“Stripey” the Three Badge AB

Sailors in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), up to the rank of petty officer, were once entitled to earn and wear as many as three good conduct badges on their left sleeves: one for three years, a second for eight years and a third for thirteen years. Although they could be lost for misconduct, they could also be restored by further good conduct. These badges were worn with pride. (Chief petty officers earned them as well, but they were not displayed on their uniforms.)

Normally, as sailors progressed up the ranks – ordinary seaman to able seaman (AB), leading seaman to petty officer and finally to chief petty officer – they acquired their good conduct badges, one of the requirements for promotion. But there was one noteworthy exception, a man who mounted his badges but was never promoted, and who did not fit this pattern. This man was “Stripey”, the three badge AB.

Who was he? “Stripey” was a man with thirteen or more years of good conduct. As an AB he held the second lowest rank in the lower deck (non-commissioned members), and he was waiting patiently for a twenty or twenty-five year career to end, at which time he would drift off into retirement.

Instruction in the corvette HMCS Arvida’s main gun: 4-inch Mk.IX BL gun.
Professor Sandy Gow notes that the Able Seaman at the centre of the photo, providing instruction, is a Three Badge AB (Stripey), a gunner or possibly torpedoman by trade.

Despite his rank, “Stripey’s” three badges and time in the navy commanded a measure of awe and respect amongst the men in his mess (living area in a ship). Most often found in the gunnery and boatswain trades, he was a man whose naval knowledge and ability to avoid work of most kinds made him a legend. “Stripey” was a father figure who could advise young sailors and junior officers on any number of questions from kit musters to bends and hitches and the proper steps to be followed when coming alongside. He told the most interesting salty dips (tall tales) and his evaluation of bars in foreign ports could not be matched.

He was wise and respectful to his superiors, and his work dress and his kit were flawless. His hair and beard were neat and trimmed, and he was proud of his ship. If you sought advice on sewing, knitting a pair of sea boot socks, working up a piece of fancy rope work or wood carving, or building a miniature sailing ship to slip into a bottle, “Stripey” was your man.

The seaman branch chief petty officers at the dockyard drafting (posting) office in Esquimalt and Halifax all knew him, and therefore he usually got “soft touch” (easy) drafts ashore to places like the manual (work party) office, base cells, or assigned the task of issuing cleaning supplies, linen or working in gunnery stores. “Stripey” could be relied upon to do the job properly, though without exerting himself. While ashore and at a larger establishment such as HMCS Naden, Stadacona, Cornwallis or Shearwater, and where divisions (parades) were held regularly, he often came to the attention of an acute senior officer who remembered the sound advice he had provided him with when he was a cadet or a new sub-lieutenant, and would stop to chat “Stripey” up.

When the time came to return to sea, most seaman branch chiefs at the drafting office would manage to find him a ship where he could settle back into his relaxed, headache-free, lifestyle. When he eventually walked out of the gates of the release centre at the end of his career, his RCN certificate of service in his hand, it revealed notations confirming his years of exemplary conduct that never dipped below “satisfactory” and might even exhibit the occasional higher assessment in his trade performance. If he had sinned, he had managed to escape detection. Why, then, was “Stripey” not retiring as a petty officer or a chief?

Although a handful of these men finished their careers as three badge ABs because they had been reduced in rank, the vast majority had been promoted to AB and were content to stay there until they were pensioned off. These men had entered the service in the 1920s, 1930s and the Second World War, and when they joined they were seeking security: clothing, food, a place to stay, medical and dental care, and a daily tot (2 ½ ounces) of rum when serving at sea. Travel was an added bonus. Furthermore, he was a man without ambition; he had all that he wanted from life. He did not want the responsibility that came with advancement in rank, and showed no interest in upgrading his trade qualifications. He was content.

After 1945 those men who joined the RCN for a career but who displayed no ambition began to decline in the face of a changing Canadian economy. If, by the mid-1960s, they had been awarded their third badge they found themselves in a navy that was undergoing change in the form of a new promotion scheme which saw advancement to leading seaman become based more on proficiency and less on time within the rank of AB. Furthermore, a former minister of national defence had made the promotion to leading seaman less stringent and any remaining “Stripeys” were advanced to that rank. With the unification of the three armed forces in 1968, the mandatory wearing of a green uniform by all ranks, and the abolition of the good conduct badges, the years of the “Stripey”, a genuine messdeck character, were over.