I’d not come across much pornography before I joined submarines, as it was absent from basic training and submarine school. As a teenager, there were the obligatory magazines like Fiesta or Penthouse I looked at with school friends, the normal exposure of a spotty, clueless and ill-informed adolescent. This was to change as soon as I joined submarines, for what did 143 men do while away at sea? Watch porn films, lots of them, most nights … well, every night.
My first encounter was almost immediately after diving on my first patrol. I was in the torpedo compartment being shown how the torpedoes were loaded and fired, and making copious notes, but all I could hear coming from upstairs was the funky soundtrack of a 1970s porn film accompanied by the muffled cries of the two main protagonists. On climbing to the upper level where I’d be learning about the life-support equipment on board – oxygen generators, absorption units, candles and the escape tower – out of the corner of my eye I spotted a wild-eyed, long-haired, moustachioed American man (John Holmes, apparently) and a voluptuous woman having intercourse in a very noisy manner until they reached the customary climax.
I found myself red-faced and mumbling apologies as I stumbled around, mortified, having inadvertently gate-crashed the porno film. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than sitting around with 12 sweaty blokes in overalls and hard-ons, but as a newbie I had to shut my mouth and deal with it. There was nothing more distracting than trying to learn about the everyday system dynamics of a ballistic missile-carrying submarine while some pornstar in the background grunted his way towards orgasm. Besides, as a Part 3 trainee I wasn’t allowed to watch any films at all, be they Blue Velvet, Stand by Me or Debbie Does Dallas.
After qualifying, if anything it made matters worse, as I was then expected to sit up watching porn half the night with fellow shipmates. I’ve never been one for sharing sexual intimacies unless with loved ones, and this just seemed bonkers, all of us staring at something that was simply unattainable under the ocean. If anything, it just made everything worse, at least for me; the last thing I needed to be thinking about all the time was sex. It was enough to make a sane man weep, sitting around one of the tables in the rec space with a collective hard-on in complete silence apart from the panting on the TV or someone shouting at new trainees to ‘Get the fuck out of the way!’ It was incessant, and gave me a good reason to find something better to do when off watch, being one of the main factors that drove me to study for A-levels.
The officers turned a blind eye to the porn. They used to come up to the mess when it was on and hang around watching it, until they received a menacing look from the older experienced junior rates and then slid away. The boat had its resident porn baron, who used to spend most of his off-crew time in Amsterdam, nosing round for the latest trends and returning with armfuls of the latest European and American hard-core action. He also passed round Polaroids of ‘friends’ in various stages of undress. Pure class.
Porn was rife. It was available 24/7, whether you liked it or not, and was symptomatic of the Navy at the time. The sex and drinking culture ruled, and if you weren’t prepared to follow it you were singled out and mercilessly teased. It was never that bad for me, as I bowed to peer pressure, but I succeeded in avoiding the harder stuff. Of course, the seasoned porn watchers would be straight onto you if they thought you weren’t one of them.
‘I’m off to read Moby Dick,’ I said one night.
‘Moby Dick? You’ve got all the dick you need here, son,’ came the reply.
I wanted Scotty to beam me up. I guess porn was inadvertently seen as a bonding experience; watching something outrageous and taboo in a group makes it a shared secret from the rest of the world. With everyone in such close proximity I suppose it reinforced everyone’s perceived but ever-so-slightly warped view of heterosexuality.
We could also watch other videos in the rec space, of the conventional movie kind. A particular favourite of mine, and indeed the rest of the crew, was Wolfgang Petersen’s epic Das Boot. This followed the crew of the German U-96 through the narration of Lt Werner, who has been assigned to the crew as a war correspondent. The boat’s captain, Lehmann-Willenbrock, played by Jürgen Prochnow, is a chiselled, battle-hardened sea dog. Very much the anti-Nazi, he holds any staunch believers in complete contempt as he battles the Atlantic, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Royal Navy and the brutal conditions on board, to survive with a very young crew. A certain degree of narcissism led us to put it on time and again, especially for the near disasters where the boat is depth-charged and sinks to the bottom of the sea, and watching this under the sea ourselves, we’d sit in silence thanking the Almighty nothing like that had happened to us.