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| Royale Studio - 'Navy Gash', Image 11 |
Above: A highlight of Royale Studio's 'Navy Gash' storyette
"The sexual chemistry these two men and the photographer
manage to create between them is still amazing".
(from the mitchmen NAGA commentary, publication pending)
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| Royale's brochure image for Navy Gash |
Royale Studio's “Navy Gash” (aka NAGA) is the story of a novice sailor being initiated into the demanding standards and ways of naval service by two of his more experienced colleagues. In the Royal Navy and Royal Marines 'gash'was military slang for rubbish or garbage, something that is considered useless, broken or otherwise of little value. The words written on the victim's shirt in the picture above are 'Gash Can'. That gives you some idea of the thrust of this piece which bears striking similarities to 'Navy Romeo' (No 2 in this mitchmen series on the work of Royale Studio in the 1960's).
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| Royale Studio - Navy Gash, The Cast |
The stars of this storyette are portrayed in the picture above with the 'novice', Percy, sitting in the middle. You should recognise the two men on either side of him. We know them as Spike (left) and Tom from the Navy Romeo saga (aka NAROsee mitchmen Royale 02b). In all these images they come across as big men and even in this innocuous cast picture there's a tremendous sense of physical disparity between them and their sandwiched victim (and a salivating display for all crotch watchers!)
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| Royale Studio - Catalogue entry for Navy Gash (NAGA) |
Royale's catalogue description for Navy Gash opens with the words 'Introducing...(the cast)' which suggests that it is the models' first appearance for Royale Studio. This implies that Navy Gash pre-dates Navy Romeo (and in fact NAGA is listed in Catalogue No 9, whereas NARO first appears in Catalogue 10).
If you were as confused as me about the performers' identities in NARO and DTS, the Royale blurb for NAGA creates even more confusion because it names the two tormentors from that story as Tom Harding (the same name as in NARO) but the curly haired chap we knew there as 'Spike' is called Ned Willigan here.
In my article on NARO, I took the name Spike from Royale's own catalogue description for NARO and in the DTSarticle I linked that to a model named Spike Millican, who is described as being one of the 'Navy Romeo' crew in the blurb for his own solo set, but you may recall that I commented then that he didn't look like the same man at all.
So what is going on???????
What seems to have happened is that the writer for the catalogues has mixed up the names Willigan and Millican. That's easily done, these were probably not the model's real names anyway and they were just two of many men passing through the Studio. The confusion was probably not helped by the similarity of both names to that of a very well-known, zany comedian of the time, Spike Milligan (famously one of 'The Goons'). His odd appearance and bizarre personality must have led to some joking at the expense of both Royale models. Indeed Millican is probably nicknamed 'Spike' based on this association, he certainly looks crazy enough for it in his solo photo. The same may have happened with Ned, leading to him being inadvertently called Spike in the (later) Navy Romeo storyline.
Whatever the case, it seems likely that the curly-haired man in Navy Romeo is Ned Willigan and not Spike Millican and that Millican's own catalogue entry is simply incorrect. Unfortunately I haven't been to dig out further corroboration for this but sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that the NAGA catalogue description shown above is not error-free either, check the words on the shirt here against the photo.
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| Royal Tournament, Field Gun Race 1999 |
The other interesting element of the Royale Studio catalogue description is the reference to the models being members of the 'Earl's Court, Chatham Gun Crew.' This identifies them as being or (having been) real sailors. It's a reference to 'The Royal Tournament', a military display which the UK military services used to put on annually at the Earls Court arena in South West London. It ran up until 1999 when it was halted on the grounds of the cost but it's occasionally revived for charity events.
The Royal Tournament featured displays from all three services - marching bands, army gymnastics, dog-handling skills and formation displays by motorcycle riders, cavalry and artillery regiments. One of the most popular events, however, was 'The Field Gun Race' (above) in which two Royal Navy crews, typically representing naval dockyards (such as Chatham, Portsmouth or Devonport) competed against each other to dismantle a cannon, ferry it across and through various obstacles and then reassemble it and fire it before their opponents could beat them to it. The image above features Porstmouth vs The Fleet Air Arm from the final Royal Tournament in 1999. In Royale's day the Royal Tournament got a lengthy, Saturday night, peak time TV viewing slot, so Royale's models were minor celebrities as well as being real sailors.
