Copyright

Names of Royal Navy personnel have been changed to protect privacy.

Mudlark

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by Mudlark 2019

FIRST EDITION

Text © Richard Humphreys 2019

Illustrations © Tom Hughes 2019

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers

Cover illustration © Neil Gower

Photographs courtesy of the author except where indicated

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Richard Humphreys asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008313050

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008313081

Version: 2019-09-03

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008313050

Dedication

For my father, who loved life

V.J.C.H.

1928–2016

Epigraph

‘Submariners themselves were regarded as not quite the thing – smelt a bit, behaved not too well, drank too much. They were regarded as a sort of dirty habit in tins.’

Admiral Sir John Forster ‘Sandy’ Woodward, One Hundred Days, 1992

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Note to Readers

5  Dedication

6  Epigraph

7  Contents

8  Author’s Note

9 Diagram of Polaris Submarine

10  Polaris Submarine Hierarchy

11  Glossary

12  Introduction

13  1 Beasting

14  2 HMS Neptune, Faslane

15  3 The Bomber

16  4 Alongside

17  5 Work-up

18  6 Coulport

19  7 Before the Off

20  8 Set Sail

21  9 The Dive

22  10 A Brief Tour

23  11 No Time

24  12 All the Time in the World

25  13 Downtime

26  14 Booze

27  15 Snadgens

28  16 Porn

29  17 Familygrams

30  18 Showtime

31  19 Under the Lights

32  20 Cut Off

33  21 Racked Out

34  22 Food, Glorious Food

35  23 The Day Job, the Night Job, Repeat

36  24 Letters from the Grave

37  25 Captain Is God

38  26 To Launch or Not to Launch

39  27 Homeward Bound

40  28 Off Crew

41  Acknowledgements

42  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

List of Pagesiiiiiiv1234691011121314151617181920212223242526272829313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144145146147148149150151152153154155156157158159160161162163164165166167168169170171172173174175176177178179180181182183184185186187188189190191192193194195196197198199200201202203204205206207208209210211212213214215216217218219220221222223224225226227228229230231232233234235236237238239240241242243244245246247248249250251252253254255256257258259260261262263264265266267268269270271272273274275276277278279280281282283284285286287288289290291292293294295296297298

Author’s Note

I switched off the radio, made my way slowly up the stairs, shut the bathroom door and shed a tear. It was 16 November 2017, the day after the Argentinian submarine the ARA San Juan went missing in the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina. At first, in those early days, it was unclear what had provoked the accident or what fate had befallen the crew, whether they might somehow still be alive beneath the waves. But then, with time, the cause of the tragedy became clear. An electrical malfunction had short-circuited the battery, which led to a complete loss of power for the old diesel-powered submarine. The San Juan had then sunk to the ocean depths, before finally imploding under the intense water pressure. The entire crew of 44, which included the first female submarine officer in the Argentine Navy, Eliana Krawczyk, had perished.

On hearing of the crew’s horrible fate, my thoughts switched back to my own period of service aboard a submarine and how blessed I’d been not to have suffered a similar fate. There are innumerable fine lines between life and death when operating in one of the most testing environments the world has to offer, where one wrong move can almost instantly bring chaos and disaster. After the San Juan tragedy, friends who had previously never seemed the slightest bit interested in my naval career started pumping me vigorously with questions about submarines, the dangers involved in underwater living, and exactly how I retained my sanity during the long weeks and months away at sea, cut off from the rest of the world. This book is a direct result of those conversations.

At the age of 18, in the mid-1980s, I became a member of an elite group who served aboard Britain’s nuclear deterrent, continuing my service for the following five years, while the Cold War was still hot and nuclear confrontation seemed scarily imaginable. In the 30 years since I left the Navy, submarine living and operating have remained fundamentally the same, although the creature comforts – including email, laptops, PlayStations and other products of the digital age – mean that some aspects are possibly easier now than they were during our stand-off with the Soviet Union.

I hope that what you are about to read will go a little way towards explaining the raw, real-life experience of what it’s like to spend prolonged periods of time on a submarine. I’ve tried not to focus on the military aspects, although by necessity some of these will come into the story, but have rather concentrated on how it feels to live day-to-day in this claustrophobic, man-made environment, describing the pressures it exerts on both one’s mind and body.

This is a book about life lived at the extremes, and there are few more extreme situations than living underwater in what is effectively a giant, elongated – if beautifully streamlined – steel tin can. I hope that it informs, shocks, excites and entertains, and that it moves you, the reader, to spare a thought for the brave men and women who at any given moment are patrolling the world’s waters, keeping their silent vigils.

The ID card issued to me on joining HMS Resolution. I’m going for a Mick Jones from the Clash vibe.

Diagram of Polaris Submarine

Polaris Submarine Hierarchy

Glossary

Terminology

alongside: status of submarine when berthed at jetty, in Resolution’s case at Faslane, awaiting to go to sea for patrol or work-up. Also where ship maintenance, storing ship, and loading both missiles and torpedoes – at Coulport – take place.

AMS (auxiliary machinery space): three areas on the submarine – AMS 1, 2 and 3 – where various bits of machinery are located.

angles and dangles: deep-water procedure where submarine dives and heads back to surface at steep inclines to test if boat is safely stowed for sea. Any noise generated by falling pots, pans or bits of machinery could give boat’s position away on patrol. Great fun.

ARL (Admiralty Research Laboratory) table: located aft and on starboard side of control room. Mostly used when surfaced. Map lies on top of it and periscope navigational fixes taken from landmarks are applied to chart to calculate submarine’s position in conjunction with SINS.

attack team: warfare team under guidance of XO reporting to captain, who has overall command. Consists of sonar team, tactical systems team, warfare seaman officers, XO and captain.

auxiliary vent-and-blow system: back-up vent-and-blow system in case of failure of main systems. May be used for diving and surfacing of submarine.

bathythermograph: instrument to measure changes in water temperature at different depths. Also used to measure velocity of sound in water. Sensors located in top of fin and keel.

BRN mast: supplies submarine with instantaneous navigation information to lock down its latitude and longitude at PD.

bubble: ‘up bubble’ means bow of submarine is angled up; ‘down bubble’, bow angled down; ‘zero bubble’, boat kept steady on depth. Controlled by afterplanesman.

casing: outer non-watertight upper hull of submarine, designed for hydrodynamic performance. Pressure hull is the inner hull.

CEP (contact evaluation plot): time-bearing plot constantly in operation on patrol where every sonar contact is plotted so its course, range and speed can be calculated for firing solution or to avoid collision.

control room: centre of operations, where captain commands submarine and planesmen manoeuvre, surface, dive, and go to and from PD using ship control console. Houses attack and search periscopes, attack team fire-control and plotting systems. Systems console located here, which controls ballast and trim pumps, hover pump and periscopes. Slop, drain and sewage tank is blown here and hydraulic system monitored.

Coulport (Royal Navy Armament Depot Coulport): on Loch Long, Scotland. Military facility that stores and loads Britain’s nuclear weapons carried by submarines, first Polaris, then Trident.

1 Deck: nav centre, control room, wireless office, sound room, sonar console space, electronic warfare (EW) shack containing radar room, electrical equipment space with closed room containing navigator’s maps.

2 Deck: entertainment and living spaces: wardroom and officers’ bunks, senior rates’ mess and annex, upper bunk space, coxswain’s office, sick bay, galley, scullery, junior rates’ dining area and mess in upper level of torpedo compartment.

3 Deck: senior and junior rates’ bunks, junior rates’ toilets, laundry, AMS 1, missile control centre.

dolphins: gold submariners’ qualification badge to denote fully qualified submariner, gained after passing on-board oral examination. Panel consists of XO, chief engineer and coxswain. Worn on upper-left chest.

EBS (emergency breathing system) mask: used in emergencies when fire causes poisonous smoke to billow through submarine. Plugged into various couplets around submarine, known as built-in breathing system, which supplies fresh supply of air.

emergency surface procedure: to avoid catastrophic fire, flooding and sinking of boat, all watertight bulkhead doors are shut, full ahead is selected on engine telegraphs, emergency air supply is used to fill ballast tanks with air, causing submarine to surface as quickly as possible with planesmen controlling pitch.

Faslane (HMS Neptune): on Gare Loch, Scotland. One of Royal Navy’s three operating bases. Centre of naval operations in Scotland and home of the nuclear missile-carrying submarines, in my day Polaris, now Trident.

fire-control system: computerised system on submarines, designed by Ferranti and Royal Navy, using series of pre-set algorithms and other tactical information from on-board time-bearing plots and sonar room to calculate firing solutions for torpedoes to target and hit enemy vessels.

flying the boat: phrase suggesting submarine has similar moving characteristics to aircraft while dived, with pitch and depth controlled by foreplanes and afterplanes tilted either up or down to make submarine push upwards to surface or dive towards deep. Amount of angle on planes coupled with speed of boat determines angle of descent or rise, just as an aircraft’s lift by its wings is determined by speed and angle of attack.

gash: collective name for all the rubbish on a submarine, collected, crushed and fired out by gash gun into ocean.

goffa: non-alcoholic soft drink.

HMS Dolphin (Gosport): former shore-side centre for submarine training. Royal Navy Submarine School was relocated to HMS Raleigh (Torpoint) in 1998.

LOP (local operations plot): time-bearing plot using information from sound room or periscope to calculate target motion analysis on ship or submarine contacts.

PD (periscope depth): depth equal to length of periscope when dived.

