CARNIVAL STORY
SAILORS ASHORE!
By Terry Joseph
Episode 16
The final article in
Terry Joseph's
'The Carnival Story' series.
Express
March 7, 2000
Page 15
February 23, Carnival Tuesday of 1955, saw truly spectacular mas
presentations. Bands like Sign of the
Pagan, Royal Dancers of Siam, Richard II and The Festival of Bacchus
painted the streets; but all stood in awe when a sailor band, USS Skipjacks,
hit town.
A
consortium of four steelbands from the East Dry River area, Tokyo, Crusaders,
Fascinators and City Symphony had teamed up to produce USS Skipjacks,
the collaboration boasting upwards of 4,000 members, at a time when 300
masqueraders would have been considered a 'big' band.
Such
was the spread of the band that most of the enlisted men of the USS Skipjacks
probably never heard any of the music for which they had paid a fee.
Groups
formed their own rhythms, but the underlying tempo was provided by the chipping
of leather shoes against the asphalt roadway, as the band snaked along
Piccadilly Street, then west into Duke Street, before turning north on
Charlotte Street to head for the Savannah competition.
From
my vantage position in the upstairs gallery of the Loyal Order of Ancient
Shepherds Lodge Hall, just west of the corner of Charlotte and Duke streets
(above Roosevelt Barber Saloon) the band looked like a sea of white, the 4,000
bobbing sailor caps forming a moving froth.
Today,
a similar steelband group effort at the same type of mas barely musters one
tenth of that number.
And
part of the beauty of USS Skipjacks was that its presentation came at a
time when sailors "rocked the boat" by forming lines across the width
of the band, each putting his arms around the shoulders of men on either side.
Starting
at the front of the band, each succeeding line chipped in a sideways movement,
alternating direction, to give the overall view of men on the deck of a
destroyer that was being tossed around by particularly choppy waters.
The
coming together of those four steelbands also scored a mark for the continuing
attempt at peaceful celebrations.
Curiously
enough, it was a bunch of sailors from USS Skipjacks who inadvertently
created one of that day's greatest scares, when one member attempted to cheat
his cohorts and make off with a pail of ice cream that had been stolen as a
group effort.
As
he scampered across Duke Street, members of the Silver Stars band, going south
on Frederick Street, misconstrued the action and though it to be the actions of
a group bent on violence.
Fearful
of the reputation of bands from "behind the bridge", the softer
Silver Stars members scattered.
George
Ng Wai, who played pan that year for the Newtown band, remembers fellow
pannists hiding even in the Woodford Square fountain, oblivious to the danger
of drowning.
For
it was also a time when steelbands, driven by a sense of competition of which
they had not yet deduced proper outlets, took to violence for the slightest of
cause.
In
addition, the popular movies of the day were largely those that featured
violent gang wars. In much the same way
as the bands had taken their names from the movies (Destination Tokyo, The
Gay Desperadoes, et al), pannists and their followers were taking their behavioural
cues from the cheap entertainment of the big screen.
Movies
like Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and Rumble on the Docks were big
favourites and the scenes portrayed in them were soon to be played out on the streets,
with devastating consequences.