Winston Churchill is often credited with opining that the only Royal Navy traditions were rum, sodomy and the lash. Apparently Churchill never said any such thing. “Anthony Montague-Browne said that although Churchill had not uttered these words, he wished he had.” Let’s us, put aside sodomy and the lash for a moment and consider only the rum.
Years ago when I lived on a sailboat, a friend of mine living aboard d his boat a few slips over would stop by on the occasional winter’s night with a bottle of Pusser’s Rum and a volume of the poetry of Robert Service. Service might seem an odd choice, but nevertheless reading of Alaska while hunkered down in a tiny cabin heated by a coal stove on dark winter’s night in Connecticut, with the wind blowing and the thermometer hovering in single digits, it somehow made perfect sense. Especially while drinking blackstrap rum. Poetry, like the woman sitting next to you in the bar, often becomes compelling after the first rum.
Years ago when I lived on a sailboat, a friend of mine living aboard d his boat a few slips over would stop by on the occasional winter’s night with a bottle of Pusser’s Rum and a volume of the poetry of Robert Service. Service might seem an odd choice, but nevertheless reading of Alaska while hunkered down in a tiny cabin heated by a coal stove on dark winter’s night in Connecticut, with the wind blowing and the thermometer hovering in single digits, it somehow made perfect sense. Especially while drinking blackstrap rum. Poetry, like the woman sitting next to you in the bar, often becomes compelling after the first rum.
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