Looking back, it seems that although I
never actually served in a submarine, my life has been connected to the Silent
Service for quite a number of years, in the Senior Service and also civilian
life.
Leaving my parental home in Whitley Bay, I
joined the Royal Navy on 18 October, 1965, after taking a long train journey
(about 14 hours) from Newcastle upon Tyne mainline station via London to
Torpoint, Cornwall. I was reading the science fiction novel Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke). I
was inducted in HMS Raleigh, one of
several RN training establishments, where I learned to march, tie knots, tackle
obstacle courses, pass the swimming test wearing overalls, and many other
nautical things that comprised Part I Training. From here the ratings were
dispersed to a variety of establishments for specialist training, depending on
their allocated branch. My branch was Supply and Secretariat (S&S): I was a
Writer, which seemed appropriate since I’d written a novel when I was sixteen.
After specialist training in Chatham (Part
II Training) I was drafted to the brick ship HMS St Vincent, Gosport, Hants, working in the Captain’s office. [This establishment
has since been converted into a school]. My Service Certificate attests that I
volunteered for the Submarine Service – though there were not many billets for
writers; the branch only served on the larger submarines, not the conventional
diesel vessels.
My first seagoing ship was the tribal-class
frigate HMS Zulu (F124) which I
joined on 27 April 1967 at Rosyth. Our office comprised a staff of two writers
and a petty officer writer. Unfortunately in May, while the ship was exercising
off Scotland, I developed a resistant cough which alarmed the Sick Berth medic so
I had to be landed at HMS Neptune,
Faslane – the Clyde Submarine Base. I was diagnosed with urti (upper
respiratory tract infection). The shore-based sick bay was my first encounter
with submariners.
I was fortunate to have a room to myself –
the coughing was quite horrendous and disturbing to anyone else in the
vicinity; for me, it was just painful. On the left-hand side of the bed was a
bookcase crammed with books. Hitherto, my reading material at the time was spy
novels and thrillers, science fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan Doyle and
Wilbur Smith adventures. In the bookcase, however, I found a good number of
books by Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and Georges Simenon, which I read
voraciously.
A couple of hospitalised old salts popped
in to see me – they’d heard my coughing, no doubt, since it was quite alarming
and pronounced – and introduced themselves and asked me if I was on a boat. I
said, ‘Yes. HMS Zulu.’
‘That’s not a boat,’ I was told most firmly,
‘it’s a ship. A boat is a submarine.’
‘Oh.’ Well, you live and learn.
When I finished my first seagoing
deployment on Zulu – flying from
Singapore to UK – I was drafted to the brick ship HMS Dolphin on the staff of Flag Officer Submarines (FOSM) in Gosport
on 1 December 1969. Dolphin was the
base for the First SM Squadron, comprising conventional submarines and here also
was sited the distinctive Tower for training submariners, the SETT – Submarine
Escape Training Tank. The SETT was commissioned in 1954 and continued
pressurised submarine escape training until 2009.
I worked in the Drafting Office for
submariners, an office above Alecto Colonnade. The whole office was transferred
to a new building, HMS Centurion,
Gosport in May 1970; other drafting office personnel (responsible for surface
ship postings) – Commodore Naval Drafting – joined us from Haslemere, Lythe
Hill, Surrey. Centurion was
‘commissioned’ 16 October 1970 as the RN pay and records establishment; its
computers then were ICL machines.
While there I drafted Supply &
Secretariat and Medical personnel to Nuclear, Polaris and conventional
submarines. At that time, the squadrons consisted of: First – conventional
based at Dolphin; Second – conventional and also Valiant-class submarines based
at Devonport; Third – conventional based at Faslane; Seventh – conventional,
based at Singapore, though disbanded in 1971; Tenth – the Polaris ‘bombers’ also
based at Faslane.
