Qualifying for my dolphins had been a sobering experience, with such a volume of work and study required that I didn’t have much time to think about being shut off from the world. I’d been so busy that time had simply flown by, and the patrol was over before I had the chance to fully get to grips with my newfound life. Subsequent patrols, however, brought home just how difficult everyday life aboard a submarine really was. Scientists, and indeed many military types themselves, have noted the similarities between astronauts and submariners: how we both live in conditions of confinement, follow rigorous daily procedures and live on recycled air. There is also, of course, limited physical space in both environments, together with a lack of choice as to whom the sailors and astronauts work alongside, thrust together as they are with people whose company they’re obliged to keep, whether they like them or not.
One key difference is that in space you can enjoy euphoric vistas of our magnificent planet that live long in the memory; whereas on a sub you spend ten to twelve weeks in the absolute darkness of the ocean, not knowing from the minute you dive to the moment the boat breaks the water and surfaces some three months later where the hell you’ve been. And, on occasion, it does feel like hell.
The first challenge of life on a submarine that becomes immediately apparent is the lack of any natural light. Imagine spending up to three months solid without looking at the sky, sun, moon and stars. No getting up and pulling open the curtains to admire a beautiful summer or winter’s day; here we were, locked away, with only fluorescent lighting guiding our way. Among the chief disadvantages of having no natural light is that it leads to a drop in vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is essential for maintaining a number of health functions that serve the body both physiologically and behaviourally. Maintaining calcium in the bones through exposure to sunlight and ultra-violet radiation is vital; people can be susceptible to rickets if the level of exposure drops, which, if left unchecked, can cause weak and soft bones, skeletal deformity and, in some extreme cases, stunted growth. The effect of the lack of natural light on our circadian rhythms is also pronounced, and there’s now clear evidence that the light-sensitive membranes in the rods and cones of the eye suffer from its absence too.
Of course, at the tender age of 18 I had no idea about any of this, and it was never discussed with my fellow sailors. Nowadays, I believe submariners aboard the nuclear deterrent receive vitamin D tablets to compensate for any drop in levels. To this day I regularly take supplements as I’m low in vitamin D on account of the months and years spent under the oceans.
Of most interest, perhaps, are the reports that light affects various behaviours, including levels of activity and aggression, and eating and drinking habits. An absence of natural light can make for seriously pissed-off people. Most living organisms, and I include submariners here, are subject to circadian rhythms; evolved over millions of years, these are the behavioural and physiological systems that keep the body in tune with the alternation of day and night. Circadian rhythms include sleep–wake cycles, as human beings are active during the day (diurnal) and sleep at night. Our body clocks are synchronised to the rising and setting of the sun, and if you start messing with natural light the body starts to function erratically, be it testosterone levels, metabolic processes or the quality of sleep.
Circadian rhythms are regulated and controlled by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is connected to the optic nerves that respond to natural light, thus acting as the body’s master clock and governing performance of our internal systems throughout the day. So when the sun comes up and the optic nerves first sense light coming through to the brain, the hypothalamus sends a signal to the body to raise our heartbeat and increase our blood pressure, and, as it assumes we’re about to become active, it stops releasing sleep-inducing hormones such as melatonin, and so our alertness increases.
Performance-wise, we tend to be at our peak in the late morning, followed by a lull just after lunch, when our need for sleep is second only to that period in the early hours of the morning between say 1 to 4 a.m. In the evening, the optic nerves in the brain sense the disappearing daylight and our organs start to wind down, our temperature drops and sleep-inducing hormones are released, this being the final stage of the whole 24-hour cycle. Interestingly, no other species exhibits the same once-a-day sleeping pattern that humans have become accustomed to.
Recently it’s been discovered that people with unusual lifestyle patterns that disrupt their natural circadian rhythm cycle have a greater propensity for obesity, depression, dementia, reproductive problems, heart disease and diabetes. It’s also believed that up to 15 per cent of our genes may be regulated by circadian rhythms. Being on a submarine, where of course there’s not one single glimmer of natural light, means no daily solar cycle. I found this extremely difficult to cope with, for instead of a normal 24-hour day, I was usually in a rolling one-in-three watch system – effectively four hours on, eight hours off, for anything up to 95 days; then every third day the watch would be split, so one watch was able to get 12 hours off when finishing at 8 p.m.
This obviously affects the natural performance of the brain, and I was having to eke out optimum performance at the same time as dealing with a new rolling 12-hour cycle. So, if I was going on watch every four hours and then having eight hours off, it basically rejigged the day from 24 hours into 12 hours. Jet lag then occurred, as it was akin to travelling across four time zones and then trying to adjust to that zone’s living routines before taking off 12 hours later. I was in a constant state of lag, my body clock in meltdown; with mealtimes and sleep patterns changing constantly, I was waking up in the middle of the night, then going on watch in the control room in the dark. It was a complete nightmare. I’d spend the first hour trying to wake up, ingesting caffeine like it was going out of fashion.
All of this played havoc with most of my bodily functions. My bowels, for instance, would be shot to pieces; either blocked up, or I’d be holding on for dear life while doing an impression of the pipes in a pub when the barrels need changing. Fluctuations in sleeping patterns affect performance, there’s no doubt it. Next time you read about a submarine that’s run aground on the west coast of Scotland or been in a collision with a French nuclear sub,* it’s probably been caused by a normally very switched-on, bright submariner in the mechanical or navigational team being knackered, and it’s something they’ve either failed or forgotten to do because they’ve had a week of shit sleep. Let’s just hope no such mistake ever happens in and around the workings of the nuclear reactor.
