What shall we do with the drunken sailors?

From Stuff: HMNZS Taupo crew got drunk at the pub and attacked a Nelson home.

The frightening incident left six windows smashed in the house next to the Ocean Lodge pub where police say the sailors got drunk.
[Felicity] Hurst, a Stopping Violence Services team leader, her son, daughter and her daughter's friend were in the house when the attack started at 11.30pm on Tuesday last week.
She leapt out of bed and yelled at the attackers, who went to the glass-panelled front door, kicked in two panes and tried to force it open.
"They were smashing and smashing and in quite a frenzy, yelling," she said.
Police rounded up nine sailors – almost half Taupo's crew – and took them back to the vessel at Port Nelson.

Half the crew has alcohol indulgence problems. Too much rum, sodomy and the lash? Or just too much rum and not enough of the other pastimes.

UPDATE: Two sailors were sent to a military prison for 30 days and their future career in the Navy is uncertain.

No sex in the news

Earlier this year there was a sensational but rather dubious story about sailors aboard HMAS Success keeping a ledger book about their on-board conquests of female ship staff. But now it turns out, our raised eyebrows at the time were justified:

It had all the ingredients of a good story, involving sexual peccadilloes at sea, but it wasn't true, say Australian Opposition politicians, who called on the Navy yesterday to apologise to three sailors sent home following allegations that they competed to sleep with female officers and lesbians. Opposition defence spokesman David Johnston claimed yesterday that it exonerated the sailors. He said the Navy knew within two days that the allegations were unfounded.

Sex in the news

From the BBC:

An investigation is under way in Australia over claims that navy sailors competed with each other to bed their female colleagues for cash prizes.
According to Channel Seven news, sailors on board HMAS Success put a cash value on each woman's head.
Sleeping with a female officer or a lesbian, or having sex in a strange place, won more money, the report said.
The Defence Department confirmed that a number of individuals had been sent back to Australia for interviews.
HMAS Success, which has a crew of 220, is currently on exercises in South East Asia.
According to the Channel Seven report, the contest came to light in May, when the vessel was in Singapore.
It said that the sailors recorded their efforts in a book called The Ledger, challenging each other to sleep with as many female colleagues as possible.
Sex on a pool table or with a lesbian reportedly scored higher points.
The Defence Department did not confirm how many sailors were involved.
But, in a statement to Seven Network, it said that a number of concerns raised by female crew members were "now subject to formal inquiry".
The "veracity of any allegations" had yet to be confirmed, it said.

Several points in this story urge caution:
- Who actually pays the cash prizes?
- How are the scores verified (and the lesbians tagged)? Competitors (or contest adjudicators) must obviously be present to merit the extra points for pool table sex, and the women confirm a sailor's claim of conquest.
- No indication of any offences being committed here, apart from sex on the job - but I presume the contest took place outside working hours and on shore leave.
- That sleeping with your bunk mate doesn't merit any points indicate to me that it's too common an occurrence to be subject to a competition.
- And you would think that the navy brass would encourage its personnel to get all the exercise it can to fight the obesity epidemic in the Australian armed forces.

The NZ Herald editorial thundered on Saturday:

Nobody dares to moralise any more. The cause and consequence of that reluctance is that we are not sure we agree on what is wrong. Are the Australian sailors under naval investigation for their attitude to women and sex or for writing it down? And if it is merely the latter, was their offence against the privacy and reputations of the women concerned, and does it matter if the women were equally enthusiastic participants?

Who knows the women sailors were running a ledger book too with commentary on length, width, girth, stamina and technique the boys displayed (or pulled up short on). It would certainly make good reading too, a good consumer guide for on-board fun and it would put the rating back into rating.

Fat fighters

From the Australian Sunday Telegraph:

* 7500 of 53,000 Australian military are obese
* More than three times more than US military
* 104 were discharged last year for obesity
* The navy has the highest number of obese personnel, followed by the army and air force

Several years ago, the Australian navy vessel HMAS Melbourne was in Auckland Harbour for a visit, and as always when foreign sailors visit these shores, we did not miss the chance to go have a look. Not, of course, at the vessel, but the sailors on board. Who cares about hardware and guns and stuff when all that seafood is running around. We are classified as a friendly port after all.
I remember that life looked pretty comfy on board, judging by the number of surf board strapped to the funnel. But what really struck me was that the average weight of the sailor was way beyond my comfort zone. The on board galley must be serving supersized proportions, or they don't get enough physical exercise, but the obesity was pretty clear even 10 years ago.
As the Australian military man said in above newspaper article:

"The way the ship operates 24/7, they are either working or sleeping, they have access to good grub on board and the opportunity to exercise is limited."

Unfortunately, the New Zealand Navy boys have grown in weight too, in my estimation, looking at them swaggering on Queen Street on a Saturday night, trying to make the ferry back to Devonport. Maybe I need to alert Navy command that their finest are letting the side down.