When A Dog Was Officially Enlisted In The South African NavY

Written By Southpoint Collective

In the midst of World War II, one unlikely recruit found his way into the ranks of the South African Navy, winning over sailors and officers alike. 

His presence was impossible to ignore, his antics were the stuff of legend, and his impact would be felt long after the war ended. 

So just how did a four-legged mischief-maker end up with an official military rank? Well, stick around and you’ll hear the truly heartwarming tale of the only dog to ever be officially enlisted in the Royal Navy.

The subject of today’s story is one that is rather close to my heart. Many of you may not know that I grew up right at the very Southern tip of Africa in the city of Cape Town, South Africa.

And today’s story is one that almost all the children in my area grew up hearing about as it happened just a few km’s down the coast at the Naval Base in the local suburb of Simons Town.

On the 1st of April 1937 in the Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch, nestled at the foot of the Table Mountain range, a small great dane puppy was born. This particular puppy, as is the way of his particular breed, would not stay small for long.

In fact, he grew so unexpectedly fast that he was soon sold to a man named Benjamin Chaney who would later relocate about 30-40 minutes South to the suburb of Simon’s Town, taking his great dane with him.

In a later interview with Chaney, he recounts the story of the very first night he got his new dog, and how he knew instantly that he would not be a conventional pet.

“‘The first night he was in my home, I showed him round the place, including the kitchen. Standing next to the refrigerator, I pressed the handle down and told him that if he could do likewise he could help himself to the two pounds of mutton inside. Well, The following morning I found the fridge empty. That incident showed me that I was the master of no ordinary dog’.

At the time of his relocation, Simon’s Town was primarily inhabited by Royal Navy sailors and officers and of course the merchants who ran the stores and resturants that lined the high street. This was because the entire bay in front of them was one enormous Naval base.

Benjamin Chaney had moved there to take over control of an establishment known as the United Services Institute, which had become a popular hangout spot for the local sailors. 

Every day, Chaney would take his enormous hound with him to work. His calm and friendly nature meant that he quickly became very popular with the sailors who would frequent the institute. Soon he was being treated to all manner of snacks, pies and beer and was being taken for daily walks along the high street whenever the sailors had to run errands.

The sailors fed and played with him so much that he soon considered anyone wearing a sailors uniform to be his best friend and would wag his tail furiously whenever he spotted one of them.

He would often follow them down to the dockyards and right up onto the ships themselves which were moored alongside the wharf, his favourite seeming to be the HMS Neptune. Here he would decide he’d done enough walking for the day and would flop down on the deck for a late afternoon snooze in the sunshine. The only problem was that by now he had grown to an enormous size, even considered large amongst other Great Danes, and his favourite spot to nap was right at the top of the gangplank whereby the sailors needed to get on or off the ship. 

Owing to his large frame he presented the sailors with a rather sizeable roadblock to navigate either around or over when boarding or disembarking, and because of this affectionately became known as “Nuisance”.

Nuisance, as Benjamin Chaney had found out early on, was a dog with great intelligence. He was allowed to roam freely around the town during the day and would follow soldiers back and forth until it was inevitably time for a nap. But Nuisance soon began to realise that at particular times of the day some of his friends would get onto a long metal tube and shunt off down the tracks, sometimes not returning until the next day.

His curiosity eventually got the better of him and so he began strolling along to the train station platform at the time he normally saw them leaving. The sailors he watched getting on the train each day were travelling the roughly 35km journey into Cape Town city centre on their days of leave. What Nuisance couldn’t know is that no-one was allowed on the train without a valid ticket. Entirely unperturbed by this fact he hopped inside a carriage along with a load of his sailor buddies and stared with fascination out of the window as the train wound its way around the coast, right along the water's edge.

He had so much fun, that this habit of riding the trains with the sailors would become an almost daily habit, much to the passengers delight. The only ones not happy to see him, were the train conductors who, upon discovering him in one of the train cars, would kick him off the train at whatever the next station was. 

As was his nature, Nuisance was entirely unbothered by this and would simply sit next to the tracks and wait patiently for another train to come past before catching that one back towards Simon’s Town.

It eventually became a kind of game for the sailors, who would try all manner of ingenious methods to either hide or conceal the enormous dog whenever they spotted the conductor approaching from the adjoining train car. Whenever he was discovered by the conductors, sailors as well as amused members of the general public would offer to pay for his train fare if only they would leave him alone to ride the train.

But as is the way of many state backed bureaucracies, rules were rules and despite him never causing any sort of trouble, dogs were simply not allowed on board the trains. Eventually the South African Railway Company sent an official to Simon’s Town to meet with Benjamin Chaney. They warned him that either Nuisance must be prevented from boarding the trains entirely, or he would have to be euthanised.

When word of this got back to the sailors, almost the entire navy erupted with outrage. No-one was going to harm their friend Nuisance.

Junior sailors along with some of the officers began a letter-writing campaign to naval command pleading that something be done about this. Many offered to buy Nuisance his very own seasonal travel ticket, but the higher ups, who seemed love Nuisance just as much as the sailors themselves, had an even better idea.

They worked out a plan that not only solved all their problems in one go, but also had the dual effect of sticking it to the railway officials at the same time.

Nuisance would be officially enlisted by the Navy with the full rights afforded to him just the same as any other member of the armed forces. What this meant in practice was that no-one could touch him without severe repercussions, and in a brilliant move also meant that just like his fellow sailors he immediately became entitled to free rail travel.

So on the 25th of August 1939, he was officially inducted into the Royal Navy. When filling in his paperwork his Surname was listed simply as Nuisance, and because this was all he was known by at the time, just Nuisance, that was exactly what they put for his first name, Just. And in this moment, the legend of Just Nuisance was born.

