‘The Navy
Lark’ was a radio comedy series of the type that was very popular in the mid 20th
century. Like ‘The Goons’, ‘Round the
Horne’, ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ and many others it was a weekly dose of familiar
characters and catchphrases which audiences couldn’t get enough of. These programmes launched careers back then,
and spawned other projects too. Hancock, for example was transferred to
television. It is not so well known that
‘The Navy Lark’ got its own film, which arrived quite early on in its lifetime.
Having seen it, it’s not surprising
that it isn’t listed among the classics of British cinema. But its sheer daftness was enough to brighten
up my afternoon – well, how can you not smile at Leslie Phillips?
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| Well hello! By @aitchteee |
Aside from the
fruity Mr Phillips, most of the radio show favourites didn’t make it to the
screen – perhaps the actors read the script first! The other screen stars are
Cecil Parker and Ronald Shiner – veterans who make up for the lack of Pertwee
or Barker. The rather far-fetched storyline is as follows – the Larkees are
based on a fictional island in the English Channel. They are supposed to be clearing the area of
World War Two mines; but instead they are taking advantage of the laid-back
lifestyle to spend their days fishing, womanising and dealing in black market
goods. All this is put in jeopardy when
an ambitious officer in Portsmouth works out that no mines were ever laid in
that part of the Channel anyway. He
decides to pay them a visit to begin the process of shutting their operations
down. Faced with a future of actual work, the Larkees come up with all kinds of
schemes to thwart the plans from Portsmouth. This culminates in a faked native
uprising complete with pretend battles.
It’s all harmless fun, and I began musing on just how far-fetched the basic
plot was. The film was made in 1959, 14
years after the end of the war, so I wondered about the idea of having mine
detection units still in place. Surely
they’d all been cleared up by then? Was this a daft joke, or a genuine possibility?
None of my history books touch on naval warfare, so I turned to the Google
search box.
If any mine
clearing units like this were still in place in the 1950s, I could find no
trace of them. However, I did find some interesting snippets of information. Firstly, as late as the mid 1950s, relics of
the war at sea were still being cleared away because the UK lent Denmark a
minesweeper to go and help clear up their coastline. Secondly, it would appear that mines dating
from the 1940s do still occasionally pose a danger to shipping. As late as 2007, cross Channel ferry services
were disrupted due to the discovery of an old device. These mines were built to
withstand stormy seas, and they did move around – so on consideration it is
unsurprising that some proved difficult to find and are still primed and ready
to go off.
I wouldn’t
rely on this film to tell me anything about the navy or the Channel Islands. But it did send me on a little journey of
discovery about how the problems of war didn’t just go away in 1945.
My short story, ‘Amphitrite’ touches on
the dismantling of mines on British beaches after World War Two. It’s available in my book ‘Athene and Other
Stories’ on Amazon.
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