The Gun Race was originally inspired by a heroic incident in the Boer War in which Navy crews transported guns from their ships across very difficult terrain to help relieve the siege of Ladysmith. There's a succinct explanation of the history of this event in Origins of the Gun Race. The Gun Race is still used as a Navy training exercise and I believe it will feature in the Queen's Platinim Jubilee celebrations in 2022.
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At that time the Earl's Court Arena was one of the few spaces in the country capable of mounting large scale events like the Royal Tournament under cover before a seated audience. It could accommodate military vehicles and even stabling facilities for the horses (it was regularly used for indoor Show jumping events and also for the 1948 Olympics). It was also conveniently close to Chelsea Barracks, home of the Queen's Guards.
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| The Colhearne Pub (ca 1970?) |
Given it's proximity to Chelsea barracks and the large numbers of conscripts in the services at that time, reluctantly doing their National Service in the aftermath of World War 2, there will have been plenty of off-duty servicemen who ignored the prohibitions of their superiors and frequented these gay haunts to simply enjoy the company or offer themselves for rent, where their military identity was an invaluable selling point. Basil Clavering (the man behind Royale) was a willing buyer of course and through these men he could gain access to an even larger pool of less adventurous and non-gay servicemen, who could also be persuaded to perform for him. It's possible, I suppose, that this grapevine effect may have given rise to the myth about homosexuals 'recruiting' straight men and 'turning' them queer.
During the Royal Tournament all the pubs in the immediate vicinity of the Arena will have been crammed with military men taking a break from performing and attending to their equipment, so there would have been unrivalled opportunities for Basil Clavering and his associates to chat up and proposition likely lads from all the services, offering them the possibility of becoming celebrated in a slightly different way and earning some pocket money to boot (no pun intended!). To gay servicemen in those oppressive times it must have seemed an attractive way of having their publicly despised sexuality recognised and valued even.
I'd welcome any comments on this era by readers who experienced it.
Obviously it was risky for serving personnel to allow themselves to be photographed in compromising situations, they risked lengthy imprisonment, not just expulsion from the services. Royale's description for NAGA referencing the 1959 Royal Tournament actually comes from their October 1959 Catalogue, so the men involved were probably still in the Navy at that time and therefore highly vulnerable.
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| Royale Studio Magazine Ad (1960's) |
Fortunately Royale images circulated largely on the fringes of society. A few relatively innocuous pictures and contact ads appeared in the back pages of British beefcake magazines (like Manual, above) but even those magazines were hard to come by in the UK at that time. There were rigorous censorship laws and uncontrolled Police activity and homophobia* led to the seizing of anything (they) deemed to be remotely indecent. In addition Newsagents, the only available public outlet in those days, were mostly in the hands of conservative private owners whose personal standards determined what could go on their shelves. Even those willing to sell the magazines were likely to hide them 'under the counter' where they were effectively restricted to those 'in the know' and bold enough to ask.
Nevertheless the men performing for Clavering did still risk exposure and almost certainly protected their identities with false 'professional' names, hence the confusion described above. In the erotic realm of course it's usual for model's names to be suggestive. The choices for these models are not especially subtle:- Tom Hard-ing, Ned Willy-can and Percy, which is another common UK euphemism for penis, (as in 'I'm off to point Percy at the porcelain').
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*I don't usually do political stuff here but as a relevant aside, the recent case of serial murderer, Stephen Port in the UK has vividly demonstrated to anyone with a brain that homophobia is still alive and well and institutionally embedded in the London Metropolitan Police today. The catalogue of their 'omissions' in this case would be laughable were it not so tragic - and so obviously deliberate. The features of the case - refusal to investigate, blaming of victims, fabrication of statements and suppression of evidence, are also a familiar story for anyone who familiar with the (non-gay) cases of Stephen Lawrence (1993) and the Hillsborough Tragedy (1989). The vehement denials of the obvious homophobia by Senior Officers (mis-labelling deliberate non-actions as 'failings' and 'mistakes') simply prove the point and sadly demonstrate that nothing is going to change anytime soon, if ever.
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| Royale Studio - Navy Romeo, Part 1 - Image 7 |
The need for Royale models to have a degree of anonymity may also account for the fact that their faces are often obscured or turned away in Royale Studio pictures which feature two or more men together. You can see this in most of the images above in this post but especially in Part 1 of the 'Navy Romeo' storyette. But it's also true that when it comes to censorship, rear views in general are safer ground than frontal bulges anyway.
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Next time: The Navy Gash storyette in full
and an updated link to the mitchmen Open Archive of Royale Photos