Perisher: Submarine Command Course, so-called because candidates pass or perish. Run twice a year for c. 24 weeks, taking in simulation exercises shore-side and sea-going exercises on nuclear submarine. Success leads to second-in-command, then captaining nuclear submarine. Failure, a bottle of whisky and never again setting foot on submarine.

pipe: boatswain’s call used by quartermaster to pipe aboard captain on change of crews and pipe exiting captain off boat. Also used for flag officers – rear admiral and above – if visiting boat.

Polaris: Britain’s first submarine-based nuclear ballistic missile system, in service from 1968 to 1996, when the last Resolution-class submarine in service, HMS Repulse, was decommissioned.

reactor: nuclear reactor in reactor compartment powers submarine, generating heat that creates steam to provide power for turbines, which turns propeller, and for all electrical equipment and machinery to maintain life-support systems.

‘Resolution’ class: four nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) built for Royal Navy as part of Polaris programme, each armed with up to 16 UGM-27 Polaris A-3 nuclear missiles. The capital ships of the day, named after surface ships with a glorious past: Resolution, Revenge, Repulse and Renown.

scram: reactor shutdown to ensure core remains safe and doesn’t overheat, melting the boat.

scran: collective term for food, originally naval acronym for sultanas, currants, raisins and nuts once given to fight scurvy.

scrubbers: used to remove CO2 from submarine so crew don’t die of asphyxiation.

SETT (submarine escape training tank): vast concrete tower at HMS Dolphin, Gosport, where simulated escapes take place.

SINS (ship’s inertial navigation system): internal navigation system, fitted with gyroscopes, accelerometers and velocity meters, that constantly updates submarine’s position.

SSN (nuclear-powered attack submarine): nuclear submarine not carrying nuclear weapons, known as hunter-killers for ferocious pursuit of Soviet submarines. HMS Conqueror, which sank the Argentinian General Belgrano, was an SSN. They were armed with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles.

SSBN (nuclear-powered ballistic missile-carrying submarine): see ‘Resolution’ class.

tactical systems team: part of warfare team, providing complete tactical picture for captain and XO using information from sonar via sound room and periscopes if at PD, through use of target motion analysis to calculate course, speed and range of any given contact.

thermocline: temperature differentials within body of water due to seasonal variation, local conditions or latitude and longitude that give submarines acoustic blanket to hide in from sonar.

Trident: current British nuclear missile system that began replacing Polaris in 1994.

warfare team: team responsible for fighting the submarine under leadership of XO, who in turn reports to captain.

work-up: sea trials in front of onboard teaching staff ensuring crew are capable of taking submarine on deterrent patrol.

wrecking team: engineering team looking after forward part of submarine and watch-keeping at systems console in control room.

Ranks and roles

AB (able seaman): Royal Navy rating in seaman branch, above ordinary seaman and below leading seaman.

afterplanesman: controls afterplanes at bow of submarine, tilting them back to surface, forward to dive. Also steers submarine to left (port) and right (starboard).

captain: commanding officer of submarine, also referred to as ‘skipper’, ‘the man’ or ‘God’.

chief ops: chief petty officer in charge of sound room as well as sonar ratings and any other senior rates who are sonar specialists. A highly experienced sonar operator, usually excels at quizzes.

chief wrecker: chief engineer who operates and watch-keeps at systems console, leading a team of junior rate wreckers maintaining engineering systems at front end of boat.

coxswain: ship’s senior rating, normally with rank of chief petty officer or warrant officer.

CPO (chief petty officer): senior non-commissioned officer in most navies, rank between petty officer and warrant officer.

foreplanesman: controls operation of foreplanes from the control room. Works in conjunction with afterplanesman to maintain correct pitch and depth of submarine, crucial when at PD.

junior rates: heartbeat of submarine, keeping her alive and buzzing every day. Responsible for storing ship, cleaning and scrubbing out for inspections, watchkeeping duties, and also for most of drinking and entertainment while at sea.

Lt Cdr (lieutenant commander): commissioned officer in Royal Navy, above a lieutenant and below a commander. Heads of departments on submarine were all lieutenant commanders, as was XO.

leading radio operator: leading hand working in wireless office monitoring signals from Command Centre at Northwood. Equivalent rank to corporal in Army.

leading seaman: either a sonar operator or tactical systems operative, a key member of attack team.

leading steward: personal steward to captain, also likely to do a turn on ship control steering submarine.

master-at-arms (MAA): see coxswain.

MEM (marine engineering mechanic): driving force on boat, ensuring all mechanical and life services from nuclear reactor to air purification and laundry tick over. Most importantly, keeps toilets flushing.

MEO (marine engineering officer): senior engineering officer tasked with safe working and operation of nuclear reactor and all other engineering systems. Reports to captain. Usually at rank of Lt Cdr. Mine was cerebral and friendly, and played a mean Spanish guitar.

NO (navigating officer): seaman officer in charge of navigation, holds charts and maps of patrol area in a locked room on 1 Deck. Member of warfare team. Reports to XO. At rank of lieutenant. Known as Vasco or pilot.

OOW (officer of the watch): seaman officer, captain’s representative while watch-keeping at sea, preserving safety of submarine in all aspects, especially avoiding grounding and collision. Accountable to captain for safety of entire submarine while on watch.

QM (quartermaster): in charge of external security of submarine, managing ship’s crew inventory so no one gets on board without his knowledge. Also helps with logistics of storing ship.

RPO (reactor panel operator): monitors reactor and associated electrical and propulsion systems from manoeuvring room.

senior rates: non-commissioned officers, either petty officers or chief petty officers.

surgeon lieutenant: doctor on board, hides in sick bay armed with paracetamol. Unlikely to display standard bedside manner. At rank of lieutenant. Also does turn at ship control on patrol.

TASO (tactics and sensors officer): seaman officer, part of warfare team. Reports to XO. At rank of lieutenant.

WEM (weapons engineering mechanic): junior rating looking after maintenance of torpedoes and electrical systems of sonar and other computer systems.

WEO (weapons engineering officer): in charge of loading, maintenance and firing of nuclear weapons and torpedoes. Reports to captain. Usually at rank of Lt Cdr.

XO (executive officer): the Jimmy, Number 1 or second-in-command of submarine. Like captain, will have passed Perisher course. Overall in charge of warfare team. Reports to captain. Usually at rank of Lt Cdr.

Introduction

The Cold War, deep under the North Atlantic. Probably, but who knows? I certainly don’t. Right now we could be anywhere. All I can hear are whales communicating with each other, a haunting sound that’s somewhat tragic in delivery, like a loved one bereft for eternity.

Theoretically, we are 15 minutes from the start of Armageddon. That’s the time it would take between us receiving the firing signal from the prime minister and the nuclear warheads being launched. I’m on patrol – submarine patrol – aboard a sizeable chunk of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. We are the hidden. We see and hear everything, but only ever listen – we never communicate. A highly trained, motivated, elite team of submariners, we’re the best in the business. It’s the middle of the night in the control room, all the dials bathed in soft red lighting. I haven’t slept well for days; I’ve got bad skin and my body clock has gone haywire. And then it happens.

A distant noise. Panic sets in. Undetected by our sonar, it’s as if the intruder has come from nowhere. The crew freeze, the next 30 seconds drip by … What is it, friend or foe? Have we been detected and compromised? Suddenly, the tell-tale sound of a submarine’s propeller screams over the top of us no more than 50 feet away. All hell breaks loose. I literally dive full-length into a seat on the fire-control system, as we scramble around looking for answers. We assign the rogue sub a target number and track it as it passes to the stern of us, then, phantom-like, gradually fades away to the east, never to be heard from again.

That was close, way too close. The captain made the call – correctly, of course – that it was making far too much noise to have detected us. But even so, most of the crew on watch when it happened are now nervously fidgeting, thinking to themselves: How did we miss it? There’s a lot resting on our – mostly very young – shoulders. We can never be detected or compromised. Nor can we seek and destroy. We can only evade. Our job is to hide the bomber, this monster of the deep.

***

HMS Raleigh, Torpoint, Cornwall, nine months earlier.

I’d had a plan – a clear plan – since joining the Royal Navy that I wanted to serve with the elite. I wanted to be challenged, and if I was going to do it I needed to throw my heart and soul into it. I also needed the adrenaline fix. As a restless but determined soul who wanted to do something a tad different with my life I decided on the Submarine Service, the ‘Silent Service’. I wanted some of that, and although I had no idea what it would entail or what was required both mentally and physically, it appealed as a test. I’d been intrigued by submarines since childhood and had regularly seen them at the Plymouth naval base on our family’s annual summer break to the beautiful South Hams region of Devon. We’d spend at least one day visiting Plymouth Hoe for a game of crazy golf followed by fish and chips, gazing out to sea where, among others, Drake had sailed in 1588 to engage the Spanish Armada. Plymouth had been a vital centre during the Age of Empire, and all the sailor-scientists had set sail from here – Cook, Bligh and Darwin. Its naval history carried on and on through the two world wars, right up to the fleet of vessels I’d see on my boyhood holidays.

After lunch the family would take a guided trip round the warships on one of the boats that departed from the Mayflower Steps on the seafront, and we’d work our way past the might of the modern Navy. The moored-up, rusting warships seemed large, robust, even a tad soulless.

Meanwhile, the submarines tied up alongside looked anything but; sleek and powerful, with a large helping of intimidation to boot, they radiated a sense of mystery and glamour. I’d sit there looking at them, marvelling at what lethal pieces of machinery and wondrous feats of modern engineering they were. Enigmas to me in many ways: one minute powering forward on the surface like a ship, then in a flash simply vanishing under the water, wholly hidden from the world, completely self-sufficient, relying on no one, asking for nothing.

