a look at Ocean Weather Ship Crews If I may continue the thread drift, it's particularly interesting to be reminded from the photographs that the very notable submariner, Lieutenant Commander Alastair Mars DSO DSC* Royal Navy, served in the WEATHER REPORTER (the former Castle Class HMS OAKHAM CASTLE) following his discharge after being court martialled in extremely controversial circumstances which would never have been considered permissible today.

Jack

Ah - now the thread is drifting so far away I am reminded the 'pleasure' of those long slogs by Shackleton out to 15 or 20W so as to drop Christmas Trees and Lindholm containers full of mail and other assorted goods to the Ocean Weather Ships (I and K IIRC).

PS - I still think the weather forecasts were more accurate and usable overall than with all today's super computers, radar and other gubbins. Could John Stagg have provided a better forecast for D Day today?

Working for a UK shipowner, an old boss of mine insisted on being known as 'Captain Xxxx, retired' and accorded the respect due to his Royal Navy service, as we were encouraged to believe. It came out in due course that he was indeed a retired captain, but not a naval one: he had been a captain in the army, which, though honourable, does not have quite the same status. His credibility never recovered .

Grateful for the references, I shall have a good look to see what I missed. Looking at the photos I did meet some of the OWS team in later career, they appeared about as normal as any Met people do. I leave others to judge ! I did work for the cleverest and nicest bloke in the Office instead, a truly great meteorologist, our equivalent of Turing.