The Police – Wrapped Around Your Finger

The Police song "Wrapped Around Your Finger", taken from their 1983 album "Synchronicity", contains the line 'you consider me the young apprentice, caught between the Scylla and Charybdis'. What or who were "Scylla and Charybdis" you may ask?

Well interestingly there are two answers to this.
The first is Scylla and Charybdis are two sea monsters of Greek mythology who were situated on opposite sides of the Strait Of Messina between Sicily and Italy. They were located in close enough proximity to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to ing sailors; so in avoiding Charybdis meant one would be ing too closely to Scylla and vice versa. A bit of a progenitor of the phrase "between a rock and a hard place" you might say.

The second meaning attributed from the Greek mythology is in the naming of many ships in the British Royal Navy. There have been to date, five named Scylla, and six named Charybdis.
There is a sad story in connection with the fifth Charybdis. A cruiser launched in 1940 which was sunk in the English Channel by German torpedo boats T23 and T27 in 1943 just off the north coast of Brittany, causing the largest Channel loss of the war with 30 officers and 432 ratings. 21 Royal Marine and Royal Navy men were washed up on the shores of Guernsey, where they were given a burial with full military honours by the German occupying forces. The islanders showed their loyalty for Britain and opposition to the Nazi occupiers by 5000 showing up en masse to the funerals and laying 900 wreaths. This was effective in demonstrating the anti-Nazi feeling enough, so the German occupiers subsequently banned the public from attending the funerals of the other 29 sailers whose bodies washed up later.
Every year a commemoration service is held, which is attended by local naval veterans, Sea Cadets and representatives of the Royal Navy. The wreck of the ship was located in 1993 under 83m of water.

Another interesting fact relating to Scylla and Charybdis, is a metalcore band called "Trivium" also referenced them in the title of their track "Torn Between Scylla and Charybdis" on their 2008 album "Shogun".