Unbeknown to me at the time, on these holiday boat trips I was witness to the changing nature of the Navy. It was no longer the surface boats that dominated the dockyards but the submarine. For where once it had been the battleship, aircraft carrier and frigate, now it was the age of underwater supremacy.

But even at that age I did sense that perhaps the ultimate mental examination was – as it still is – coping with life under the sea. A world without natural light, cooped up alongside more than 140 other men, eating the same food, breathing the same air, surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable. Before I was to attempt this, however, at the age of 17 I tried to join the French Foreign Legion in Aubagne, near Marseilles. I’d ventured out there alone by ferry and train – having told my mum and dad I was off inter-railing with a couple of mates – and passed all the initial tests, both fitness and written, only to be told by a corporal of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment that I needed parental permission as I was not yet 18. This was never going to happen. Immaculately dressed in fatigues and green beret, the chiselled Englishman cheerfully advised me to reapply in a few months, seemingly implying it would be a mere formality and that a career in the Legion lay ahead. To this day my mother knows nothing about this episode in my life, nor does my father.

I’d been fortunate enough to win a scholarship to public school in the Midlands for some of my secondary education. I didn’t come from a wealthy family – my family had grafted all their lives – so boarding school had certainly been an eye-opener as to how the other half lived, but it was useful in developing coping measures and survival instincts, and enabled me to get along with pretty much everyone. It was here that I first read Simon Murray’s Legionnaire, his classic account of serving in the Foreign Legion and the very book that had inspired my ill-judged trip to Marseilles. But the book also taught me something else – that the traditional trip through further education and then college or university wasn’t for me. I’d had enough of textbooks, teachers and essays; it was time to do something against the grain for a few years and see where I ended up.

There didn’t seem much point hanging around in the real world, as Mrs Thatcher and her Conservative government were wantonly destroying the West Midlands and most of northern Britain. The very recent miners’ strike was evidence of that, with the hitherto unseen spectacle of the British police having pitched battles with miners in desolate fields across South Yorkshire. It seemed that tradition and heritage no longer stood for anything. The miners, who could trace their family lineage back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, when the mining industry supplied power to steam engines, generated electricity and heated buildings, now found themselves on the sharp end of the politics of hate and the systematic destruction of the industrial heartlands. Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham were the major cities on the brink of economic collapse, and this had a knock-on effect on their satellite communities, my hometown of Wolverhampton being one.

Wolverhampton had gained its fortune on the back of the wool industry in the Middle Ages, when it flourished as a small market town. Its prosperity continued through Tudor Britain, and its first canal opened in the early 1770s, stimulating economic and industrial growth through the transportation of raw materials and goods. During the 19th century, at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Wolverhampton boomed as a centre for steelmaking, coal mining and lock-making, and most of the country’s cables and anchors were made there at the height of the British Empire. It was also in the 19th century that the town and the surrounding area picked up its nickname of the ‘Black Country’, when the soil was turned black with soot deposited by all this burgeoning industry.

The railways reached Wolverhampton in 1837 and, coupled with the canal system, further increased the accessibility of the town; indeed, the Great Western Railway soon became a major employer in the area when it opened a locomotive repair factory in 1859, a large bicycle manufacturing industry further enhanced economic prosperity, and by the time a public park was opened, quickly followed by an art gallery, library and hospital, the town was thriving as it headed into the new age.

The early and middle part of the 20th century had been kind to the town, and its football team – along with Manchester United’s ‘Busby Babes’ – were the best in the land. Captained by legendary centre-half Billy Wright, Wolverhampton Wanderers won three league championships in the 1950s and an FA Cup at the end of the decade, making them the unofficial world club champions.

But the mid- to late-1960s saw a painful decline in both Wolverhampton’s – and the industrial western heartland’s – economic fortunes, and by the mid-1970s a third of the population lived in council housing, with unemployment rising and immigration causing deep divisions in the West Midlands.

Enoch Powell, author of the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, was the local MP for Wolverhampton South West. I’ll never forget as a very young boy answering the door to him while he was on the stump in the first general election campaign of 1974. I remember opening the door to the palest-looking man I’d ever seen, his skin like alabaster, head slightly tilted forward. He stared at me intensely with fixed, unblinking eyes.

‘Mum and Dad are up the road at the neighbours,’ I told him bashfully.

I may have been very young but I knew immediately who he was – I’d seen him on the TV – but of course I didn’t know about the general furore he’d caused in the country as a whole. At this point my elder brother Chris joined me for moral support, so Powell doffed his trilby hat, wished us good luck and walked off at a gallop to Number 6.

Wolverhampton in the 1970s staggered along with rising unemployment and seemed to me to possess an underlying threat of violence. The place was suffering – economic death by a thousand cuts – and by the time the Tories came to power in 1979, hell-bent on changing the social and economic outlook of the once-great industrial heartlands of the Black Country, most of northern Britain was finished; the collapse of the industrial working class and the north–south divide of Thatcherism had well and truly begun.

As a six- and seven-year-old, I’d watch the news of factories shutting, car plants closing, the oil crisis and the first miners’ strikes. Even at that age I was aware that this wasn’t business as usual, but it didn’t give me sleepless nights. I was too busy with my newfound love of sport. Whether it was football, rugby or cricket, it all came fairly easy to me, and I guess that sport was also an enjoyable release from overly zealous, annoying teachers. Football was my obsession; morning, noon and evening I’d be out in our road, in the park, or driving my parents mad, hammering the ball against the garage door. Slightly introverted and on the shy side, I was wary of people until I got to know them, and was not much of a conversationalist. Instead, I lost myself in sport and my other passion – music.

Later on I captained the school football team and played for the area and district teams. Football was my life. Aged 14, I was lucky enough to have trials with my hometown club, Wolverhampton Wanderers. I’d been training in their youth set-up and had been on a couple of tours with them, including a memorable trip down to London where we played the borough of Hackney, coincidentally my home for the past 16 years. We had stones and bricks thrown at us from the touchline, and the match was suddenly called off after 30 minutes.

I didn’t make the grade for Wolves. I remember the coach coming round to my house, sitting me down in front of my mum to break the upsetting news. It hit me hard, the first time I’d failed at something.

But my childhood was happy for the most part, except for losing both my maternal grandparents at the end of the decade, my grandfather dying six months to the day after his wife; married at 18, they’d been together for over half a century before both bowing out at three score years and ten. I was particularly close to my cousin Stephen. Four years older than me, he was cool, played the guitar and was into New Romantic bands, particularly David Sylvian and his group Japan. I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked, and by the time he reached 18 I’m sure he didn’t want to be seen hanging round with this spotty 14-year-old with braces.

It was the hot summer of 1982 and the World Cup on the telly when the phone rang. Dad answered. It was a friend of my Uncle Brian, telling him that Stephen had been found dead in his car. In shock, we assumed he’d been in a car crash, but in fact he’d had a massive heart attack and a friend had discovered him slumped over the steering wheel with the horn blaring. Dead, and not yet out of his teens. The post-mortem revealed he had an enlarged heart muscle. I was devastated by his death, but of course I had to be as strong as I could for my aunt and uncle. I didn’t know how to process my feelings or communicate my grief, so I just bottled it up and allowed it to fester. It wasn’t really an era for discussing feelings – that wasn’t how things worked – and my whole family suffered in silence.

My parents would let me out of the house for hours at a time. I’d disappear up the local park, playing football, climbing trees, annoying the neighbours, staying out till dark; fish and chips every Saturday lunchtime, going to Woolworths to buy The Jam’s Sound Affects, my first LP – not ‘vinyl’, it was never called that, a modern term used by people who were never there in the first place; playing ‘knock and run’ … slowly I was tapping into a new sense of adventure as my body and confidence grew.

As I became older, this love of adventure – plus Simon Murray’s book, which had provoked my failed attempt to join the Legion – pushed me towards a life away from formal education. When I returned from Marseilles, the Navy looked like the next best option for an unconventional life – and I’d also heard that the Submarine Service paid well. Serving Queen and country never entered into it for me, as I was neither nationalistic nor a particular fan of the monarchy. The only people who ever talked about fighting for Queen and country were – and still are – feckless politicians who’d never done, nor ever would do, any of the fighting. Queen and country? One was outdated as an institution, the other past it as an idea. No, I wanted to do it for me.

1
Beasting

HMS Raleigh is a naval establishment on the banks of the River Tamar in Cornwall, where all new recruits commence their Part 1* training. At the height of a warm and bristling English summer in early July 1985, while the country was looking forward to Live Aid from Wembley and Philadelphia, all I had in front of me was 11 weeks of utter hell and lunacy. I arrived on the Torpoint ferry from Plymouth, trying to give off an air of nonchalant irreverence. I decided I’d try to get on with everyone and make the best of it, and attempt not to get too downhearted if things didn’t go according to plan. I was nervous, yes, but I had to exude some positivity if I was to make the grade.

My grand intentions were destroyed within 24 hours. We were put together in a class of around 25 recruits and given a lecture of induction by the master-at-arms. He told us he was to be addressed as ‘Master’, pointed out who the senior NCO (non-commissioned officer) on the staff was, and then, much to my amusement, had us pledge allegiance to the monarch and sign various forms with next-of-kin details. I was then given a service number and whisked to the barbers for a brutal No.1 haircut – the only option – for which I had to pay £1.20. Piss-take. Next, once I’d climbed into a smelly sweater used by every training recruit, I had my photo taken for my naval ID card with said new haircut. I was then measured by the stores staff, hats were shoved on and off my head, shoes and boots tried on, more sweaters hurled at me, with tape measures poked into my every nook and crevice. Finally, once I was handed a kit bag, I walked over to my dormitory – a ‘mess deck’ in naval terminology – ready for the long slog to begin.

