See, I was looking for a picture of a freshly inked tattoo. I knew it was there somewhere but I found a thousand other pictures first. There goes my evening. I’ll have to look at every single one of them….and so will you!

First up, Falklands tour from September 1984 to March 22, 1985. Your blogger was eighteen years old and had already been in the Navy for two years. I joined HMS Southampton, a Type 42 Destroyer, in June ’84 and was on board her for a year.

We stopped in Portland on the way to the Falklands for some war-game exercises, then finally set off for Gibraltar. We had just made it out of Portland when the ship lurched, and there was a painful scratching sound. Then the propellers started making a horrible noise.

Trivia note from the Wikipedia article:

In 1984, she ran over one of the Shambles Buoys off Portland during final War Games before deploying to the Falklands, sinking the buoy and resulting in repairs in dry dock.

We had to return to dry dock to replace one propeller shaft and have the other straightened out a bit. They did a fine repair job of straightening out the shaft, but not fine enough, and for the next six months, if we went above 12 knots, the noise in our mess was completely unbearable. We could barely hear each other, even if we shouted. My bunk was about 4 feet above the seal where the propeller shaft entered the ship.

We headed with careful haste to Gibraltar to meet up with the rest of our squadron.

We were the lead ship of our squadron, and as we arrived in Gibraltar, the other frigates had to salute us as we came into the harbour. All three ships were in full dress with flags, with their crews lining the decks. Right after the salute, each of the frigates unfurled an enormous banner over the side.

One banner said

Buoy, Oh Buoy! What a Shambles!

The other said

Congratulations! It’s a buoy!

Note to Americans: “buoy” is pronounced “boy” in normal countries (as in buoyant).

Our Captain was absolutely furious. He was also very embarrassed and was court-martialed when we got home.

From there, we headed south!

[I’ll tell you about our Crossing the Line ceremony another day]

Our next stop was Ascension Island, where we encountered the Shit Fish. They were like saltwater piranhas. We threw huge bags of garbage) over the side and watched them get eaten. The water swarmed and frothed, and the whole thing was gone without a trace within a minute. Legend had it that if you fell off the ship, you would have a heart attack before you hit the water.

On to the Falklands!

The Falklands really sucked. It’s hard to imagine a worse place on earth. It was cold and barren, with barely a tree, and there was always a gale blowing.

My family almost moved there in the late seventies because my dad worked for Southern Ships Stores who owned most of the fisheries in the Falklands.

Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, had four pubs, and they all sold the same cans of Penguin Ale. It was not uncommon to get banned from a pub in Port Stanley and, indeed, on one night, I got banned from all four of them. I forget why, but it was probably something to do with having too much Penguin Ale.

We spent Christmas Day anchored in San Carlos Water, which you may remember as the scene of a ferocious battle during the Falklands War two years earlier. It was also the main landing site from which British forces had recaptured the Falkland Islands.

The picture above was taken on the Flight Deck right after Christmas Dinner. See the clear blue skies? I think that must’ve been the only day we had blue skies the whole time we were there. The five of us in the photo (Harry, Jock, Andy and Pincher) were great friends and went everywhere together. I wonder where they are now?

And here’s us having Christmas Dinner. For some reason, I wasn’t drinking at the time but everyone else was drunk as drunk could be. The dude opposite me had just turned sixteen — impossibly young to us eighteen-year-olds!

Here’s me with an after-dinner coffee and my Green Machine Fighting Machine football shirt.

Wearing that very shirt, I played a full 90 minutes of football with six pints of beer in me, narrowly missing George Best’s record by two pints. We lost, but we drank another six pints after the game.

And here’s me sitting on my bunk.

The bunks in the living area were reserved for the most junior of sailors and engineering apprentices (I was one). The bunks were stacked three high and were collapsible to make a kind of couch. We weren’t allowed to go to bed before Pipe Down at 11 pm, but even then, have people sitting on our beds drinking beer until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, while we were trying to sleep. Fortunately, we couldn’t hear them over the noise of the propeller shaft right under our bunks.