Following on from this, and to make sure that everything was in order and official, his trade was listed as Bonecrusher, with his religion simply filled in as “Scrounger”. Years later upon his eventual death, his records would be updated to reflect his religion as “The Canine Divinity League.

Once they had all of his paperwork squared away, even having had the giant dog sign his own name by dipping his paw in ink and stamping it on the page, they realised that they had made a grave error. They had listed his rank as simply beign that of an ordinary Seaman, which meant he was not entitled to receive any official rations. This would simply not do, and so, in recognition of his excellent and long standing service of accompanying the sailors on their official duties, he was instantly promoted to Able Seaman with all of the perks and benefits that came with it.

We’re going to take a short break, but when we come back, we’re going to fill you in on some even crazier antics that he got up to now that he was officially an enlisted sailor.

It wasn’t long before he started fully taking advantage of his new rank, and was soon spotted each night sleeping, fully stretched out with his head on a pillow, on one of the beds in the sailors sleeping quarters.

He quickly took pride in his new position and was often seen wearing his little white sailors hat with a blue band around it, especially at any of the navy’s official parades. In one anecdote it was said that Just Nuisance was fiercely patriotic, and as soon as the South African National Anthem began to play, regardless of whether he was fast asleep, upon hearing it, he would jump to his feet immediately, barking along in time to the music. In another tale, an official from the Cape Town Customs Department swore that he witnessed Just Nuisance growling at a man who had been ignoring a minute's silence.

He also made sure that when things got a bit heated amongst his sailor friends that he was always on hand to defuse the situation. If he ever came across two of the sailors arguing or fighting with one another, we would bound over to them, jumping up with his paws on their chest in order to push them apart. And it was a brave man who defied Just Nuisance who at this point stood almost 2 metres tall when up on his hind legs.

He even started taking care of sailors who had had too much to drink, escorting them back to the barracks to sleep it off. Hilariously, there were even occasions when sailors he met on the train who had indulged a bit too much, had their uniforms tugged by Just Nuisance who did this as a way of guiding them safely in the direction of home. In the morning however, these sailors who, in their drunken stupors had simply gone with the flow, realised that they had woken up in Simonstown, despite their own barracks being somewhere else entirely.

His celebrity continued to grow, and almost everyone in Cape Town and its surrounding areas had either met him, or had at the very least, heard all about his escapades.

All of this was happening amidst the outbreak of World War II and Just Nuisance became a great morale booster for all of the enlisted men.

In fact, as the main event of one particular fundraising function, an entire wedding ceremony had been organised. Just Nuisance, dressed in full navy whites, was betrothed to another Great Dane by the name of Adinda, and together they would go on to have 5 beautiful puppies together.

Whilst he never actually went on board a ship that travelled out of the harbor on a mission, he would sometimes sneak off to the local airfield where one of the Airforce pilots there would strap him into the seat beside him. The two of them would take off from Wingfield air base and fly together in a Fairy Fulmer, a coastal reconnaissance plane used to spot enemy submarines off the South African Coast.

But Just Nuisance, for all his lovable traits, was not without a few black marks against his name. According to his official navy conduct sheet, throughout the years he was charged with several offences and subsequently had to undergo the requisite punishments.

Some of his more notable infractions were listed as the following:

1. He did commit an act to the prejudice of commonsense and good humour, in that he did, before his enlistment, travel on the South African railways without a ticket. 

Punishment: confined to the station platform.

2. Just Nuisance did sleep, without permission, in an improper place, namely in the bed of a petty officer in the Sailors and Soldiers home.

Punishment: Deprived of any bones for seven days.

3. Did resist ejection from the very same Sailors and Soldiers home when it was deemed that he was too dirty to recline there. 

Punishment: Made to sleep outside.

Amongst a variety of other entries were citations for losing his official navy collar, refusing to leave the pub at closing time, and most egregiously of all fighting with the mascots of any other ships that happened to dock at the Simon’s Town Naval Base.

Unfortunately for our story, it doesn’t end on a particularly happy note. In general Great Danes, owing to their large size and the toll this puts on their organs, are only expected to live between 6 and 9 years.

Just Nuisance, as he approached his 7th birthday however, was still in relatively fine form. But on the 1st of January 1944, after a night of celebration, ringing in the New Year with his navy buddies, he was unfortunately struck by a car. The impact of the collision did not kill the heroic hound, but within just a short while a thrombosis formed, gradually and painfully paralysing him. He was officially honorably discharged from the Navy, but as his condition continued to worsen, just 3 months later on the 1st of April 1944, the exact date of his 7th birthday, he was taken to the Simon’s Town Naval Hospital. It was here, upon the advice of the devastated Naval Veterinary Surgeon, that Just Nuisance was peacefully put to sleep.

The next day he was taken in a long procession to the Klawer Camp where his body was draped with a Royal Navy White Ensign Flag and buried with full naval honours, including a 21 gun salute, and the mournful playing of the Last Post by a navy trumpeter. Every sailor in the bay knew about his death, and when the echoes from the 21 gun salute rang out from atop the hill, every single sailor stopped what they were doing, bowed their heads and swallowed hard as the lumps rose in their throats. Many a tear could be seen rolling down the cheeks of the men whose lives had been so greatly impacted by the simple, enduring love of the only dog to ever be enlisted in the royal navy.

Just Nuisance’s granite headstone still stands proudly at the top of Klawer hill outside the former SA Navy Signal School. Later, in 1985, in the centre of Simon’s Town Jubilee Square a life size statue of Just Nuisance was erected with his two front legs perched upon a boulder overlooking the waters edge. From here he can keep watch over all the boats coming and going from the harbour, making sure that all of his sailor friends make it home safely.

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