I soon got chatting to my fellow squad members, who seemed like a good bunch, a nice mix of cocky, hard-working and methodical types. I reckoned I’d be OK. I was assigned a bunk, and told that lights-out was at 22.00 hours and we’d be woken up at 5.30 every morning. Shitsville.

Just before I drifted off for my first night’s sleep I distinctly remember wondering what the hell I was doing there and thinking that there had to be easier first rungs on the job ladder. The next thing I knew it was 5.30 sharp, the lights flicked on, to the accompanying shout of ‘Hands off cocks, hands on socks!’ That morning – like every other that followed – started with half an hour spent scraping away at my mostly whiskerless face with an old cut-throat razor, then a shower and a further 30 minutes making my bed, which had to be done to perfection: sheets, counterpane and blankets all folded in a variety of ways, snug and neatly presented or my bedding would be launched straight out the window.

Our instructor was Chief Petty Officer Jenkins, a Cornishman who had served most of his career on carriers as a radar operator. He was a softly spoken man of the sea whose bark was worse than his bite, and he used the word ‘boning’ a lot. At first I thought he must have been a butcher in a previous life, but it soon became clear he was talking about the opposite sex – he could have given Roy Chubby Brown a run for his money. And then one day Jenkins vanished from our course and wasn’t seen again. I never discovered what happened – maybe the Navy found out he was a sexual deviant and had him put in rehab or a straitjacket. He was replaced by another officer, CPO Williams, on what was to be his last posting before he retired. Supportive and occasionally encouraging, he was confident enough to let other training departments do the shouting.

Basic military training is pretty consistent across the armed forces: 11 weeks of ‘militarisation’ to instil a sense of discipline, teamwork and organisation, with a focus on weapons training, firefighting, swimming and damage control. You’ve got to be fit, as there are obstacle courses, long runs and gym sessions, including gymnastics and rope-climbing. Although I absolutely hated gymnastics, the one sport I’d been hopeless at while at school, being quite unable to reverse-somersault over the pommel-horse, I was brilliant at rope-climbing; I could get up a rope in around six to seven seconds, which took some doing.

Part of our training involved a trip to Dartmoor, a long weekend in the middle of nowhere with a compass, food and tent, trying to get to various rendezvous points within a certain amount of time. As ever when I ventured outdoors, the heavens opened with monsoonal fury, and we spent most of the weekend soaking wet, cold and hungry. One guy got pneumonia and ended up in hospital for a month. Most of the weekend, John – probably my closest mate in the squad – and I kept seeing what we believed were shadowy figures, which flicked in and out of our peripheral vision. Everyone thought we were going loopy through lack of sleep and hunger, hallucinating even. We were later told that members of the SAS had been shadowing our movements all weekend for training purposes.

I soon picked up the fundamentals of life in the Navy, including ceremonial duties and basic drill – yes, lots of drill, far too much. I still don’t know why there was so much of it. Its purpose was to instil pride and discipline in the group, but I never saw the point. It seemed a relic of a bygone age, resonant of empire and the need to keep the plebs in place. Getting screamed at by a gunnery warrant officer was a particular favourite, especially when there was close eye-to-eye contact; no matter what I or the rest of the squad did, it was important to keep a straight face as the guy’s blood vessels reached bursting point with the rounds of expletives he hurled in our direction. Partly detached from the whole experience, I was usually overcome by the smell of Kouros emanating from his every pore.

Other than advanced seamanship, firefighting, navigation and basic weapons training – comprising pistol shooting, self-loading rifle (SLR) and general-purpose machine gun (GPMG), which consisted of hitting a stationary target from 25 yards with a machine gun firing God knows how many rounds a minute – the one element of basic training I remember was this pointless shouting and hollering by the instructing staff, which often bordered on bullying and abuse. I could deal with the insults and swearing (‘You fucking spunk bubble!’ being my personal favourite), along with the questioning of my manhood and parentage, but I wondered how this would improve me as a person and sailor? To me, the idea that abuse is good for the individual and team ethic, and that subordinates – even in a military environment – should be taught through fear and humiliation, is just wrong. All it served to accomplish with me was strengthening my sense of self, while making the training staff appear like wild-eyed testosterone monsters. Why an experienced NCO would squander all the knowledge he’d toiled for over a long and successful career by hurling inane obscenities at a group of young men, and in some cases boys, I never understood.

I’m not sure what the Navy is like nowadays, but in my day it verged on the nonsensical. I’d spent time at boarding school, where the bullying was at least as bad as you got in the armed forces, so I’d dealt with this kind of treatment before. I knew you had to let it wash over you and not engage with the teaching staff. If you did, they’d exploit each and every one of your weaknesses, and devote themselves to making your life a misery.

I used to be up for hours every evening, washing and ironing; it felt more like a dry cleaner’s than military training. And the ironing was ridiculous – creases here, creases there, creases fucking everywhere, creases sharp enough to cut a loaf of bread. I’d spend an eternity perfecting the use of the steam cycle, and if I was required to wear ceremonial dress the next day I might as well forget about getting any sleep. Polishing shoes was another major ball-ache – up all hours, using a naked flame to heat the polish, then applying it with cotton wool, then, Bob’s your father’s brother, shoes so gleaming you could use their reflection to shave in. Again, I’m not sure how all this was preparing me for a career under the waves, but hey-ho, that’s basic military training; you are scum, the lowest of the low, a number. Nothing more, nothing less.

Summer 1985 and I’m passing out. Proud as punch in my full Royal Navy guard uniform, armed with a self-loading rifle, shoulders back, chest out, begging my father to get the camera working.

The extreme demands made on us were a shock to many. Some of my group had suffered enough by the end of Week 5, as their bedding and locker were launched out of the window onto the parade square for the umpteenth time, their kit and shoes deemed insufficiently clean. Their punishment? Cleaning the toilets with a toothbrush. Utter sadism. After 11 gruelling weeks I passed the course, and Mum and Dad came to see me pass out. There was an official video made of the day, and as the camera panned around the parade square before the arrival of the First Sea Lord, the VIP for the day, it caught my parents arguing intensely about the workings of the new camera they’d bought for the occasion. I presume they got it working in the end as I still have a couple of photos that I’ve shown my children, who never believed I actually went to sea or indeed was ever in the Royal Navy at all.

What did I learn from basic military training? Not much, to be honest. Everyone talked about it being good for developing team skills, but I wasn’t so sure. It seemed more like 11 weeks of self-preservation by any means. I learnt how to iron and I became an expert shoe-shiner. If all else failed I could keep my kit nice and neat; ‘Humphreys kept a good locker’ would be a fitting summary of my time there.

The most rewarding aspect of basic training was that I was taught how to sail at sea. I spent a long weekend on Plymouth Sound on a boat learning the basic skills of seamanship and how not to endanger myself or other crew-members. I loved it so much that in the time between my leaving submarine school and joining the Polaris fleet – some three to four weeks – I used to sail two retired admirals from Portsmouth round to Southampton, a distance of about 12 miles, where they’d lunch at the yacht club while I’d get a fry-up at the local café. They’d talk about the scourge of communism, Labour leader Neil Kinnock being a Russian spy, and bringing back the death penalty and the birch as I sailed them home to Gosport. They’d head off to their houses and I’d pootle around the boat, have a gin and a smoke, then return to base. Heady days.

The aim of Part 2 of the Navy training course at HMS Dolphin, in Gosport, was to instil the highest standards of professionalism demanded by the Submarine Service. I travelled from Plymouth across to the Navy’s other major historical port city, Portsmouth. From here it was a hop on a ferry over to Gosport, the home of HMS Dolphin and indeed the Submarine Service since 1904. Dominating the skyline was the submarine escape tank. It sent shivers down my spine just thinking about how I’d cope with that infamous aspect of the training. I was also required to demonstrate an intimate understanding of the different engineering, weapon and safety systems that run the submarine and keep the crew safe.

This seemed a long way away from cleaning toilet bowls with a toothbrush, ironing shirts and buffing shoes. Fortunately, the days of kit musters, long runs and drill were long gone. It was classroom-based, head down in books-type learning, absorbing the basic principles of nuclear and diesel propulsion. There were various exams after each stage: hydraulic systems, auxiliary vent and blow, electrical systems, the workings of a nuclear reactor, torpedoes and ballistic missiles, CO2 absorption units, the different ventilation states on board, the workings of the periscopes, navigational systems, electronic warfare, and radio and sonar systems – quite enough to fry your brain. This was followed by radar training, which I struggled with; it was all blips and blobs to me, a predetermined mess on a screen. I’m still very much in awe of air-traffic controllers and how they manage flights in and out of the major airports and monitor the sky.

HMS Dolphin was the very first time I saw serving submariners. The base was home to the 1st Submarine Squadron and the ‘Oberon’ class submarines, or O-boats, as they were called; these were diesel-electric submarines, Cold War intelligence gatherers also used for Special Ops drops and pick-ups (usually members of the SBS – the Special Boat Service – doing reconnaissance or covert landings). I’d mosey on down to the jetty and gaze at these sleek, stylish boats with their bulbous front ends where the sonar was mounted, wondering: How do people live on something so small for weeks on end? Sometimes I’d wait until the crew appeared, to get a glimpse at what this way of life might do to me. They always looked rough and greasy, with a deathly pallor about them. Doubtless they stank as well, although I never got close enough to tell.

These men were a throwback to the submariner heroes of the past, a tightly knit crew in their own secret world, all members of the exclusive underwater club, with the golden dolphins badge† to prove it. They may have looked gaunt and unkempt, but it was the swagger of their gait that gave the game way, confident but not cocky, men completely at one with themselves and their crewmates. It seemed like a lot to live up to.