Engineers, called Artificers or tiffies — I was one — were destined to be promoted rapidly up the higher ranks, and we were taunted and maltreated during our apprenticeship to make up for it. Most young sailors were given a proper bunk after a couple of months, but tiffies had to spend the whole year there.

Tiffies weren’t allowed to go to bed before Pipe Down at 11 pm but even then, we would still have people sitting on our beds drinking until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, while we were trying to sleep. Fortunately, we couldn’t hear them over the noise of the bent propeller shaft.

After Christmas, we had a fun little trip over to South Georgia. I’ll tell you more about South Georgia another day, but for now, I’ll just say that South Georgia might be the most beautiful place on Earth.

It wasn’t all fun and games on HMS Southampton, though.

As an apprentice, I had to spend a week or two in each engineering department (Sea Dart missiles, 4.5in Gun, Comms, Radar, Computers, Sonar, anti-aircraft guns, plus some others that I don’t remember). That was my day job, but we had additional responsibilities at Defence Stations and Action Stations, too.

At Defence Stations, half the crew manned weapons systems because “we might be attacked at any moment”. My Defence Station was a twin-barrelled anti-aircraft gun.

It was a cushy gig. Each gun had two people — one to load and one to fire — and there was a little cabin next door where we waited, ready to man the gun. I spent most of my time in that cabin working through the A-Level Maths textbook I borrowed from Jacko.

Every now and again, we would spring into action. It was usually a drill, but one time it was for real when two Argentinian Jets flew over to give us a scare. They closed in to about a mile before they veered away and left us in peace. It’s quite thrilling to have your guns pointing at a plane with your finger on the trigger, waiting to see if the plane will shoot first.

Every now and again, we’d fire our guns at a practice target. A brave pilot would tow a target, and we’d hear

“Alarm aircraft! Bearing: Red nine-zero! Elevation two-two!”

I’d rush for my gun and wait for

“Port guns, engage!”

Then I’d blast away at the target at 60 rounds per second, accompanied by two 20mm guns and the 4.5in Mk8 gun, all filling the sky with tracer.

Action Stations were for when the ship was ready to fight. My action station was in the gunbay.

The gunbay is the magazine beneath the 4.5in gun below decks in the bow of the ship. There were five of us in the gunbay, loading the gun. The gun fires a shell every 2.4 seconds and has a feed ring holding 12 shells ready to fire. My job was to make sure that the feed ring was never empty, and we loaded the shells from the magazine racks.

Imagine, if you will, a rolling sea, and a magazine full of rounds weighing 72lbs each. Imagine two 18-year-olds who each have 5 seconds to grab a 72lb shell and carry it to the feed ring for the gun to fire.

Did I mention that we were way up in the bow of the ship? When the ship rises and falls in a heavy sea, the forces on your legs are so strong that you can barely stand up. That 72lb shell makes it almost impossible.

Now imagine this:

“Naval Gunfire Support! 300 Rounds! Engage!”

We had to load 300 of those shells, weighing 72lbs each! The top shelves in the magazine were so high that you stood on tiptoe to drag the shell down and catch it on your collarbone. Guess how much that hurt.

The rest of our tour passed without incident…

Oh! Except for the Argentinian submarine that followed us around for several days before we spotted him and followed him for a week instead.

Oh! And the Force 11 storm that battered us for a week on our way home. The ship rolled so far that a Sea Dart missile fell over in the magazine, and we all thought we were going to die.

Storms are pretty cool.

On any given ship, about half the crew gets seasick and about half don’t. I get sick for a couple of days when I first join a ship, but I’m fine for the rest of the trip, and not even a storm will bother me. Lucky for us, both our Captain and First Lieutenant suffered from seasickness, so whenever there was heavy weather, they would send everyone to bed. The half of us who didn’t get seasick could sit around drinking and playing cards for a week.

I am sure I have missed some important bits – like the Master of Your Domain contest (predating Seinfeld by several years), and the deckchair bonfire on the beach in Weymouth, and my two days’ punishment for being “thirty seconds adrift from the operations room, which place it was my duty to attend”.

If I remember, I’ll tell you about them another day.