4

Alongside

After simulation training ended, the Port crew returned from their patrol and it was now the Starboard crew’s turn to take over the boat; resupplying it, carrying out any required maintenance and performing sea trials to ensure we were fit to go on patrol. The term ‘alongside’ refers to the period when the boat is stationed in port before it goes out on work-up and then patrol, and when routine maintenance and storing the ship take place. It’s very much the calm before the storm, with the crew gradually moving from accommodation blocks in Faslane onto the boat. It doesn’t happen all at once, so we don’t get too cramped too soon.

I spent the days and weeks before my first patrol lugging food supplies on board and mostly avoiding the sharp tongue of the coxswain. It was pretty tedious, backbreaking work, and the other junior rates and I bitched about it constantly. But before my second patrol I was given the role of quartermaster, a hugely important job for a 19-year-old, particularly with the boat alongside. I was basically in charge of the external security of the submarine, making sure anyone coming onto the submarine had the correct pass, including members of the ship’s company. Security was so tight that serving submariners from the 3rd Submarine Squadron – also based in Faslane – were not even allowed on the jetty where Resolution was docked. I checked visitor lists against who was expected, whether the captain had any guests arriving or if the MEO had any thespian types up from London. His wife had something to do with the theatre and so we’d receive visitors from time to time. And, since I would be the first person visiting dignitaries would meet on their arrival, it was important not to look like a sack of shit.

My favourite visitor was the Oscar-winning actor Sir John Mills, with whom I shared a pint down in the mess. He was immaculately dressed in a gold-buttoned navy blazer, shirt, cravat, grey slacks, pink Lacoste socks and brogues. We talked at length about the final scene in Ice Cold in Alex, which, he told me, needed quite a few takes. It’s a classic scene in which Captain Anson, the character he played, takes a drink at a bar in Alexandria. The grand actor bemoaned to me that the director wanted to use ginger ale as a substitute for alcohol, but Mills thought it looked odd so they went with beer, and after about ten takes Mills was hammered and could barely deliver his lines. He had some experience of acting in submarine films set during the Second World War, and we talked about Above Us the Waves and We Dive at Dawn. I had developed an interest in acting when I’d played a few parts in school plays. I’d also seen a very young Kenneth Branagh in the role of Henry V at Stratford, so I found this all fascinating. I still have a submarine photo signed by him somewhere. An extraordinary man.

Being QM enabled me to spend lots of time above water, overdosing on vital fresh air to top up my vitamin D levels before heading off to sea. It was a heavily pressurised job, and given the fact not only that CND supporters from the local peace camp had been threatening to board one of the Polaris boats, but that it was also the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the base was high on the list of IRA bombing targets, I was slightly on edge.

Sir John Mills kindly autographed this picture of three of the four Polaris submarines, with HMS Resolution leading the way. The fourth boat would have been out on patrol.

The worst did in fact happen. In October 1988 three peace campaigners, fairly heroically it must be said, broke into the Faslane base and onto a submarine. They cut through the outer wire, before scaling high-security fencing, evading Royal Marine patrols and the quartermaster – not me, thank fuck – and scrambling on board, making it all the way to the control room before capture. It wasn’t Resolution that suffered this embarrassment but our sister ship, HMS Repulse. There was a huge amount of fallout of the conventional kind to deal with from the whole affair. Around ten personnel were reprimanded, including the commodore in charge of the base and the officer commanding the Royal Marines. You can bet your life the QM was also in the shit as well. The incident was covered up at the time, and apparently Mrs Thatcher blew her top when she found out. After that little episode, armed sentries were given the order to shoot on sight, but only as a last resort, in any future breaches of security.

There were two quartermasters on board, me and Charlie Stephens. Charlie was great, a rare character born in Salford and a Manchester United fan. Tough and firm, he liked a joke and was excellent at his job as a sonar operator. We lived in a small cabin at the top of the gangway on the jetty. It was a responsible job, but came at a price; I worked shift patterns, six hours on, six off. The ‘graveyard watch’ was from 2 to 8 a.m., which was never easy, and it was all I could do to stay awake. Sometimes I didn’t, and I’d wake up frantically thinking I’d been asleep for three hours when it was probably only a couple of minutes. I’m not sure that would have gone down particularly well had anyone seen me. Trying to pass those night hours in the cabin was horrendous – the radio would be on constantly, and since it was the days before rolling 24-hour news coverage, we were forced to endure some local radio station, or, if we remembered, we’d leave music tapes for each other to listen to. It was here I first discovered Tom Waits, with his deep, gravel-charged voice singing about the seedy underbelly of the US. He helped me to get through many a long night.

Crosswords were another antidote to the endless nights, but reading was a no-no as after 15 minutes I’d start nodding off, despite my best attempts to stay awake. Sometimes when I was off watch I’d go back to my room on the base to get some shut-eye. When in port, because of a lack of space in the boat, it made sense for the crew of a submarine to live at the base, but in the last few days before patrol everybody moved down to the boat, department by department.

