In fact there are incidents recorded as recently as 1995 where Naval sailors were physically and sexually abused by over-zealous Shellbacks. It’s a crazy, noisy, historical hodgepodge of a ceremony, but it takes little imagination see how rough it may have been for a press-ganged Pollywog on a Man’o’War 200 years ago. The rest of the royal court is made up of senior sailors dressed as mermaids and pirates.
Students of ancient mythology will note that Amphitrite is actually the wife of Poseidon, the Greek God of the Sea who several centuries later he changed his name and nationality to became the Roman God, Neptune. On Neptune’s other side sits his wife, Her Highness Amphitrite. He is flanked, on one side by Davey Jones, the legendary owner of the locker, which is a euphemism for the bottom of the sea where drowned sailors are interred. The Court of King Neptune is presided over by the mythological Roman God of the Sea himself, with his crown, trident and seaweed hair. That frisson of fear made the silly ceremony all the more exciting and memorable for me. It was before that baptism, as I stood in line with my fellow Pollywogs waiting to appear before the Court of King Neptune, that I experienced a shudder at the thought of what was going to happen next. As I was only 15 at the time, and a paying passenger (my parents paid), the level of abuse I suffered, as far as I recall, was nothing worse than being drenched in green slime before being tossed into the pool by some ridiculously dressed seamen.
On passenger liners such as the Canberra, the line crossing ceremony was not just novelty shipboard entertainment for the passengers, it was the continuation of a centuries old tradition, based upon sailors’ superstitions and riddled with myth and legend.Īlthough I had heard of the ceremony and seen some Kodachrome snaps from my uncle who had made the long ocean journey to the UK in the early sixties, I had no idea, up until the moment of my initiation, that I and most of my fellow passengers were considered to be “Slimy Pollywogs”, whereas the ship’s crew and those lucky few passengers who had already crossed the line, were “Honourable Shellbacks”, who traditionally have the power to use and abuse the uninitiated Pollywogs.
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