It was my last day in the Sea Cadets before I left home to join the Royal Navy. I had just turned 16 and Great Britain had just won the Falklands War.

The Sea Cadet officers invited my parents to my farewell party at TS Caprice and we gathered in the officer’s mess for a beer. Everyone was very proud of me. 

At my farewell party, Mr Hargreaves cried into his beer as he said goodbye. Mr Hargreaves had been a radio operator in the Royal Navy during World War Two and he taught me Morse code at his house on Saturday mornings. Mr Hargreaves begged me not to join the Navy. I should stay and do my A-levels and go to Cambridge, he said. I could always join the Navy later if I was still interested. But I had made up my mind. I was going to join the Navy.

Before I left home, I led a double life. At home, I barely spoke and I was always in trouble at school. I didn’t even read a book for the last two years. But in the Sea Cadets, I was the star of the show.

I won Best Cadet two years in a row and I was the only Cadet Petty Officer in my district. We had competitions against other Sea Cadet units practically every other weekend. Sailing, rowing, shooting, orienteering, pentathlon, adventure training, guard drill, PT and more with me as team captain and we won pretty much everything. TS Caprice won the coveted Burgee Award for Excellence.

At school, I was a clown and a troublemaker. I went to a fancy grammar school but everything was so easy and boring that I switched off and did no work at all for the last two years. I was always in trouble and did zero homework but I always came top of my class anyway. 

I came first in my year and won prizes in maths and advanced maths but I couldn’t face another two years of this. I needed a challenge. I needed to get away.

At my farewell party, they gave me a bosun’s call as a farewell gift, and everyone shook my hand. My mum gave me a St Christopher for safe travels and my dad gave me twenty quid for beer.

The train for Plymouth left from Paddington Station at 9:25 am on the Third of September 1982 and I was off. I had twenty quid, a St Christopher and a change of clothes. I didn’t look back.

Chapter Two — Arriving at HMS Fisgard — is here:

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.

I’m writing down some memories.
You can start at Chapter One if you like or just keep reading here.

Larissa MacFarquahar has a fascinating history of the last fifty-something years of the Falkland Islands in the New Yorker. MacFarquahar is like an itinerant storyteller from ancient times, weaving the threads of stories that are not her own. One of those stories could have been mine.

When I was eleven, my mother and father were having one of those cruel not-in-front-of-the-children arguments that, I understand now with the wisdom of age, foreshadowed the divorce creeping up to change all of our lives forever.

My father worked in a meat factory owned by Southern Ships Stores, the main importer of meat and fish from the Falkland Islands. They offered him a job in Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands.

“Go!” said Mother.

“I will!” said Father, “and I’ll take Bill with me.”

When I was born, my mother and father never agreed on a name for me. To my mother, I was Kevin. To my father, I was always Bill. Dad called me Kevin for the first time in 2009, not long before he died.

My father left our lives soon after that argument on the balcony but he never made it to the Falklands. That turned out to be fortune of the best kind since we would have made it there just in time for the arrival of the Argentinian invaders.

After the divorce, Dad became a Saturday Father and he took me on days out every weekend, usually up to London where he would drop me off at the Science Museum or at the big hill in Greenwich Park with my skateboard. He’d tell me which pub to find him in when I was done.

Sometimes we just spent the afternoon in the Conservative Club in Sidcup or in the Cray Valley Working Man’s Club – whichever had the cheapest beer – and he’d buy me a half-pint of lager and tell me dodgy stories from his fabulated past.

Were those stories real or were they fiction? Who knows?

Perhaps Dad really did apprentice with Arsenal before his dodgy knees gave out after playing for England Schoolboys vs West Berlin in 1948 and maybe his South London gang really did have razor blades sewn into their collars. Bricks through rival gangs’ café windows? Loosening the wheel nuts on their rivals’ cars? Cook on the QE2? Maybe some of this happened.

I have a whole bookful of similar stories that I tell my own children about my adventure-filled past but mine are all true. I should write them down someday.

Southern Ships Stores went bankrupt in 1980 and my dad was out of work for a while. I had always assumed that this was part of Mrs Thatcher’s wonderful plan for the British economy but I now understand it to be another chapter in the history of the Falklands. If SSS had hung on for another few years they could have had a share of the prosperity that Larissa describes in her article. Maybe we could have too. Alas! They died too soon.

What would life have been like for me if Ken and Bill had headed down to those desolate islands?

In one of Fortune’s more playful tricks, I made my own voyage Down South on HMS Southampton in 1984. On my visit to Port Stanley, we called the locals ”Bennies” because of their resemblance to the simple-minded handyman in the TV drama, Crossroads. Would I have been a Benny drinking my life away in Penguin Ale in a shack in Port Stanley?

Would I have been one of those sheep farmers waiting to greet the Marines when they yomped into Goose Green?

In my own Turn Left moment, would I have watched HMS Southampton sail into San Carlos Water in 1984 from those cold, barren shores?

Though they did not take me to that lonely life in the South Atlantic, the timey-wimey strands of fate had other plans for me. The ripples from the splash of the divorce rocked my boat for years after the initial splash. I was in constant trouble for all of my school years and I fled my blended family at the first opportunity with just a St Christopher from my mum and twenty quid from my dad to go join the Grey Funnel Line. I signed up a couple of weeks after the Argentinians invaded.

