At the time when William joined the Navy, ships were used for several purposes other than sailing the high seas. When not at sea William lived afloat in docked ships known as "receiving ships" which were, in effect, floating barracks. This was the role of HMS Terror, stationed at the Royal Navy dockyard in Bermuda, having been previously the guard ship there.

For many years Britain had maintained a Royal Naval Dockyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but when in 1818 the base became too vulnerable to attack from American forces it was moved to Bermuda, well beyond the operating range of the United States Navy but well-placed strategically in the mid-Atlantic. After his initial training at Portsmouth, William was drafted to HMS Terror in October 1889 for three years service based at this North America & West Indies Station. William’s time on HMS Terror appears to have been one of his quieter periods at sea. The role of the ship was to receive newcomers to the base and to fulfil the formal responsibilities of a flagship. In 1889, concerned by the increasing naval power of France and Russia, the British Government passed an Act to increase the country’s naval strength so that it maintained a number of battleships at least equal to the combined strength of France and Russia. When William returned from his three-year spell on HMS Terror to be stationed in the Victory II base ship, he could not have failed to be impressed by the new state-of-the-art HMS Royal Arthur cruiser which had just been completed in the Portsmouth Dockyard as a direct result of the Naval Defence Act programme.

The Discovery Expedition

In February 1901 William was back with HMS Duke of Wellington in Portsmouth Docks. The 1901 National Census records that in March he was living with his wife and daughter Alice (aged one) at 38 Elmsworth Road, Portsmouth in a house they shared as two flats with Henry Miles, a painter in Portsmouth Dockyard, and his wife and son. William had just signed up for ten more years in the Navy, to complete the time required for his pension, but in June he joined the Discovery in London. For the next three and a half years while, as his naval record puts it, “lent for service with the National Antarctic Expedition”, William was registered with HMS President, the training ship for the Royal Naval Reserve based at the West India Dock, London.

Next: Between Expeditions