Shellback Ceremony Turns Pollywogs Into Shellback
You crossed the line. You went from Pollywog to Shellback and no it wasn’t easy. Here is where that Shellback Ceremony Turns Pollywogs Into Shellbacks and you meant to endure it cause failure was not an option. There were exhausting hours where sleep was never issued and you though the initiation into the Court of Neptune Rex would never cease. The stories about what happened on deck or in the bowels of the ship still astonish many and as consistent as our US Navy is the stories are as diverse as the personalities that serve beneath the uniform.
Remember the stories? The salt water coffee, pulling something out of the belly button of some barnacle encrusted crewmember or swabbing the deck with god only knows what right before you were ordered to navigate some disgusting obstacle course riddled with some really vile substances below your fingertips and within inches of your nose. Ah yes the good times.
So as the story goes they did it and so shall you must cause when you have to be initiated just like your former crew members had been, whether a Chief or lower rank had done their time as well.
Do you have a story to tell? All good stories were once good sea stories and they just got more interesting over time. No experience is exactly the same and if I had to guess yours would be pretty unique as well.
It can only get worse when it comes to a Shellback Ceremony? Right? Right!
You have had better day!
You think you are safe? You are not!
It’s right there. I see it!
Lunch ala Shellback!
So it is painfully obvious that generation after generation of US Navy Sailor has been ordered to volunteer to go through the infamous USN Shellback Ceremony and arrive on the other side of this dubious right of passage a Shellback and invited into the Court Of Neptune Rex. Everyone remembers it and while it happened you hated it but years later you remember with find memories you and your shipmates going through this ordeal.
Maybe you are out of the US Navy or still in and want to commemorate your Shellback initiation with something all your own. There is a way!