Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: crew were supposed to find Bessy, Fact2: mine-shaped object used to collect Lifeboat funds, Fact3: Pouter Bessy bashes in effort to take it apart, Fact4: Povey decides on using competent crew to do job, Fact5: Binns took of him leading all-out attack on what is known to be hoax picture tomorrow
Output (English): Captain Povey has built a reputation for shutting down redundant naval bases, and now has his eye on the minesweeping detachment on Boonzey island 55.5 miles from Portsmouth, a Channel Island. Arriving on inspection, he is told tales of finding many mines in the sea there and not believing them goes out on the Compton minesweeper. The crew were supposed to find Bessy, a mineshaped object used to collect Lifeboat funds but found a real mine instead, which Pouter bashes about in an effort to take it apart. Released, it explodes nearby and this convinces Povey that the incompetents there are not up to the job and he decides on using a competent crew to do the job. CPO Banyard uses his Pullsons Fulminator Mark III trick it does not exist to delay their decommissioning and what started off as a thin folder goes around the military offices and comes back to Poveys office as a mountain of paper work. He sees through it and goes back to the island only to be told there has been an outbreak of Yellow Fever there. He is taken in and leaves but decides to return and the trick is revealed as life is back to normal there. Now more than ever he is determined to shut them all down. Gaston Higgins, a Frenchman, owns the local bar and when he gets drunk he talks of revolution and kicking the British off the island. They decide to use him and say they are under siege from revolutionaries. Povey knows this is another trick and officially gives them three days to leave the island, but his bosses and the government believe the story when they get reports from a reporter, Lt Binns, who was sent there to take photographs. Questions are asked by the British and French governments and Poveys career is on the line as he is told to sort this out as the British dont run from the French. Povey goes to the island and a fake attack on Gaston and his men is launched but Povey finds out it was all a hoax. Ready to hand out court martials all round, Povey is confronted with a picture Binns took of him leading an allout attack on what is now known to be a hoax, which will be frontpage news across the world tomorrow. Stanton talks him into seeing sense and Povey, with his career in tatters if it gets out, tears up his report. He leaves and life goes back to normal on the island. On the way back to Portsmouth, their boat hits another real sea mine and Povey, Binns and the others are left to swim back to base.