No more drinks aboard the Royal Navy vessels.
Killjoys.
I remember doing a CONREP with a Brit frigate passing them gas and snacks and here is some overweight engineer type, coveralls tied at the waist, no shirt, killing a Guinness at 0900 and watching the world go by. Seemed like a better deal than my Navy. I think I made one beer day my entire ten years afloat and several times was out long enough but they weaseled their way out of it. For you poor dry land people, in our Navy an unofficial tradition allows for a beer day after 45 continuous days at sea. On the big decks we usually fired up the grills and made it a party. Two beers per person allowed. Non drinkers had the ability to run quite the black market, but you gotta be slick. They hand you the beers open.
Now, one float, no beer day but we pull in to Agusta Bay to refuel pierside. No liberty, six hour stop. The fun boss went to the pier to sell the beer day cache, $1/beer, limit six per customer. We had our MEU back aboard too, so a total of about three thousand sailors and Marines not on duty. The line got long. Procedure was buy the six pack, go to back of line, drink in line, get to front, repeat. I was perhaps unfortunately the inport Officer of the Deck, theoretically responsible for the shore party's correct conduct and safe return. Well, we got every creative version of permission to come aboard that night. See above, six hour stop and the drinking was only about four of that. Fun boss comes back with a cardboard box containing $34k in cash, small bills.
