| T.S.Sturdy | |
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| Nautical Training Corps |
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TS Sturdy celebrates 30 years of youth service for West Sussex On the 30th September 1978 TS Sturdy opened their doors for the very first time bringing a new youth service to the city of Chichester. Since then as you can imagine, hundreds of faces have come and gone, all hopefully remembering at least one good memory. Year in year out, TS Sturdy has had a huge number of cadets on board, (the lack of technology in 1978 may of played a big part in that), and now a days we currently have around 15 to 20 cadets. The military band of TS Sturdy was formed in 1987 competing in their very first Nautical Training Corps Band Competition in the same year. Being placed into Novice Class they came second (not bad for their first year). The band is still going strong and still competing in the Nautical Training Corps Band Competition, with the band competing in Contest Class in 2007 and came first. For 30 years, TS Sturdy has always had fun and challenging activities for all our cadets. Ranging from camps to kayaking and archery to Christmas Yule log making. You can see more about our activities here. For all these years we’ve given an exciting and knowledgeable service to West Sussex and hopefully we can continue this for another thirty years. ------ TS Sturdy win Contest Class at NTC Band Competition 2007! That time of year again (already?!), and after many hours of blood sweat and tears (and again, that was just the officer making the tea), TS Sturdy were taking part in the 2007 NTC Band Competition at the Triangle Centre in Burgess Hill. With a band of just ten members, and the average age of the cadets was only ten years old, the pressure was on to perform well in Contest class, against four other bands who no doubt had also been rehearsing long and hard. Five new songs had been learnt for this routine, as well as some 'golden oldies' that hadn't been played in many years. Marching, dressing and the display routine had been practised time and time again, and after the Bandmaster's final words "Enjoy the moment", it all came down to ten minutes of routine. In a matter of minutes we had marched on, completed our display and marching off with our heads held high. The routine and music was brilliant, everyone performed fantastically well and those two months of practice was over in a matter of 10 minutes. Then came the results: Best Display and Showmanship - TS Sturdy Then something that has never, ever, happened in our history: Overall 1st place - TS Sturdy! Once again, we would like to thank everyone involved with the preparations of the Band for this momentous day. It really made the weeks of hard work thoroughly worth it. Well done TS Sturdy! ------- TS Sturdy Recruiting Now TS Sturdy are currently recruiting for new cadets, aged eight and above to enjoy a wide selection of activities and to learn a lot of new skills. Across the NTC we are able to provide a wide selection of activities for our cadets to participate in - Hiking, Sailing, Kayaking, Band Music, Rifle Shooting, Archery, Climbing/Abseiling, Adventure camping and a whole lot more. If you've liked what you've seen on our website, and are keen to talk more or would like to make a visit, then please contact the Commanding Officer on our Contact Page. ------- Wales 2007 Trip In August this year TS Sturdy and TS Intrepid embarked on a five-day trip to the Brecon Beacons in Wales. We stayed near Hirwaun in a converted youth activity centre which used to be a cottage and barn. We made the five hour minibus journey on Thursday evening, arriving at the centre about half past eleven, even arriving that late none of the cadets wanted to go to bed. We had lots of activities for the cadets to get involved in - including visiting The Big Pit on Saturday, spectacular waterfalls on Sunday, and the National Showcaves Centre for Wales at Dan-yr-Ogof on the Monday morning. We hope all the cadets and officers that attended enjoyed the weekend, and special thanks go to the Chichester Boys Club for supplying a second minibus at a late call. Wales 2008 is booked for Thursday 14th - Monday 18th August 2008. ------- We worked extremely hard in the run up to this competition, with a challenging but entertaining routine, development and enhancement of existing songs with new harmonies and dynamics, and a new song for the bell lyre section (we've called it Sky, but it's more commonly known as Toccata and Fugue, composed by JS Bach). Also, it was the first band competition in a few years for the new bell lyre section, as it didn't even exist at the beginning of 2006. You can read the background to the run up for the Band Competition on the Mighty Oak Blog here. Anyway, the routine went very well, and we took 3rd place in our class, but we also won the Best Wind Section, and came joint 1st in the Best Bell Lyre Section. As you can imagine, this was a fantastic result for us, and an excellent reward for the hard work, effort and perseverance of our relatively new band. TS Sturdy would like to thank the Officers, Committee Members and Parents who have given their time and effort in the run up to the Band Competition, but most of all would like to thank the cadet band members themselves, all of whom gave their all in the preparation and practices over the past three months, and without whom there simply wouldn't be a band of TS Sturdy NTC. You can read more about the actual day on the Mighty Oak Blog here. ------- The 2nd phase of the Sturdy website has now been completed! Whilst you
