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Chapter Five
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Ashore 1930 - 1946
“In February 1930 I came ashore to help as 3rd Assistant to the Superintendent at Southampton at a salary of £400 per annum”
In those few words Geff summed up a momentous change in his life, for it brought to an end sixteen years of seafaring and heralded the ‘state of Holy Matrimony’!
Geff had been courting Ruth Morris for five years, in June of the previous year she had finally passed for her L.R.A.M. but marriage was still out of the question, finances would not stand the strain and there was the “H 47” tragedy. But now this was all behind them, Ruth had achieved her goal, Geff had a very much more secure job, although sea going officers held contracts they were for two years only whilst shore appointments were on an ‘establishment’ basis. Whilst a salary of £400 per annum may not sound much today, it was not exactly a fortune in 1930 either, some true idea of its worth can be gained from the account of Maple & Company for their first furniture. For £36 15s Ruth and Geff purchased the furnishings for their first home in Hill Lane, all of solid oak I recall it well for this furniture furnished Geff’s last home, his flat in Brookvale Road forty years later.
On the 8th of September 1930 the marriage took place at St. Mark’s church, Southampton between Ruth, the daughter of James Henry and Catherine Morris and Claude Stanley Griffiths Keen the younger son of Catherine and her husband ex Bombardier Alfred Keen, Royal Artillery nicknamed by his family Butcher Keen.
No photographs recording the occasion have survived, I’m not at all sure that any were taken other than a snapshot that I recall seeing of mother in a tailored suit, father likewise with Ruth’s sister Margery and Geff’s best man Iky Goldstone.
St. Mark’s is by any standards an ugly church, one of those early twentieth century red brick characterless buildings that do nothing for one either spiritually or aesthetically. The wedding was a very low-key affair, or so it would be thought today but then a young couple being married in the 1930’s would think the idea of elaborate bridal gowns, brides maids dressed in gaudy colours, grooms in rented ‘tails and toppers’ more often than not ‘dandified’ dreadfully, would be extravagance to the point of comedy. For we are in a time when the idea of credit was almost unheard of, newly married couples frequently moved in to live with parents whilst saving for the deposit on a house or even being able to afford the rent of their own flat or terraced ‘two up, two down’ house.
As a young boy in 1946 when we returned to live in Southampton I well remember Dad’s ‘iron steed’ we called it, his old push bike he went to work on in those days of 1930 propped up against a dark recess of the garage wall. The notion of owning a car of his own would have to wait for some years yet.
The witnesses were Margery and a W.C. Adams, of course Marge was Ruth’s younger sister but who was this Mr. Adams? Hanging on dad’s bedroom wall for all his life (and now sadly I think lost) was a photograph of an old white haired, white moustached gentleman standing between the thwarts of an old lifeboat, masts rigged and an end of rope in his gnarled hands. He was an old ‘shore bosun’, a great friend of my father’s who spent many a weekend sailing with him in this converted boat, I am almost sure this was Mr. Adams, if so it would have been so very typical of my dad to have him a his wedding and as his witness. As you will read my father became in his lifetime a legend in Southampton for his kindness, consideration and warm affection for all those he worked with and for all who worked under him.
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