Better to appreciate the living conditions
I was assigning the men to endure, I requested a trip on a submarine. Happily,
I identified the conventional submarine HMS Artemis
which was scheduled for exercise off the Bay of Biscay followed by a brief
visit to Newcastle upon Tyne. I joined Artemis
alongside at Dolphin and sailed with
her for a week or so. As it was a conventional boat, space was limited, the
crew hot-bunking – one man on duty, the off-duty man in his bunk, and then vice
versa. My bunk was different; it was in the fore-ends, among the torpedoes,
with a polythene sheet stretched above me to catch the odd drip from the pipes
that snaked along the deck-head. Lying there, I could hear the water rushing
against the boat’s hull. For a brief watch period I steered the craft, used the
periscope, and later climbed up into the conning tower, where the fresh air was
most welcome; while up there, I participated in the excitement of ‘dive, dive,
dive’, shutting the hatch on the way down. Needless to say, the rough seas of
Biscay did not bother us. At the end of the exercise I thanked the crew and
disembarked when the boat moored at the Tyne quayside; and I went home to
Whitley Bay to see my parents for the weekend! Then I rejoined the office,
greatly appreciative of the confined conditions the submariners lived and
worked in.
Out of this experience I wrote my first
short story sale, ‘Hover-Jack’ for the weekly magazine, Parade published in 1971: a spy story featuring a Soviet submarine
and the Isle of Wight hovercraft!
The Navy
News published two of my articles on the mechanics of drafting to
submarines: ‘Giving deep thought to submarines’ and ‘How they filled
Cornucopia’. I created the fictional HMS
Cornucopia for illustration purposes.
At the time – I cannot speak for the present – there were never enough
volunteers for submarines. Naturally, drafting officers would accept those who
volunteered – providing they passed what was termed Part III Training, which
entailed classes in the Submarine School in Dolphin,
which included safety procedures and undergoing the Escape Training in the
SETT. To fill the SM quota, certain personnel would be drafted into submarines
who had not volunteered; their initial draft was for five years, after which
they would be returned to the surface fleet. However, when the five years were
due to expire the vast majority of those non-volunteers elected to remain in
boats – around 90% – partly due to the
additional pay but also by then they were well-versed in the ethos of the
Silent Service, which was essentially a small navy within the Royal Navy.
Every RN rating completed a drafting
preference card (DPC), asking for a preferred base – in those days there were a
lot more bases than nowadays. Every individual’s personal card showing current
draft and previous billets, together with his DPC and was held in a whirligig
(see photo below; I'm at the end of the office, with beard).
The idea was to balance sea-time with a
certain amount of shore-time; this would vary depending on the particular
branch. Submarine squadrons also had a ‘spare crew’, men drafted here who still
might have more sea-time to clock up before being sent for a longer stay in a
shore base. This spare crew was available at short notice to plug gaps due to
illnesses and other absences; it was popular for some who preferred going to
sea, but not for everyone, as they found it unsettling.
Several of the FOSM staff visited
Barrow-in-Furness to give talks about the process of determining who to draft.
While there we descended into the dry dock of HMS Conqueror. The words iceberg and surface sprang to mind; the screws
were huge, gleaming, almost like gold, like something out of science fiction.
My time with submarine drafting ended in
1974 when I was drafted to RNH Mtarfa,
a RN hospital in Malta near Rabat three months after marriage. On return in
1975 I underwent the Leadership Course at HMS Royal Arthur, Wiltshire, and then joined HMS Mermaid (F76) in March 1976, a few days after our daughter was
born.
In June 1977 I was reacquainted with
submariners, being drafted to HMS Neptune,
the Clyde Submarine Base; it was the day before my birthday, great timing! This
was the home of four Resolution-class Ballistic missile Polaris submarines – below
is a photo of one in the 1970s.
I was in charge of the Central Records
Office, staff comprising seven naval personnel (male and female) and I also had
the responsibility for several civilians, such as messengers, the typing pool,
and the print room. The Head Messenger was a mine of information, since he’d
been there a long time; he was due to retire and join his family in Canada so
was not averse to apprising me of certain civil service goings-on.
