The doctor on board was not only responsible for treating ill sailors and hosting our quiz competitions. One of his other main duties, and probably the most important of the lot, was to choose approximately 55 films before patrol to take to sea with us for film nights. The films would go on around an hour or so after evening dinner and were looked forward to immensely as a relaxing way to round off the day. From my second patrol onwards – after I’d earned my dolphins – I became one of the projectionists who presented the evening movie. We’d take it in turns, so I’d probably show a film once every three or four days.
Maybe it had something to do with our ‘special relationship’ with the Americans, but somehow we managed to get our hands on the latest Hollywood releases, and indeed many that hadn’t yet been released. The films would be on spoon reels that I fitted onto the projector like an old-fashioned cine reel. The junior rates’ dining hall would be cleared after dinner, a pull-down screen placed in front of the adjoining senior rates’ bar and a curtain was pulled across to block out the light from the galley where the chefs would be prepping for the following morning’s breakfast or baking bread and cakes.
I’d always take care when removing the spools from their cases and attaching them to the projector that I’d got them the right way round – it was never a great move to switch off all the lights, roll the film and then discover I was showing it upside down. Once the spools were successfully loaded it was lights out all round, and as I switched on the projector we’d forget all about the soulless depths of the ocean pressing in on us just a few feet away, and escape into the film for the next two hours or so, be it Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Harrison Ford in Witness, Jodie Foster in The Accused or Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society. The list was endless, the films usually at the mass-appeal end of the spectrum, as naturally they were chosen to suit most tastes on board. This wasn’t the place to start showing Jean de Florette or Au revoir les enfants, but I did, however, enjoy showing semi-cult classics such as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China and Alex Cox’s Repo Man. These nights at the movies were the single biggest escape from the monotony of patrol and the humdrum of daily life. At no time in my entire life, before or since, did I derive as much joy from the cinema as during my days under the sea.
It was weird to think that back in the real world people would be off to the local Odeon to watch the same films we were viewing in a location unknown. We might not have had popcorn, but I had my beers and cheroots. These two-hour movie nights offered me a chance to let out emotions that no one else could see in the dark; alone with my thoughts in the make-believe world of celluloid, I could have a little cry or a laugh behind my projector in complete privacy, as it was so noisy with the volume of the film.
I distinctly remember being reduced to a blubbering wreck when I watched Sean Connery’s death scene in The Untouchables for the first time, with De Palma’s expert use of the camera as Connery crawls across the floor, blood pooling from an assassin’s gun wound and ‘Vesti la giubba’ from the opera Pagliacci being sung in the background. It was riveting. I loved the film nights, the beauty of cinema, and how it transported me to a different time and place. That was the important bit. It meant I could dream of elsewhere, escape the present and think about the future, all of which were crucial to maintain a sense of myself in this faraway, isolated world I now occupied. The movies could keep me going for three to four days until it was time to show another one; then, when the film ended, I’d be back to square one, the lights on, reality returning with a harsh bump as I rewound the spool and packed up the projector ready for the next showing. Dreams over, bed following soon after.
At the end of each patrol, a theatrical performance – or ‘sod’s opera’, as it was known throughout the service – was put on by the ship’s company. This invariably involved a mixture of comedy (with a small ‘c’) and music, with sailors dressed-up in drag, sporting fake boobs and tutus – a truly harrowing sight. The night would be compered by one of the senior CPOs, who would turn the air blue with a string of jokes that would have made even Bernard Manning wince; an acquired taste, perhaps. In between the awful jokes, however, there’d be some good piss-takes of crewmates, several musical performances, usually acoustic guitars, baking competitions and the aforementioned cross-dressing in women’s lingerie.