HMS Dolphin was very much like going back to school, punctuated by the odd pint or six in Gosport, or over the water in Pompey town centre, in the footsteps of Admiral Nelson himself. One of the nightclubs, I think it was Joanna’s, was a favourite haunt, treading through sticky, beer-slicked carpets onto the dancefloor, dancing to Barry White, Marvin Gaye, Paul Hardcastle and Madonna, with one-night stands a-plenty – the dirtier the better.

The accommodation at the base was four to a largish room. There were no kit inspections, no hassle from the staff, a complete change from the horrors of Part 1 basic training. It wasn’t without its moments, though. In the room next door a trainee submariner from Aberdeen scared us to death one night, returning back to base well and truly hammered, waving a gun around and threatening to shoot someone. We became scared very quickly, and amid all the screaming and panic I found him with his back to me. I gave him a hefty kick behind his right kneecap and he collapsed like an old block of flats being demolished, straight down in a big heap. As he hit the floor the gun flew out of his hand, and we pinned him down until security arrived and took him off to the detention quarters. Just like CPO Jenkins, he was never seen again.

The final stage of submarine training ended with four pressurised ascents of the 100-foot submarine escape water training tank (SETT), the enormous concrete tower that dominates the skyline on the Gosport side of the Solent as you leave Portsmouth Harbour. All the training had been leading to this point, for this was the test, the ultimate trial of nerve. This section of submarine training in the tank had seen a few deaths over the years, and put the fear of God into every young submariner courageous or stupid enough to attempt it.

Before I started, I had to sit in a decompression chamber that sits near to the tank itself to make sure my ears could endure the pressure I’d shortly experience in 100 feet of water. Then I was bundled into the chamber with around half a dozen other terrified souls and we waited for pressurisation to commence.

No one had told me about the hissing sounds as the air rushed in. I sat there holding my nose, clearing my ears and looking like a startled child, praying that we’d get to the prescribed depth pronto. The air temperature increased and I started feeling exceedingly wary of where this was going. Soon enough we reached the required depth of 100 feet and the air temperature equalised. The instructor announced, after what seemed an eternity of five minutes, that he would slowly release the pressure and that the temperature might drop. We finally returned to normal pressure at sea level and I clambered out disorientated, nauseous and nervous; ‘shitting conkers’ is the expression that comes to mind. Next stop, the tank.

I had to make two free ascents from 30 feet below, one from 60 feet and then, to my horror, an ascent from 100 feet, in a fully pressurised suit out of a cramped, claustrophobic escape-hatch based on the type you’d find aboard a real submarine. My nerves were shot to pieces as I clambered into the first side chamber, contemplating my first free ascent from 30 feet. There were around 20 of us sitting in the chamber, which was about to simulate a rushed escape from a stricken submarine. Trying to listen to the final instructions from members of the teaching staff, my mind wandered back to my childhood in the old Victorian central swimming baths in Wolverhampton; I’d be wearing arm-bands and a rubber ring, being pulled along on a rope by an unimpressed swimming teacher with my father looking on in hideous embarrassment, until he’d up and leave to wait in the car, unable to stand the sight of his limp-bodied son. I can’t say I blamed him. Back then I was scared to death of the water, and if someone had told me I would be free-ascending from the murky depths a decade later, my seven-year-old self would have cried uncontrollably and probably pissed himself.

First off, the 30-foot ascent. The water started to rush into the chamber and I tried to clear my ears as the internal pressure equalised with the external water pressure in the tank (around 15 pounds per square inch) at 30 feet. Dressed in swimming briefs, lifejacket, goggles and nose plug, I was in the middle of the queue to get out. Very soon it would be my turn, and my heart was racing. I couldn’t hear anything with all the noise of the water pouring into the chamber. Quickly, in what felt like seconds, the chamber was flooded, with just a small gap at the top left in which to breathe. Once the pressure equalised, the main hatch to the escape tank would open and it would be time to get it done. I was next in line at the entrance, taking a big, deep breath as one of the instructors pushed me under and out into the vast expanse of the tank. I barely had time to take in the surroundings as I was met by two instructors who seemed to take an eternity to let go of me. I glanced around, they released me and I started the ascent. I knew I had to breathe out all the way up, because the volume of air in your lungs increases as the pressure decreases, and if you held your breath, your lungs would simply burst. I pushed the air out and looked straight ahead as I glided upwards for what seemed like a lifetime before I hit the surface.

Next up came another big test – the free ascent from 60 feet, something that filled me with abject terror. Maintaining exhalation from that depth seemed to me a close call, but the instructor informed me that if I ran out of puff, and if I felt like I couldn’t breathe out anymore, then I needn’t worry – I should just keep blowing, as I’d still have 25 per cent of my lung capacity left. Of course, I didn’t believe him. Water pressure increases the lower you go; at a depth of 60 feet, I’d be experiencing 30 pounds per square inch of pressure on my body. In addition, the greater the pressure, the greater the chance of a burst eardrum while equalising to the pressure in the tank. All of this information turned me into a nervous wreck as the water began to enter the chamber in preparation for the mock escape. I cleared my ears, and then I was next. ‘Take a good, deep breath,’ someone bellowed at me as I ducked down and pushed out into the tank. Within seconds a barrel-chested, slightly pot-bellied instructor appeared from a diving bell in the tank to make sure I was breathing out correctly. Meanwhile, in my head I was screaming: Shit, let go of me before I run out of puff and my lungs give way!

Slowly I started to rise, but this time I was really struggling to breathe out – the natural bodily response is of course to hold your breath. I got halfway up and a second instructor who’d been hiding in another diving bell came out to meet me and jabbed his outstretched hand into my rib cage to make sure I was exhaling. I clocked the depth gauges as I ascended, and I realised how deep this actually was. I had to regulate the blow, as I felt I was running out of capacity, but eventually I breached the surface, relieved I’d made it through unscathed.

The final part of these two days of hell was an ascent from 100 feet, with a simulated evacuation from a replica submarine escape tower. This involved climbing into a tiny compartment beneath the 100-foot tower in a hooded pressure suit. I clambered in, having only half-listened to the instructor, overcome by an adrenaline rush and heart palpitations. I couldn’t yet vote, I was about the age at which I could learn to drive, yet it felt like I was putting my life in completely unnecessary danger, as if I’d sleepwalked into this nightmare in the hands of total strangers. The tower closed shut behind me and I was stuck in a minuscule space that was about to be flooded. I guessed that they were checking for signs of claustrophobia and stress, and I saw there was an implement for me to start banging on the pipes with if I couldn’t hack it. Pleasant thought.

I climbed gingerly into the escape hatch, head to toe in a self-contained submarine escape suit; I knew I needed to plug myself into an air pipe that would inflate it as the water came in, making it fully pressurised. Suddenly it was time, and the water started to shoot in, my stress levels becoming almost unbearable as I was squashed into this tower, the suit inflating around me. As the water pushed against me, I tried to clear the pressure from my ears with the help of a nose plug, all the while trying to remember what I’d been told. I recalled all the stories of what could go wrong; at the very least I was expecting my eardrums to burst.

The pressure on my suit was immense now, around 50 pounds per square inch, and bubbles blurred my vision as water rapidly filled the tank. I was terrified beyond comprehension, but within 30 seconds the hatch suddenly opened. After floating out I said my name and RN ID number to the instructor, who had gone to the bottom of the tower to meet me in a diving bell. I was then attached to a pole and shot up the 100 feet of water in around ten seconds. As I was now in a fully inflatable suit I remembered to breathe normally, in, out, in, out, reminding myself constantly that my ascent needed to be smooth, and that I should breathe all the way to the top. I suddenly popped to the surface, almost fully breaching out of the water, then floated onto my back doing a fair impression of the Michelin man, before I was finally led to the side of the pool and handed over to the medical staff for a once-over.

At once terrifying and exhilarating – a trainee breaks the surface after successfully completing the 100-foot ascent. (POA Phot Gary Davies/MOD)

This was both the high point and the most nerve-wracking part of initial submarine training. The Navy stopped all pressurised escapes in 2009 and worked on a simulation basis instead. This seems like a shame to me as it takes away the key element of danger. Although I found it a suitably terrifying experience at the time, which I’m sure pales into insignificance compared with a real-life submarine escape, the retirement of the tank-ascents programme strikes me as an example of modern-day health and safety gone mad. It’s worth noting that in 1987 on board HMS Otus in Norway,‡ two staff members from the SETT team escaped in pressurised suits from a depth very close to 600 feet, a truly remarkable achievement by an extraordinary group of men.

I was told shortly after my final examinations that, subject to vetting, I would be drafted to the 10th Submarine Squadron, which meant only one thing: nuclear deterrence. The 10th Submarine Squadron took their name from the heroic 10th Submarine Flotilla, who performed miracles in the Second World War in their defence of Malta from German forces, by keeping the country in supplies, as well as sinking German ships destined for Rommel and his troops in North Africa. In total the flotilla sank around 412,000 tonnes of Axis shipping. At the forefront of this effort was Lieutenant Commander M. D. Wanklyn, who torpedoed, sank or disabled around 127,000 tonnes of shipping, an astonishing feat that earned him the Victoria Cross and Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He was declared missing in action in 1942, aged just 30.

* Naval training is split into three parts: Part 1 is basic training; Part 2 is shore-side specialist training; Part 3 is at-sea training.

† The dolphins badge is awarded to fully qualified submariners after Part 3 sea training and an oral exam.

‡ ‘HMS’ can mean both ‘Her Majesty’s Ship’ and ‘Her Majesty’s Submarine’, with the context usually giving a clue as to which is meant. Here it’s clearly a submarine.

