Dover, 1st January 1936

Billy had grown up staring at the sea.

From his family’s little house on the hills of Dover, he had watched great ships dock

into port for as long as he could remember. Their billowing smokestacks belched

then came to a halt as they docked into port, their masts coloured with the flags of

many signals and nations. Their family even owned a small fishing boat, and he and

his mother would sail through the Channel to see the warships in the summer— until

his father came back from the War.

As Billy grew, so did the ships. Once in a while, an enormous battleship would dock

into port, and a crowd would gather to see it. When Billy was a toddler, they were

tubby, almost round oval shaped things, then all of a sudden somewhere in his

childhood they turned into sharply angled, long and intimidating gun platforms— the

‘Dreadnought Revolution’, the papers called it— slowly becoming sleeker and longer

and boxier until Billy was a teenager— the battleships having become something

that was nothing like their past selves. As he grew, they grew, as did his fascination

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with the ships outside their window— earning the disdain of his father, who was no

longer able to go outside the house unaided.

“Those guns look ol’ mighty, alright.” His father was looking through the window

beside him, a copy of the Sunday Post in his lap. “What do you think would you

happen if you were on the receiving end of that lot?”

He flicked his finger across the paper, drawing Billy’s attention to the headline that

read, ‘JAPAN LAYS DOWN TWO NEW TOSA-CLASS DREADNOUGHTS’. “They say

they have enough firepower to knock out anything we have in our entire navy. In the

Great War I lost my legs to one 105-millimetre howitzer. These new Japanese ships

carry 410-millimetre guns— ten of them. Nobody can survive that shit.”

Billy imagined himself like the boys in the papers, sailors that had braved the Great

War and come home with a medal or two, smiles on their faces as they regaled their

families with tales of the great waves of the Atlantic. He wanted to come back as a

sailor and stare his father in the eye, almost to say: “I lived.”.

The Revenge-class battleship HMS Ramillies was docked in the port, its guns facing

the blue expanse of the sea as people, barely discernible seemingly little dots,

hurried about the deck. Beside it, small tugs surrounded the gargantuan vessel,

moving about like servants attending to a king.

“Don’t let it get to your head. Everything looks so goddamn good in peacetime.”