For example: Every civilian was entitled to
a certain number of days per year sick leave without the requirement of a
doctor’s note; they made sure they took their ‘sickies’ – effectively looking
on them as additional leave entitlement.
Before my time there, during a mail strike,
two Glaswegian messengers were tasked with taking the RN van into the nearby town
of Helensburgh and picking up the mail – and regularly popping into the local
hostelry for a couple of bevvies before returning to the base with the mail
sacks. No problem. However, after the strike ended, they continued doing this
for well over a year.
Thus apprised, I pointed out to the pair that
there was no longer any need for them to make the journey and taxpayers’ money
was being wasted. They objected and brought in their union representative. The
Commodore was not best pleased as this business was about to be blown out of
all proportion, with a strike being threatened. I was told to sort it out, and
arranged for a meeting with the union representative and the two messengers.
That weekend at home I didn’t sleep too well. Fortunately, on the Monday, after
I put my reasoned argument, the union man admitted that the two guys in
question had enjoyed a good run but it must come to an end; we agreed on a
compromise, giving them until the end of the month to desist.
I left Neptune
9 October 1979, and returned to HMS Centurion
until my draft to the Leander-class frigate HMS Diomede (F16) and had no further involvement with submarines whilst
serving in the RN.
During our fifteen years living in Spain, Jen
and I visited Cartagena a few times and saw the submarine Peral on display in the harbour. The craft was the first successful
full electric battery-powered submarine. It was built by the Spanish engineer Isaac
Peral for the Spanish Navy and launched in 1888. She was armed with two torpedoes.
Yet, after two years of successful tests, the project was terminated.
Near our home in Spain is the town of
Torrevieja. Here, in the harbour, is a submarine tourist attraction – S61 Delfín – Spanish for Dolphin.
Returning from our family’s lengthy sojourn
in Spain, we moved to Blyth, Northumberland, which had been a submarine training
base over many years. During the First
World War Blyth was the base for the depot ship Titania and submarines of the Eleventh Flotilla that were to
support the Grand Fleet. Apparently, at the battle of Jutland, a Blyth-based
submarine took part in the engagement and was credited with sinking a German
warship.
At the time of the Second World War the
Blyth base was named HMS Elfin and
became a training base for about 200 officers. There is now a blue plaque
signifying the position of the submarine base (see photo below); near the Blyth
Boathouse and Caboose restaurant.
On display in the Blyth Community Hospital
is the name-plate of HMS Onslaught. (I
used to draft personnel to this Oberon-class boat). On the boat’s visit to
Blyth in 1979 the officers and crew were given the Freedom of the Borough of
Blyth. Onslaught was decommissioned
in 1990, having served for twenty-eight years, and eventually scrapped at
Aliga, Turkey in 1991.
Not far from the hospital, outside St
Mary’s Church alongside Blyth’s regenerated town square, is a memorial and an
anchor. The anchor (seen below through the silhouette) belonged to the T-class
submarine HMS Tiptoe. She was named
by Winston Churchill, implying that the boat could approach the enemy silently
as if on tiptoe. The Royal Navy naming committee was against the name, arguing
that ‘it was derogatory to one of His Majesty's ships’, but the Prime Minister
had his way. The vessel had links with the Royal Ballet and Moira Shearer; its
crest features a ballet dancer.
So far, that seems to be my involvement
with submarines and submariners. I think it is quite apt that I should settle
in a town that honours the Silent Service.
***
Jargon:
Boat: Submarine
Branch: Specialisation, such as Seaman,
Communications, Medical, S&S, and Weapons.
Draft: Soldiers and airmen are posted but
naval personnel are drafted.
Deck-head: ceiling in a ship or submarine
Fore-ends: the front of a submarine
Target: any enemy surface vessel
