By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Many respectable matrons in Our Honolulu, like the 125-year-old Falls of Clyde, have secrets about their youthful indiscretions. Here's one that's never been told in public before.

The tattletale was a 15-year-old English schoolboy, Arthur "Specky" Roland, who boarded the ship as an apprentice in 1882 and for the next two years kept a journal of the high jinks that went on behind the captain's back.

Many sailors in those days sang sea chanteys while they heaved on the lines. On a voyage to Bombay, the Falls of Clyde apprentices organized a ship's band.

According to Specky's journal, the sailmaker arranged the music, directed the band and doubled on banjo. Other instruments included a drum made of sheep skin stretched over a flour barrel, an accordion, a concertina, two tin whistles, three harmonicas, a triangle, sleigh bells, spoons, bones and a clarinet.

The first Bombay concert on the main deck for the captain's guests inspired a globe-circling phenomenon. In Liverpool, one of the apprentices stole a pump organ that added quality to the band. A recruit named Barney brought a rattle made of nails in a tin can.

The band was a smash in Calcutta, making a horrible din on the most elegant ship in the harbor. The good ladies of Calcutta who tried to save sailors from dens of iniquity took to the band immediately.

They invited band members to evening services at the Bethel. But Barney disappeared. During the service, he crawled down the brass steps from the choir loft. He slipped and landed in the choir's umbrella stand, breaking the first soprano's umbrella.

Band members greatly increased their repertoire by stealing hymn books. Barney said the soprano was so grateful when he brought her a new umbrella, she gave him a Christy Minstrel song book. But nobody believed that's how he got it.

In any event, band practice relieved the tedium of long voyages. So the crew took it hard when a new captain with steely eyes refused to let the band make those terrible noises. At the equator, he said he would have no silly initiation ceremonies for Green Lobsters aboard his ship.

Obviously, there was a Jonah on board. The crew decided to Bury the Dead Horse. They sewed together an effigy of the captain from canvas and filled it with coal.

They hung it from the yardarm. The band marched around the main hatch playing the Dead March, the whole crew singing the chorus. As the trombonist played taps and the effigy splashed into the water, the captain came around to find out what the noise was all about.

Without a word, he turned on his heel. Three weeks later, he gave the band permission to play again. They refused.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-0873.