may not see any immediate obvious amendments (why change a thing of beauty),
if you browse around a little you will notice some things are different: www.ntc.org.uk/sturdy ------- As described in our History page, the Nautical Training Corps was founded in 1942, by Commodore FP Froest-Carr. Every year we have a celebration of the founding of our organisation, which naturally we call Founders Day. Held in June at Preston Park in Brighton, it is the one time of the year where all the units of the NTC gather in one place. It is the most important parade in the year for the NTC, and an excellent opportunity to showcase the ever-improving band and Ship's Company to the other ships in the organisation. As you can imagine, a lot of effort went into preparing for this event, from the drill practices at Deck Nights, constant marching and music practices for the Band, to the organisation of the stalls and transportation arrangements for everyone. We are happy to report that the day went fantastically well. The band sounded and marched like professionals (even if we were full of new members over the recent weeks), the Regional Band were excellent on their debut performance, and even the weather was kind to us! Pictures will be uploaded to this website shortly, and you can read the background on the Blog here. ------- The beginning of May, start of the summer (well, the weather was certainly very summer-like), and the start of the Sturdy Regional Kayaking Days, hosted by ourselves on the Chichester Canal all day Sunday. Kayaking has always been a very prominent aspect of NTC life, with events taking place almost every weekend throughout the summers of old. Sadly with the reduction in numbers of ships, and particularly instructors, kayaking is something that sadly has taken something of a 'back seat' of NTC schedules. The Regional Kayaking Days are a step in the right direction, a chance for the cadets in our region to get some experience in kayaks, and possibly the precursor to more regional kayaking activities in the future, naturally dependant on the number of kayaking instructors available at the time. However, that's for the future. The present is the Regional Kayaking Days. The first one went very well, with all three ships in our region present. The cadets thoroughly enjoyed themselves, the instructors just about survived the day (despite our bodies suddenly finding aching muscles that most of us, even the qualified 1st Aiders, didn't even know existed), and a good day was had all round. The plans are to hold a kayaking day at the beginning of each month until September. You can read the insider view on the Mighty Oak Blog. ------- TS Sturdy recently lead the St George's Day Parade in Chichester. With the help of our sister ship TS Intrepid the band numbered in the region of 20, the largest band we've had at St George's Day for many a year, and we were well suited to lead the scouts, guides, brownies and everyone (numbering somewhere in the region of 600-700 in the parade through the city centre onto the Cathedral. Sturdy had prepared for this parade in a rather unusual way - we received a request from one of the local Scout Leaders a few weeks beforehand. His scout group were scheduled to be the first group directly behind the band at St George's Day, and he thought it would be a good idea for his group to get some marching practice, in order that they could look much smarter behind the band on the big day. So we invited them over to our band night to learn some drill. Thankfully we had some extra officers and instructors on hand to teach them, as we were rather surprised to see a group of almost 30 scouts arrive! One hour, and a very worn out floor (not to mention instructors), later and they seemed to have acquired the general knack of it. It's amazing what you can do with a bit of perspiration eh! The whole day went very well, the band sounded and look fantastic, the Ship's Company managed to keep up, and even the local paper managed to get our name right in their report! Sadly everyone in the band were so concentrating on marching in step and in line, as well as playing the right music, we didn't think to keep an eye on the scout group behind us, but we did hear from the general public that they were looking like they've been marching for years! You can read the Blog entry here. ------- Older news articles can be found here. |
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