Dry skin and rashes were another side-effect, mostly as a result of the desiccated atmosphere in the boat and the recycled fresh air. Facially, I could be susceptible to dry skin and scalp, and I could have given Philip E. Marlow’s character in The Singing Detective a run for his money. Copious amounts of E45 cream usually did the trick. Another classic was the sebaceous cyst – the equivalent of having a marble-sized spot under the skin – usually on the neck area due to the constant rubbing of dirty naval-issue shirts. Popping one of those mothers was a joy to behold. If I was really lucky, the doctor would lance it; failing that, a fellow crewmate, provided he’d washed his hands first. It was still a long way from the Second World War, however, when scabies and crabs ran amok on naval vessels.
Cuts could take a while to heal because of the reduced oxygen content on board, which in the real world would have been higher and promoted quicker recovery. I remember slicing my finger while helping the chef – it bled for 48 hours before the wound closed. Everyone used to go down with a cold and a nasty cough after a week or so, as the crew got used to patrol conditions, in the same way as irritability usually came to the fore after three to four weeks. A combination of people missing loved ones, being cooped up with the same crew for three months and a lack of vitamin D made certain individuals more argumentative and prone to tit-for-tat bullshit. Unless you kept away from anyone you thought was a prize plum, you might find yourself having pointless arguments that you wouldn’t have had at the start of patrol or indeed back on shore. And after a month the full effects of the interchangeable watch system would be kicking in with the reliability of a Swiss timepiece.
Most of my crewmates were totally cool throughout a patrol, but you always got the odd hothead whom it was best to avoid; most notably the sonar operator, who’d be constantly pissed before going to sea, and then on patrol getting so skulled he’d literally start eating his pint glass to prove how tough he was. I’d never seen anything like it – a complete nutter chewing on glass like a fairground geek, the rest of us edging slowly away from him before he decided to lay one of us out.
Except for sleeping quarters, the junior rates’ dining hall on film night and the control room, from sunset onwards the boat was lit up with myriad lights like a fucking Christmas tree. This made you feel as if you were under interrogation lamps almost as soon as you crawled out of bed, exhausted from lack of sleep and faced not with granola, natural yoghurt and fruit, but toad-in-the-hole, mashed potatoes, apple crumble and custard. As lovely as that sounds, it takes some digesting after a five- or six-hour sleep.
The lighting needed to be as bright as possible in case of emergencies, so that every potential disaster could be quickly seen and – hopefully – isolated by damage-control teams, although in some emergencies the electrics had been short-circuited so we had no lighting at all and had to deal with it in pitch darkness. The constant, burning white light was yet another form of hell, ratcheting up the tension and making you feel as if you were on a brightly lit A&E ward. At mealtimes you’d have watches crossing over shifts, with those coming off watch all perky and jolly, relishing some downtime, while the sailors replacing them looked like complete shit – ghoulish, pasty and drawn, just out of bed and under the full glare of those cop-shop lights.
Compounding the discomfort of the lights was the smorgasbord of odours: body sweat, stale nicotine, farts, recycled oxygen. It took some getting used to. I could have periods of a few days or a couple of weeks when my body temperature would be all over the place, usually too hot, as I was awoken in the middle of the night, went to bed at 4 a.m., on watch till midnight, then back to bed at 4 p.m., day after day for three months. My body could never reach a state of equilibrium as I was either too tired, moody, pissed off and homicidal, or jokey, life and soul of the party, gregarious, cheeky and utterly reliable. All these states and emotions came and went without apparent rhyme or reason when we were locked down in the deeps, and a psychoanalyst could have had a field day with us if we’d taken one on patrol – 143 separate and indeed probably unique cases to interpret and treat.
I suffered from fatigue through my service, and most days it was a real struggle to get out of my bunk – even with burly Glaswegians right in my face, screaming at me to wake up. The way I tried to cope was to stay awake for as long as I could from 8 a.m. to midnight – whether that was on watch, studying, keeping fit, watching movies or drinking. If there was a spare couple of hours in the mid- or late-afternoon when I wasn’t on watch, I’d try to grab a catnap and recharge the batteries. So long as I followed that schedule, things never got too bad, skin rashes and bowel issues aside, as I knew that occasionally I’d be getting racked out for a full eight-hour trip to the land of nod.
Every day, no matter our depth, the control room, where I kept my watches, was bathed in red lighting come sunset to synchronise the boat with above-water day- and night-times. Strange as it sounds, this was actually very soothing, and a pleasant change from the bright white lighting on the rest of the boat. The only issue came from rising from bed at night and going on watch; it then took longer to adjust as I went from the dark of my bunk, into the bright lights of the galley as dinner – my breakfast – was being served, then back to the dark, red, misty lighting of the control room. After a large meal I’d quickly become tired again, longing for my bunk. Bordering on the bizarre was when red lighting became black lighting, if a return to periscope depth occurred overnight. You wouldn’t want a situation where the boat was near the surface at night, with white light reflecting through the periscope and potentially giving the submarine’s position away. This usually happened when we were up for a routine satellite lock-on to check our latitude and longitude position.
Blackout curtains were rigged across the control room to ensure that the captain had the best view possible through the periscope, but this in turn made it impossible to see anything on a watch changeover. Changing watches in black lighting was usually a no-no, but on one occasion the captain deemed it OK, as we had to spend longer than usual at periscope depth. One able seaman relieving me in black lighting blindly stumbled, fell forward and brought the curtains down over the captain, completely covering his head and making him look like a murder suspect being led from a police van into court or something out of a Jacques Tati film. ‘Get this fucking cretin off me!’ he boomed. The poor lad was scrubbing decks for a week solid afterwards.
* It’s always the French.