02 Navy Romeo (Jan 1960)

Navy Romeo is a "Royale Storyette" in which two Royal Navy ratings play a humiliating, practical joke on one of their shipmates after secretly ridiculing his vanity. They abduct him and leave him tied to a tree with his bare ass exposed.  

Royale's Catalogue Description for Navy Romeo (NARO)

Royale used the acronym 'NARO' as the ordering code for customers wanting to buy the 'Navy Romeo' pictures by post (no internet in those days!)

The story features "R.N. matelots" Tom, Spike and Ted. Tom is played by Tom Harding with Ned Willigan as Spike, Ted's identity has not been established. The same three men also appear in a set labelled 'DTS' which provides the information we have about their identities. It's discussed as an annex to Romeo (see below) .

 

 NARO has 2 distinct sections with different settings and they appear to have been photographed at different times. It was comprised of 36 photos altogether, according to the Catalogue description. The Archive has 12 of the Part 1 pictures and 19 of Part 2, which is 31 out of the advertised total of 36. Most of them are thumbnails which a previous enthusiast must have extracted from a Royale Catalogue sheet, so, sadly, they are not of full print quality, but you still get a good sense of how they looked and the compensation is that many of them are numbered which assists with sequencing the storyline (although these numbers are a mixed blessing - see full article). 

Navy Romeo was first advertised in List X (i.e. List 10) of Royale's catalogue, dated Jan 1960

DTS is listed on the same sheet.

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Read this storyette in full at Navy Romeo 
(Part 1 links to a separate post containing, Part 2).

Read about the cast in the DTS post.

Read about the many props used in this story in  Romeo Props post

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NARO was previously posted at mitchmen blog in 3 parts with a supplement about the cast (and set DTS).  The original mitchmen post was entitled 'The Itch' with a storyline which suggested that the piggy-backing pair had played a prank on their colleague by putting itching powder into his underpants. I got this story from the website of 'Sailor Al' (now defunct). I now know that the images I presented there actually came from two different Royale series - 'Navy Romeo' and 'Navy Gash'. Neither of them were called 'The Itch', nor is any itching referenced in the plot summary provided in the the Royal Catalogue (see above). However there is a plausible support for the itching powder idea in the imagery itself which I point out in the new article (link above).

If you want to view the original mitchmen post the links are given below

1. Part 1 a Two Sailors spy on their shipmate who is changing for a dance
2. Part 1b  Hidden behind a screen they ridicule him with mimes.
3. Part 2    They abduct him to a wood, tie him to a tree, drench him and expose his ass
4. The Cast (DTS) Identifying the models from Royale's sketchy and inconsistent information.