My MIL was pretty homophobic but her favourite record was Bohemian Rhapsody sung (mainly) by Freddie Mercury. She had no idea and we never told her.
Urban legend has it that one of the old senior admirals heard the song and thought it should be used in a recruiting campaign. Some lucky guy was delegated to explain to him why it was a baaad idea.
Certain naval traditions are better left hidden in a closet you say? 
Or more properly a locker in Navy-speak. Let he who is without sin cast the first pogey-bait.
I was in the Canadian army. It might be that it was different for officers than enlisted, but our reception consisted of the following.
They call Ocdt Bloggins. When Bloggins arrives they tell you “Follow Ocdt Bloggins to the 8th floor. Your room is pod 3 of room 814. You are not permitted to go to the 2nd floor for the next four weeks. Your course will begin at 0630 on Monday.”
Liberace won a lawsuit in the 1950s when a British gossip columnist called him “fruit-flavored”, testifying that he was not a homosexual or ever engaged in homosexual sexual acts.
On the DVD for the “McHale’s Navy” tv Series, there is a discussion between several cast members. Ernest Borgnine says that Navy told him that McHale’s navy was the best recruiting tool they had. “Stripes” isn’t very different from “McHale’s Navy”, assuming Borgnine was accurate.
What’s on the 2nd floor?
I think it was actually the 1st floor when I thought about it some more, but anyway the bank, Canex (convenience store), messes, movie theatre, etc. For the 1st four weeks you are confined to barracks and so not permitted any of these niceties. On day 1 or day 2, we were marched down to the Canex and instructed to buy whatever we would need for 4 weeks in addition to those things which were mandatory, e.g. the proper hangers, a picture frame, etc.
an officer’s stateroom (for three officers). It’s much roomier on surface ships.
[/QUOTE]
Who gets, or gets to call top bunk?
Perspective on robby’s first picture sucks – here is a somewhat better one, with people added for scale. 
And this is what the captain’s stateroom looks like. The inboard bulkhead is just a few inches past the right edge of the picture, and the aft bulkhead is maybe a foot and a half past the left edge.
That’s a 688. There are three wardroom staterooms, each shared by a department head and two junior officers (JOs). The engineer is in the forward stateroom, the navigator in the middle, and the weapons officer in the aft. They normally have the centre bunk; don’t know how the JOs sort things out. Maybe the senior of the two gets to pick, and the junior gets the rack that’s left over…
The CO and XO have their own staterooms (though the XO may have to share with a senior rider, and the remaining JOs are in berthing with the enlisted men.
I never expected much in the way of accuracy in the lyrics of a Village People song.
You really can get yourself clean and have a good meal and do whatever you feel at the YMCA.
Whatever…whoever… shrug
It went farther than that. According to Wikipedia:
Was that in the megaplex in St Jean, for your basic officer training? I joined in '79 and we had ours in Chilliwack.
Regarding the rest of the question, I was in the Canadian navy (now RCN) I personally did:
Learn science (and) technology, to the extent required to learn some basic oceanography as an ASW officer and to the extent required to learn the technology of the various ship’s systems (weapons, sensors, command and control systems)
Study oceanography (see above)
I didn’t do the others but scuba diving, sailing the seven seas (I guess I’ve sailed three), and searching for treasure are possible in that you could become a ship’s diver; you could, depending on postings and operations and career longevity, sail the seven seas; and you could possibly be in a ship required to conduct some sort of salvage operation.
“688”?
And 'the remaining JOs"—there are only three at the highest rank (call it 3-rack rank), and all the others sleep with the crowd because they’re lower rank? (Kind of “who calls top bunk” at a larger scale).
Yes, I did my BOTC in sunny St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu at the Mega. Oh the fun times that were had by all.
I heard a great story (legend?) of two junior officers doing their Phase III (or Phase IV) training. They had the stereotypical seadog CPO training them. The officers were known to be a couple of jokers so they got along swimmingly (in that the CPO probably wanted to throw them overboard). Anyway, one of them wore glasses and one morning the glasses broke so he fixed it with a pipe cleaner twisty. So they’re getting their morning chewing out from the CPO when he sees the pipe cleaner and yells “And what the **** is that?!?” The officer with the glasses says “Oh, that’s actually a transmitter up to the bridge so we can keep them informed of how you’re treating us.” The other officer says “And how is he treating us?” The first one replies, while pressing on the transmitter “Not very well, over.”
I don’t know if the story is true but it makes me laugh with tears everytime.
688. Unless I say otherwise, all my comments on submarines or submarine life refer to 688s, because that’s all I have personal experience with. (I served on three of them.)
The captain is a commander, the XO and the engineer lieutenant commanders. The weapons officer* and the navigator are lieutenants, and the fourth department head – the supply officer (aka the “chop”) – is a lieutenant or a JG[SUP]**[/SUP]. He lives in the weapons officer’s stateroom, usually in the top rack. The remaining five spaces in the three wardroom staterooms are taken by the senior division officers (normally lieutenants or JGs). The remaining division officers (of which there are usually two or three) live in the nine-man bunkroom with the rabble.
- So called on my first boat; somewhere along the way the new kinder-and-gentler Navy changed the title to “combat systems officer.”
** Lieutenant (junior grade).
A good one, but not one that I’ve heard. A popular one in my day was about a Naval Cadet getting reamed out by the Capt on the bridge of a minesweeper. The Cadet then supposedly took his nav notebook and flipped it open like a Star Trek (TOS) communicator and said “Beam me up Scotty! No intelligent life down here.”