2
HMS Neptune, Faslane

It was time to head north to Scotland. Far from being an alien land to me, this was where my mother and father had moved for Dad’s last job before retirement, to a small village called Houston, just outside Paisley, near the wonderful city of Glasgow. Dad then worked in Govan. I was going further north-west to Gare Loch, a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, about 25 miles from Glasgow. The loch, around six miles long and on average about a mile wide, is not at all what you might associate with potential Armageddon, as it’s mostly a very peaceful place, almost suburban in much of its appearance, flanked by the picturesque, affluent seaside town of Helensburgh, with its polished Edwardian and Victorian houses dominating the skyline of the eastern shore. The village of Rosneath lies on the western shore, among blue-green hills, and it’s at this point that Gare Loch narrows to just 600 metres wide, at what’s known as the Rhu Narrows, after the tiny village of the same name. Here, at its southern end, Gare Loch joins the Firth of Clyde, providing access through the North Channel to the main submarine patrolling areas of the North Atlantic.

It was further north on the eastern shore that the dominating fixture of the landscape lay in wait for this somewhat nervous-looking, anxious 18-year-old ‘man’. The Clyde Submarine Base, Faslane, had been the home of the British nuclear deterrent since 1968, and was the Royal Navy’s main presence in Scotland. Known as HMS Neptune, I was struck by its razor-wire security fences, the MOD policeman patrolling the perimeter fencing armed to the teeth, and the Comacchio Group of the Royal Marines doing hand-brake turns in their RIBs* as they raced up and down Gare Loch, keeping at bay any unwanted trespassers from the Faslane Peace Camp, a permanent CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) site since 1982.

The base had the usual accommodation blocks, parade squares, offices and training centres, as well as a hospital and massive canteen, but the whole place was geared towards the main jetty and the submarine that was harboured there: HMS Resolution, my new companion, a weapon of war capable of destruction on a scale hitherto unseen in any modern conflict. Its nuclear weapons could deliver massive explosive force, more firepower than all the bombs dropped during the Second World War, including the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For someone as young as me, this was hard to comprehend. Until that point I’d barrelled through life with a carefree attitude and a cheery sense of bonhomie; now I was about go to work on this most lethal of killing machines.

Before joining Resolution I was security vetted to within an inch of my life by a bespectacled, ruddy-faced man in a double-breasted pinstripe suit in a small office somewhere in HMS Dolphin. The office was well lit and looked particularly unforgiving as I entered: two chairs, his across from mine, two plastic cups and a notepad on my side laid out on a plain white table. Initially I heard footsteps in the distance – sharp, unforgiving strides as the man’s steel-tipped shoes announced his imminent arrival from some distance away, reminding me of Lee Marvin in Point Blank. Am I going to be on the receiving end of those? I wondered. He entered the room, we shook hands and he proceeded to inform me that he was a vetting officer. Vetting officer, my arse. He was a member of the security services based in London, and it was his job to make sure I was of sound temperament and had no skeletons in my closet that would make it impossible for me to serve on the nuclear deterrent.

He asked a wide variety of questions, some about politics, others about family, starting with, ‘Are you a communist?’

‘Nyet,’ I answered in Russian.

That went down well.

More questions followed, about my sexual orientation, whether I liked a flutter on the horses, and whether I could keep secrets about operations and the submarine. Then the Irish wing of my family – my mum’s side – who hailed from the Catholic south, found themselves in his crosshairs. The Troubles were still in full swing – bombs, murder and misery across the water in the six counties – and he asked if I had any Republican sympathies. I replied that the notion of a united Ireland was a noble idea to aspire to, but the way it was being played out on the streets by lunatics on each side was ridiculous.

I detested the way the Irish had been treated by the British, the casual racism that they suffered, particularly after the Birmingham pub bombings; the endless Paddy jokes about how thick they were, told most nights on television by misogynistic, racist comedians. My grandfather was from Dublin. Crossing the water to find work decades earlier, he had grafted all his life and settled in the Midlands. I’m sure he must have witnessed this racism first-hand, but he never made comment about it. I relayed all this to the vetting man, who looked at me open-mouthed and speechless.

Then the final subject surfaced – nuclear weapons – and a series of questions designed to assess whether I was sufficiently sound of mind to be trusted to work in close quarters with a weapon that could wipe out a sizeable chunk of humanity. I, of course, kept schtum, too frightened to speak in case I said the wrong thing. All things considered, it was a topic best not to have too firm an opinion on and I hadn’t really given it much thought until that point, there in that spartan room with a complete stranger sitting in front of me. All I knew about nuclear war came from nonsensical 1970s public information films. I didn’t want my career to be over before it had even started, but presented with the scenario that at the age of 18 I might be party to delivering the most lethal weapon system in the history of warfare and play a role in the destruction of nameless millions was a little off-putting, to put it mildly.

‘Are you comfortable with the use of nuclear weapons?’ he asked directly.

‘Yes,’ I eventually answered.

The vetting man looked me up and down, then jotted some final notes in his folder. A week or so later I was informed I’d been positively vetted to serve my country. My national security clearance was Top Secret.

I presume fledgling submariners would have seen their careers end with a wrong answer. I know for a fact that some officers who had passed Perisher, the notorious Submarine Command Course,† and who had subsequently been offered the captaincy of a Polaris submarine, had declined, as they couldn’t live with the awesome responsibility of having to fire their missiles in retaliation for a Soviet first strike.

Upon arrival at HMS Neptune I was met by two humourless MOD policemen, who proceeded to process my ID card for the base. Radiating machismo, they made it obvious that they were both armed – some sort of machine guns, by the looks of them – but I put it down to them not getting out much. It took more than an hour for them to register that a) I was indeed a human being and b) a new member of the ship’s company. On reflection, they probably needed the guns, as they looked so out of shape they wouldn’t have been able to chase down an intruder. I was led by these two charmers through three gates, all involving bag searches, then onto the jetty where I caught my first glimpse of HMS Resolution.

She lay there motionless, tied with ropes forward and aft, 80 per cent of her bulk hidden underwater. Sleek, black and athletic-looking, Britain’s ultimate war machine had more than a hint of menace about her, as if she knew the punishment she could inflict, quite aware that she could disappear like a ghost and travel undetected for months, armed to the teeth with weapons of unimaginable destructive power.

Resolution was a Polaris submarine built by Vickers shipbuilders in Barrow-in-Furness to the south-west of the Lake District. The other three Resolution-class boats – submarines are never called ships, reflecting a time when submersibles were taken out to sea on the back of ships like boats – in the squadron were Repulse, Revenge and Renown, Repulse also being built by Vickers, the other two by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead. The Polaris programme was born of discussions between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that took place in the Bahamas in 1962, and became known as the Nassau Agreement. This ended the programme of airborne-launched nuclear missiles, which had been used by the Americans since the 1950s.

Britain had joined the trans-Atlantic programme in 1960 but had struggled to revamp the newer missiles to its existing squadron of Vulcan bombers, the beautifully designed delta-winged, high-altitude strategic planes that had been Britain’s carrier of nuclear weapons since November 1953. With the withdrawal of airborne-launched ballistic missile systems, the plan was to switch to submarine-launched ballistic missiles, giving rise to the Polaris submarine programme. Britain would have their own submarines but would be supplied with American Polaris missiles. Building of the subs began in 1964, with Resolution being commissioned and finished in 1967, and completing her first patrol in 1968. Along with the other three subs comprising 10th Submarine Squadron’s Polaris fleet, until its decommissioning and replacement by Trident beginning in October 1994, Resolution was the most powerful weapon of war ever built in this country.

With the advances in missile defence made by the Soviets in the 1970s, it was deemed that the existing Polaris warheads were vulnerable to interception around the major Soviet cities, particularly Moscow. The way around this was to develop a system whereby the missiles on re-entry would launch a multitude of decoys and counter-measures that would offer too many incomprehensible targets, thus overwhelming Soviet anti-ballistic missile defences while the real warheads slipped through. This became known as the Chevaline Warhead System, and had been kept in strict secrecy by successive Labour and Tory administrations. It was a wholly British design and represented a fundamental shift away from methods used in the American programme. By 1982, Britain, with this new warhead in place, had a fully independent deterrent missile system.

Longer than a football pitch, narrow and forbidding, HMS Resolution lay silent as death as I looked on – no machinery running, no sailors or stores being loaded on board, no hustle and bustle in the neighbouring support depots, just quiet and still. Even Gare Loch was motionless – no birds or wildlife, only the tiniest swell lapping against her bow as if in reverence to this huge, black leviathan. She was a killing machine – everyone in this place knew it, most of all me. I was extremely nervous, almost a wreck by this point. On the jetty next to the submarine I exchanged forced pleasantries with the quartermaster (QM), the seaman in charge of the boat’s security.

As he checked my name against the list of names permitted on board that day, I detected a Mancunian accent. I knew full well that if your name wasn’t down, you weren’t coming in. Had even the First Sea Lord – the highest ranking officer in the Navy – come a-calling unannounced and wasn’t booked in for the day, he’d have had a long night waiting up top freezing his nuts off. Nothing was compromised at any point; clockwork and military precision were the order of the day as the security of the boat was paramount. My cockiness on passing Part 2 submarine training five weeks earlier had quickly dissipated, and it was with a deep sense of unease that I made my first steps across the gangway and prepared to go on board.

* Rigid inflatable boats.

† All captains have to pass the Perisher course to command a submarine, and all seconds-in-command on nuclear submarines will have also passed the course.