We’d have a Royal Marine who would patrol up and down the jetty as well as other areas of the base. They’d be from Arbroath, where the Comacchio Group were based. They specialised in naval operations, like storming oil-rigs, which at the time were considered by the powers-that-be to be a prime target for terrorist attacks. Their other job, when not stationed in Northern Ireland, was the protection of the nuclear deterrent. They were decent guys to talk to, in many ways the ‘thinking man’s soldier’. I’d share my flask of coffee with them over a chinwag. One guy I recall who’d served in Northern Ireland told me about some of the serious scrapes he’d been in – and he’d obviously been deeply affected by it all. You’d call it PTSD now, but back then it wasn’t thought to be anything serious, just something that had to be dealt with.

I’d do anything to make the time pass more quickly during those long nights: shadow boxing, press-ups, gabbling away like I was on speed to anyone who happened to be around – whatever it took to get through until morning. I’d also double-check the draught marks on the side of the submarine to make sure we weren’t sinking while alongside. HMS Artemis sank in 30 feet of water in 1971 alongside at the submarine base in Gosport; her arse-end hatches had been exposed because of cable wires running through them while her diesel engines were being refuelled. Thankfully there was a very limited crew on board, and they were able to make it to the forward escape hatch and exit from the bottom of Haslar Creek to the surface half a day later to a hero’s welcome.

I had a heater in the cabin, which helped during the winter months. I also wore the classic white submarine pullover to stave off the cold, and indeed anything I could add to keep warm. This didn’t wash with some of the old CPOs, mind you, and I remember a certain nuclear chief of the watch grassing me up to the coxswain, since he didn’t agree with the colour of the scarf I was wearing to fend off the icicles (I was an early exponent of Burberry). It was all right for him – he was around 20 stone, most likely pissed up, and encased in enough blubber to ward off the sharp end of a Scottish winter’s night.

I used to spend hours just looking at this big, black messenger of death tied up alongside just yards away, marvelling at what an amazing piece of machinery it was; massive in size but minuscule compared with the oceans of the world that it pootled around in, unbeknown to the outside world. I often wondered, what if, what if we had to launch those missiles … would things ever get that bad? Although I cheered myself up with my belief that humanity would never attempt to self-delete and the missiles would forever sleep in their tubes, never to be roused, it was an unsettling thing to think of in the dead of night.

Being QM meant that if we had any visits pre-patrol from high-ranking officers, we would have to pipe the side (using a boatswain’s call, or whistle for the layman) as they came on board or left. This always proved mildly amusing, as both Charlie and I were fairly hopeless at using the boatswain’s call and the skipper would be glaring at us not to cock it up. Submariners are not really that great at old-fashioned ceremonial, and we tend to do things on the fly. We usually got away with it, even though our piping of the side left a lot to be desired, sounding like a strangled cat serenading the boss of the Submarine Service as he floated across the gangway. Admirals tend to float everywhere; they don’t do walking.

Our other main ceremonial function was being the meet-and-greet if any important VIPs arrived for a pre-patrol ‘look around’. It didn’t get much more important than Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. She arrived in a royal car, bulletproof, the works, and I was charged with opening her door, having been told not to do so until the car had come to a complete stop. I bowled up, pleased as punch, to what I thought was a parked car, looking a million dollars in my new pressed uniform, white gloves, belt and gaiters, gripped the handle and pulled, but it just kept moving forward at around 5 mph. The doors wouldn’t unlock as the car was still in motion, so I found myself in the bizarre position of jogging alongside the Queen Mother for about 30 feet, looking in at her with an expression of horror on my face, my hand still glued to the handle. She stared straight ahead as if nothing had happened, obviously used to this sort of incompetence on a daily basis. I was embarrassed beyond words. She finally got out from the car with a simple ‘Thank you,’ while I burned with shame and stared straight at the ground.

When I finally looked up, the first person I made eye contact with was the coxswain, who was muttering something to me through clenched teeth. The royal visit was rounded off with the usual inspection of the ship’s company, and the Queen Mother paid particular attention to one of our chefs, who reeked of booze from the night before and had a massive love bite on his neck. Clearly, she very much liked the cut of his jib as they chatted away, laughing and joking, and everybody else who was immaculately turned out in their dress uniforms and mirrored shoes never got a look-in.

The daytime was all hustle and bustle. I had to sort out the ship stores, as well as diving down to check the state of the propeller and the condition of the anechoic tiles below the waterline, whose purpose was to insulate against active sonar, radiating a distorted view back to any ship or submarine looking at the frequency waves. As well as blocking the enemy’s ability to figure our true range, they also absorbed our submarine’s noise, so passive sonar was unable to positively identify us. Yet another layer protected the pressure hull against sea corrosion, which could be potentially catastrophic, especially around sea-facing hull valves and periscopes; in fact, anywhere where the submarine was in direct contact with the sea. Sometimes, this layer would displace on patrol, so had to be fitted back on. Something similar was applied to the outer skin of space shuttles to reduce heat on re-entry. I shudder to think what each individual tile on a submarine cost the tax-payer, but these things were never discussed in the 1980s. It was simply buy, buy, buy whatever the Navy wanted, and Resolution and the other three Polaris boats were top of the tree in regards to defence spending.