[The author’s father was ‘pensioned off after his twenty two years naval service, he finished as a Chief Petty Officer’, p. 28. The extract is taken from a section recounting the war years] 

[A]part from such hymns as “There’s a Friend for little children”, and “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam?” there was one hymn which dominated my childhood, and naturally enough it was, “Eternal Father, strong to save,… Oh hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea”. Once when my maternal grandmother was staying with us for a day or two, she took me to a service held in a hall at the Royal Sailors’ Rest, or Aggie Weston’s, as it was known, and I’ve never forgotten the singing, it was wonderful, with good old familiar tunes in which everybody could, and did, heartily join.