3
The Bomber

I was greeted on the casing by the coxswain, CPO Freddy Maynard, a gruff northerner of Yorkshire descent. On initial impression he seemed fair, despite possessing the look of a man not to be crossed in any shape or form. The coxswain is the chief of the boat, the head NCO who looks after its company in terms of discipline; if you’re up before the captain because you got pissed in Helensburgh and started acting like a spoilt arsehole, it’s the coxswain who’ll be giving you the evil eye and enforcing any punishment according to Navy regulations. Chief of the boat, he’s the third most important person on board after the captain and the XO.

It was time to go on board and see what all the fuss was about. Even though I’d had three months of training, this was the first time I’d ever stepped aboard a nuclear submarine. I was shitting it. The main access hatch was a straight drop down a ladder of about 10 to 12 feet, starting off vertical, then halfway down kicking out towards 1 Deck, as the top deck of the submarine’s three decks was known. The first thing I noticed was the claggy heat as I reached the bottom and turned 180° to carry on down to 3 Deck, where my locker and bunk were located. There was a distinctly stale odour down here: the ghosts of farts long dead, mixed with heat, oil and the CO2 absorption-unit chemicals they used to recycle air back into oxygen. Add to that special cocktail the collective sweat of a crew of 143 men and bingo, you had the submarine smell. It was grim all right.

The second thing to strike me was what lay immediately above my head – and the need to duck. I cracked my forehead on the overhang of the steps down to 3 Deck, giving me a nice egg of a swelling above my left eyebrow. Although Resolution was the biggest submarine built by the Navy at that time, it was hellishly cramped in terms of living space, and moving around its tiny passageways required all manner of contortion. The raison d’être of the submarine is first and foremost machinery and functionality, with the bodily needs of men coming a distant second. I noticed valves, gauges, low ceilings, wires, switches and dials all round, and wondered how in hell I was going to cope learning the mechanics of all of this.

Two people couldn’t pass on a corridor without one moving aside. You could stand in the middle of the passageways on 1, 2 and 3 Deck with your outstretched hands and touch either side of the sub. It was impossibly tight. Then there were the protruding pipes to bang your head on, bulkheads to trip through, small hatches to navigate, valves and dials all over the place, plus vertical ladders between decks … there were risks everywhere. I had to pass through hatch after hatch and ladder after ladder before getting to my bunk at the bottom of the boat. The lack of space was giving me the fear. I couldn’t let on, but on first impressions I wasn’t sure life in a steel cigar-shaped tin can was going to work for me. It was all the equipment, for fuck’s sake. It was everywhere you looked, coupled with those passageways and ladders eating up all available living space. Plus, there were nuclear weapons and a nuclear reactor to worry about, never mind their impact on the space. I was already starting to regret my ballsy decision to become a submariner.

The walls started to close in as panic got a hold of me, so I ran to the toilets to take some deep breaths. Christ, we hadn’t even left the dock yet and I was getting into a state. I just needed to regroup a moment. Anyone who tells you they’re not nervous when they first step on board a submarine is talking nonsense; the machinery, claustrophobia and alien smells, it’s not good for the uninitiated.

Fortunately, the crew were mostly friendly and eager to help me settle in. I started to calm down after about five minutes as I messed about and put my kit in my locker along the passageway near my bunk space, although ‘locker’ is probably overdoing it. Was I really supposed to fit my kit for a two-month patrol in there? It was about half the size of one you’d find in a local swimming pool. There was a drawer back in my sleeping compartment where I could put my shoes and boots, but storage-wise that was it. I rolled out my Navy-issue green sleeping bag on my bunk and left my own pillow on top. The lack of privacy was plainly obvious. I was going to have to put my faith in the hands of my fellow crewmates and needed to be a good judge of character.

Submariners hanging out in 9 Berth, where I spent my time in the land of nod. My bunk was the top one in the middle rack of three, never the bottom. (Wood/Express/Getty Images)

My main fear was that I couldn’t do it, that it would all be too much. How would I cope? What dangers would lie ahead? How the hell was I going to remember everything – both my job and everyone else’s – while contending with this ever-present claustrophobia. I’d only experienced being cramped in an escape hatch at the SETT at HMS Dolphin, but ten minutes in the submarine and I was already having a crisis of confidence. How would I manage being underwater without daylight for anything up to 80 or 90 days? And nuclear weapons? What if we had to use them?

It was still the height of the Cold War, with Gorbachev only recently having come to power, and the Soviets were hard at it. The Navy’s hunter-killer nuclear subs tracked their aggressive submarines across the North Atlantic, in the waters between Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and the Arctic Ocean, while our diesel-electric O-boats penetrated Soviet waters via the Barents Sea. It was like time had stood still for the last 15 years, each side trying to gain the upper hand.

The Americans, too, in their ‘Los Angeles’ fast attack submarines, were playing cat-and-mouse games in the Pacific, with Reagan well into his second term as president and hawkish as ever, despite the apparent friendly overtures from the Soviets now that the affable Gorbachev wielded power.

I wasn’t the only new starter; Philip, a bright, introverted lad from the Lake District whom I’d gone through training with at HMS Dolphin, was joining the boat at the same time. In addition, there were a couple of other junior rates,* all of us within the warfare team in the boat and collectively under the guidance of the coxswain.

As a submarine ship’s company is notably smaller than, say, that of a frigate or aircraft carrier, the coxswain is the de facto master-at-arms, a person to keep on the right side of. His main duties include being in charge of operating ship control while diving, surfacing and returning to and from periscope depth (PD); supervising the ratings who control the foreplanes and afterplanes, which regulate the depth and pitch of the boat; and overseeing new members of the crew. He would keep a steely eye on us throughout the forthcoming patrol.

The coxswain, like every other submariner on board, does more than one job. The leading steward, for example, will serve the captain his meals, then half an hour later will be on the foreplanes helping to bring the submarine to periscope depth. The beauty of this is that all qualified submariners can do their own jobs very well, but unlike other members of the armed forces they’re also proficient at everyone else’s. I might have been the nearest person to an emergency – be it fire, flood, hydraulic burst or ruptured air pipe – and I had to know how to deal with it and isolate the various systems involved in order to make the boat safe. This level of responsibility is unique within the services. Everyone here is in the same boat, and as JFK said, ‘We all breathe the same air’ – quite literally on a submarine, and for three months with no escape. You have to get along with each other.

In order to get to become a member of that rare club I had to undergo Part 3 training with a mentor at sea, and then an oral exam with the XO, the second-in-command, who himself had passed the Perisher course. Our XO had already captained a submarine, so was biding his time until his own bomber command came through. The coxswain and usually one of the chief MEMs (marine engineering mechanics), comprised the remaining members of the exam board. All the knowledge I’d picked up at submarine school seemed worthless, for while it might help with my own job, it was of no use in terms of the many skills required to make the boat function, nor did it mentally prepare me to keep on top of everything. Everyone I met on board said the same: ‘Forget all that shit, complete waste of time.’ This was big-boy stuff, so it was time to knuckle down.

Resolution was 425 feet long by 33 feet wide and pulled a draught (distance from waterline to keel) of an inch over 30 feet. Her displacement when surfaced was 7,700 tonnes, and while diving 8,500 tonnes. The speed of the boat was roughly 20 knots surfaced and 25 knots submerged. The tear-shaped hull of a submarine is designed to be more aerodynamic when it is surrounded by water on all sides, hence it is faster underwater. The optimum depth to which the submarine can dive is over 750 feet.

As for her armaments: six Mk 24 Tigerfish torpedoes with a maximum range of 39 kilometres, travelling at a speed of around 35–40 knots, and 16 Polaris A-3 ballistic missiles with two Chevaline warheads per missile, with a staggering nuclear yield of about 225 kilotonnes. To put that into perspective, ‘Little Boy’, the Hiroshima bomb, yielded around 13–18 kilotonnes, while ‘Fat Man’, the Nagasaki bomb, weighed in at 20–22 kilotonnes. A deeply sobering thought when I considered what I was sleeping next to.

In terms of propulsion, the boat was fitted with a pressurised water nuclear reactor (PWR1) capable of powering it for a number of years. However, patrols were limited in duration by the supplies and food for the crew. Furthermore, the power generated by the PWR1 also helped with the distillation of sea water. Pumped into the two distillation plants, sea water was recycled into potable water by separating the salt vapour produced when it was boiled. The two plants could quite easily reach an output of over 10,000 gallons a day after which, free from impurities, the water made its way to the fresh-water tanks. The water was subsequently used mainly for cooling electronic equipment such as sonar computers and navigational equipment, but was also essential for use with reactor services, batteries and domestic services such as cooking. If any was left after all this we may have got some laundry done and had a ‘shower’.

The nuclear reactor also created the electricity for the life-support systems on board, such as oxygen regeneration and the expulsion of unwanted gases like hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, in addition to heating the air circulating round the boat and powering a number of other systems. The water deep under the world’s oceans is around 3°C, so heat needed to be applied to various parts of the boat to keep the temperature regulated. Though not back aft in the engineering spaces or the galley, I might add, where temperatures could easily reach 40°C.

The reactor compartment was lead-lined, sealed and constantly monitored by the >manoeuvring room engineers under the expert guidance of the nuclear chief of the watch, who in turn ultimately reported to the marine engineering officer (MEO), one of the most professionally qualified and important positions in the whole of the armed forces, period.

The submarine was split up into the different departments that made up the ship’s company. These were headed up by the senior officers – the XO, weapons engineering officer (WEO) and MEO – who in turn reported to God himself: the captain. The warfare team was headed up by the XO, and its main function was to take the boat to war: tracking and evading enemy craft, keeping the submarine safe by controlling all the other systems on board, while maintaining the boat in a state of readiness to launch its devastating nuclear weapons.

