TOM EATON | Shiver me timbers — what’s going on with the shrinking navy?

I am sorry it has taken me so long to write you, my darling Penelope, but here aboard the SAS Mendi we have taken the news pretty hard that we are the only functioning warship in the South African navy, and also we have had to use the last of the letter-writing paper in the officers’ loo.

Of course there were signs, like our daily ration of ship’s biscuit being replaced by ship’s cookie and then by ship’s Mini Tennis, which are lovely and coconutty but don’t quite pack the calorific punch to allow a chap to stand a full watch before the mast.

Still, to see it reported in the press has holed many of us below the emotional waterline. South African sailors are a resilient lot, ready to face rough seas, scurvy and even erratic Wi-Fi coverage, but we all had friends on other ships, and last night I heard some of the youngsters crying themselves to sleep in their hammocks, no doubt thinking about the horrible fate of the Isandlwana, the Amatola, the Drakensberg and all the others blown clean out of the water and onto bricks by a relentless barrage of budget cuts.

Indeed, even as I wrote this I was interrupted by a young able seaman who came to me to express how horrible it must be to be a submariner without a submarine, having to lie in your bath all day long making pinging noises in a hopeless attempt to simulate work. He tells me that things have got so desperate for some in the submarine corps that they are starting to hire canoes and drilling holes in the bottom just so they can feel the rush of an emergency dive one last time.

I know that I am lucky to be on the Mendi, exhilarated by the smell of the sea, penguin guano and Mini Tennis, but I must confess to you that I share their creeping frustrations.

I mean, for heaven’s sake, Penelope, even Bolivia has a functioning navy, and Bolivia doesn’t even have a coast! Of course, I know how much you love both geography and saucy wordplay, and you might rightly point out that Lake Titicaca is very different to the South Atlantic, not least because it’s got a much funnier name. But I am slowly reaching the point where I would gladly accept deployment on some inland lake if it meant seeing another ship proudly steaming off the starboard bow.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting anything mad like putting patrol boats in our rivers the way the Bolivians do — my crew is adamant that they’d rather face the US Pacific Fleet in a typhoon than risk falling into a river in an ANC-run municipality — but honestly, how difficult would it be to put a small minesweeper into Harties to tackle the water hyacinths?

Then again, I also know that this is, alas, not an issue of logistics or even national pride but of money.

There is a nasty rumour flying around the lower decks that all the cash that might have kept us running has been stolen and buried on a desert island. This, obviously, is nonsense: Dubai might be a desert but it is not an island.

The truth, however, is that the navy’s budget keeps shrinking even as our gigantically complex equipment needs increasingly expensive maintenance, and given that 64% of the entire defence budget now goes to paying salaries, the question has to be asked: if the navy can’t keep ships in the water, what exactly are sailors like me being paid to do?

You will recall that I once studied economics for half a semester before the siren song of the sea became impossible to resist, and I think it was John Maynard Keynes who suggested that governments could easily create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them up again.

At the current rate, dear Penelope, I fear that the navy might become an employment scheme where people are paid to march up and down past the berths where ships used to be. Of course, should this come to pass I will do my duty, and salute as briskly and precisely as any man ever saluted a stretch of slightly oily seawater, but it will be with a heavy heart.

No, dear one, the problems remain, and chief among them is that most South Africans don’t know what a navy is for or why South Africa should have one at all. And can I blame them?

You know that I am all for heroic rearguard actions (just last week I made 14 not out off 182 balls against the Dockyard XI while we waited for new parts to be delivered by pack donkey), but even I have to admit that, were we to be attacked by a determined and well-armed foe, or even a lackadaisical enemy armed with sharp sticks, I am not sure the navy could do its job.

And if I have doubts, then what of the people I serve? After all, if they don’t have jobs or safe streets, why should they care whether they have a submarine?

But now, my darling, the penguins are marauding onto the stern again and I must go and repulse them. Until I write again, which will depend on when we get more toilet paper, I remain devotedly yours.