The warfare team used the sound room, where you’d find the elite sonar team hidden in the dark, headphones on, as they collated and evaluated contacts through the use of passive sonar. Contacts were either audible sounds picked up by the sonar team, or, if a long, long way off, visible sonar traces were detected on one of their many screens and sent through to the control room, where they were tracked. Sound waves in the sea are affected by many things, the two main ones being the temperature and density of sea water, coupled with the many background noises of marine life and merchant ships. The sonar operator’s job of accurately classifying contacts was a hellishly tricky one and required a great deal of experience.

Passive sonar is the non-active kind, meaning the sonar operator just listened and didn’t actively transmit. He was able to identify the source of the noise by listening to the sound of the propellers, or using invaluable intelligence from SSNs,† which recorded the signatures of Soviet ships and submarines. The sonar operators were able to instantly classify the vast majority of sounds, be they a merchant vessel, oil tanker, fishing vessel or Soviet submarine. As passive sonar doesn’t transmit sonically, its only major drawback is that it is extremely difficult to work out the range of a contact, as it’s not getting a ping back from the target. Silence was paramount to evade detection, so active sonar was only ever used in sea-training exercises.

The data from the sound room detailing the craft’s bearing and movement was then transferred to the control room, and from this information the tactical systems team (including myself) were able to work out firing solutions relating to the enemy’s course, speed and range, which the XO and the captain could use or modify, depending on their own calculations.

The warfare team also navigated the submarine while she was on the surface, controlled the submarine at periscope depth for satellite navigational fixes and positioned the submarine before firing torpedoes.

The weapons engineering department were responsible for maintaining and servicing the weapons on board, from nuclear missiles to the Tigerfish torpedoes, all of which were under the command of the WEO, who also pressed the trigger that would send the missile to its target. And yes, it was an actual trigger, coloured red just in case the WEO forgot what he was doing. In addition, they carried out electrical maintenance of the warfare team’s attack systems, sonar, electronic warfare, radio transmission and navigation, to keep them functioning at all times. This could either be routine maintenance or a complete strip and rebuild, which involved a riot of electrical leads spread out all over the floor awaiting reassembly. ‘Was it red first, then yellow?’ I’d often heard them say. I still don’t know the answer.

The Royal Navy newspaper Navy News visited the submarine to celebrate 21 years of the deterrent patrols in 1989. Here’s me posing for photos next to one of the torpedo tubes. (Navy News/Imperial War Museum)

When the boat was on patrol, there was a separate team of electrical engineers who kept vigil over the nuclear missiles in a cordoned-off area in the missile compartment. As well as loading the missiles onto the boat at the armaments depot, they packed the conventional torpedoes at the forward end of the boat and maintained them throughout patrol in the lower end of the fore ends, or ‘Bomb Shop’ as it was known. The team was supplemented by radio operators who looked after all the communications coming from the Command Centre at Northwood in north London, and who were based in the wireless room.

The engineers ensured that the nuclear weapons and torpedoes were safe through a system of round-the-clock, fail-safe checks. Their thoroughness and knowledge were vital, for at any time before a patrol began the men from the ministry in the form of the NWI‡ team could arrive for a snap visit and ask some pretty awkward questions, under the auspices of a weapons inspection. This could result in the WEO or any member of his team being relieved of their duties. This actually happened on Resolution, where a WEO was removed due to a perceived lack of knowledge on the day. At the time, we thought his had been a strange appointment, as the individual concerned had come from a Special Forces background and was thought to have been a serving member of the elite SBS. While that’s great in its own right, it hardly qualified him for a life under the sea in charge of nuclear weapons.

The marine engineering branch, led by the MEO, were tasked with looking after the boat’s propulsion, mechanical and life-support systems, and were split into two operating areas: aft (the back end of the submarine) and the control room, and everything forward of that. Aft of the missile compartment was their main focus, principally the manoeuvring room, for here were the controls that looked after the functioning of the reactor. Up to six people managed the detailed switches, pumps, hull valves and other bits of kit to make sure the reactor and its associated systems functioned correctly

The wrecking team manned the control room’s systems console, where they assisted in diving and surfacing the submarine, raising and lowering the periscopes, and monitoring oil pressures. They were also responsible for the diesel back-ups and maintaining the battery, should we ever have needed to use it in the event of the reactor being shut down. As well as maintaining their favourite bit of kit, the garbage and sewage systems, they also ran the laundry on 3 Deck, where clothes tended to come back as smelly as when they went in.

The final department was the supply branch, whose sole function was to ensure the boat had all the necessary food, drink, toilet rolls (essential, obviously. I never fancied using my hand to wipe my arse) and any other vital spares necessary for a ten-week patrol. This department was headed up by the supply officer and staffed by chefs, who did a superb job cooking three meals a day, plus snacks for months on end in the most testing of working conditions. Next time you’re in a restaurant, take a good look at the kitchens and all the chefs toiling in those cramped, hot and pressurised environments. Now, while they might be able to go for a fag break or some fresh air halfway through their shift, you can’t do that in a submarine. It’s torturously hot and stifling in the galley, with fire hazards aplenty … a total shit-show where miracles daily occur in keeping a crew fed and watered non-stop for three months, all of it happening in around 15 square feet.

The supply branch was completed by the stewards, who served the officers meals and drinks in the wardroom, and then did a shift on ship control, driving the boat with its changes of course and depth. And lastly there was the leading writer,§ who could usually be found holed up in the ship’s office doing all the coxswain’s admin; he also took his turn at flying the boat as well.

Then there was the doctor, who occupied a small sick-bay on 2 Deck, where he treated physically sick sailors. Don’t assume there were any mental health considerations, mind you. If someone rocked up and complained, ‘I’m not feeling that great today, Doc. Can we have a chat about it, please?’ the main gist of the doctor’s response would be, ‘Yes, of course, now fuck off.’ He also doubled up doing a turn on ship control, where he helped look after the pitch and depth of the boat while it dived and was at periscope depth. The occasional failure to carry out that part of his obligations resulted in him being on the end of some almighty bollockings from the captain.

That said, these always seemed to wash over him, for he was not easily irked. I guess doctors don’t get intimidated that easily. Although he was an officer with the rank of surgeon lieutenant, the doc I served all my patrols with preferred the company of the junior rates and drank heavily with us, always first in the queue for the pub on a night out and one of the last home, as well as being a heavy smoker. I’m not sure how he would have been judged by modern-day NHS standards, but he was great company – thoroughly entertaining, clever, level-headed and entirely unflappable. That said, I’m not sure I’d have wanted him taking my appendix out or resetting a broken bone.

The other major feature of the submarine particular to the nuclear deterrent was that it was made up of two crews, Port and Starboard (my crew). While one crew was out on patrol the other crew would be on the piss, on holiday or on training exercises. The main reason for this was maximising the amount of time any one of the four submarines could spend at sea. On these training exercises, we’d go to a simulated control room in Plymouth, where we’d practise both attacking and evasive manoeuvres in front of teaching staff who would judge our performance. It would be back-to-back, full-on attack-simulation training, with the warfare team under the leadership of the captain.

We liked these simulations. It made for a nice change to practise attacks on enemy ships or submarines, and they kept our hand in, for our main task on patrol was to evade and hide, not to engage or investigate like the SSN hunter-killers, or the diesel submarines that spent their patrols intelligence-gathering in Soviet waters and tracking enemy submarines. On the attack drills I usually found myself paired up with the captain as his periscope assistant. This consisted of helping the team effort by working out my own range of given target/targets using the angle of its bow and a 360° protractor slide-rule. The captain could then choose to ignore it, use it, or refer to it as a ballpark figure to help him with his own calculations. This full-on training lasted around a week, and to relieve the stresses of the day we partied hard in Plymouth. It led me back to some of my old ‘run ashore’ haunts on Union Street that I’d first encountered near the end of my basic training.

Aptly named, Boobs nightclub left little to the imagination; drink was consumed on an industrial scale, one-night stands were commonplace, with women and sailors in various states of undress while still in the club. Full-on debauchery ran amok, and I remember a particularly frantic half-hour of my own in the ladies’ loos. The night would usually end side-stepping vomit or fighting men, occasionally women, or both at the same time, always alcohol-induced. Once, on exiting Boobs en route to our favoured Chinese takeaway, I saw a sailor come hurtling through the window; landing with panache, he dusted himself down and strolled off into the night like a gracefully listing galleon.

Our other haunt was Diamond Lil’s, with Ronnie Potter. Ronnie played his Hammond organ while his wife sang mainly blue songs, as strippers did their thing on a raised stage, dragging inebriated sailors up for audience participation. All very bizarre, a kind of sleazy version of The Good Old Days, it was packed out every night. There was obviously no accounting for taste. The best hornpipe dance would win a free drink at the end of the night, but I’d never be in a sufficiently decent state to even attempt it. Although there were plenty of fights – mostly handbags – genuine violence was fairly thin on the ground among sailors. If there was any real trouble it tended to get started by the local thugs who wanted to put one over ‘Jolly Jack’ to prove that they still possessed the requisite manliness to survive in seaside cities they perceived as being ‘invaded’ by the Navy. All the recent debate about the disenfranchisement of the British working class is nothing new. I saw it first-hand in the mid-1980s on the streets of Plymouth and Portsmouth most Friday and Saturday nights.

* ‘Junior rates’ is the collective term for seamen, able seamen and leading hands.

† Submarine submerged nuclears – known as ‘hunter-killers’ – were nuclear-powered submarines that didn’t carry nuclear weapons.

‡ Nuclear weapons inspection.

§ The leading writer was responsible for helping with the HR function, legal matters and other administration.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.