What stories would I have, had I stayed?

The first event of our day was the Race to the Line. The brave souls from the ship’s crew launch all manner of craft into the inky blue ocean and race the last 100 yards to be the first to cross the equator. A few sailors take the race seriously and build elaborate sailing vessels and canoes but emphasize novelty over velocity and a more typical craft is an inflatable sheep or a sex doll chosen, no doubt, for her seaworthiness rather than her pulchritude. Sadly, our race had to be called off on account of the unusual number of sharks surrounding our ship so we turned to the second event of the day – the three-legged volleyball.

My readers have doubtless run a three-legged race in their youth and three-legged volleyball is organized along the same principles. Each team consists of four pairs of players, each tied to his neighbour at the ankle and the thigh. The ball is tethered by a long rope to the net posts to prevent it going over the side. The combination of the Siamese contestants, the tangling rope and the vast quantities of beer is practically guaranteed to ensure hilarity. The WEMs’ mess – my mess – won the day! Hoorah! More beer for us!

Time for the diving contest and the Jimmy decided that we would safe from the sharks if we posted sailors with machine guns on the bridge wing. No one wondered whether we would be safe from drunken sailors with machine guns. We had three dives each and I took second place with a pike dive, an inward and one-and-a-half somersaults. Hooray! More beer!

I did a little extracurricular diving later in the day. I dived from the bridge wing – about 35 feet up. You had to dive out about 8 feet to clear the side of the ship and my foot slipped as I dived. I tumbled a full somersault and narrowly missed hitting my head on the side. Oooh. Close one!

Next up was the deck hockey. Deck hockey is a traditional naval pastime – more ancient than Uckers – played with a puck made of masking tape and a set of walking sticks which double as weapons. The WEMs won again! More beer!

Time for the main event of the day – The Court of King Neptune. The role of the King was played by the Chief WEM who was the fattest man that I have ever seen in real life.

He was also the meanest. We called him Ten Bellies. Not to his face, of course – except that one time when Jumper Collins called him that over the phone. That did not end well!

King Neptune has a large entourage of oddball characters – a judge, a doctor, his queen, some henchmen and (honestly) the Three Bears. Neptune’s Queen Consort was played by my very best friend Jacko.

King Neptune starts the proceedings with a speech about how there are sinners aboard and he has come to deliver justice. One by one, the sinners were called up to the dock and the charges against them are read aloud.

The Captain is the first defendant and then the Jimmy and they are followed by all the first-timers. The routine is the same each time and has barely changed over the centuries. King Neptune calls the name of a sinner and Neptune’s henchmen armed with maces, battle axes and clubs made from masking tape apprehend the suspect, beat the crap out of them and drag them to the dock – a large, red chair – where they prepare to face justice.

The Judge reads the trumped-up charges and quickly finds you guilty [this is not too different from normal military justice, about which more another time – ed]. The Doctor forces you to swallow a disgusting and unfeasibly large pill and then the chair dumps you unceremoniously into a pool filled with nasty-smelling leftovers from the galley where the three bears beat you some more.

I have compared notes with sailors from other nations and they all report a similarly bizarre ceremony with only minor differences in the proceedings. How great is it that such a crazy ceremony should survive for so many years?

Wikipedia has an account from 1825.

There were on board the ship a great number of officers and seamen, who had never yet gone South of the Tropics, and, consequently, were to be initiated into the mysteries of crossing the Equinoctial line, and entering the dominions of Neptune; great preparations had been making since our leaving Woolwich, for an event which promised to some part of the crew great amusement, to the other great fear; many a poor girl at Woolwich, and at Spithead had been deprived of some part of her wardrobe, to adorn Amphitrite; from one a night cap and gown had been stolen, from another some other part of dress, and although I had no hand in it, I was as bad as the rest, for I was consenting thereto. An immense grey horse hair wig, sufficiently long to reach well down the back of Neptune, had been purchased in England by subscription, accompanied by a venerable grey beard to sweep his aged breast; a tin crown and a trident completed the regalia. On a review of all those who previously had crossed the line, I was selected as Neptune; in vain I endeavoured to defend myself from being deified, it was useless, I must be Neptune, all remonstrance was vain; I took it, resolved to use the trident with mildness. Now reader fancy to yourself the writer of these lines with his legs and arms well blacked, his cheeks, vermillion, short and very loose trowsers, a double frilled shirt, from whose ample folds the salt water dripped plentifully, two swabs for epaulets, a long grey horse hair wig, a venerable beard of the same colour, a tin crown, a trident, and to complete the whole, a hoarse church yard cough; fancy all this I say, and Neptune, or your humble servant in his shape stands before you. The evening before we expected to cross the line, the lookout man reported at 8, P.M., a light a head; presently a hoarse voice hailed “ship ahoy” which being answered by the Captain, Neptune intimated his intention to visit the ship early next morning. Accordingly early in the morning the ship was made snug, the top-sails were close reefed, courses hauled up, top gallant sails furled, a new sail was secured to the gunwale of the barge on the booms, the other edge to the hammock netting, leaving a hollow of eight feet, capable of containing an immense quantity of water; into this sail the very men who were to be dipped in it, were employed in pumping and bailing water, little thinking, poor creatures, they were making a rod for themselves. A gun had been dismounted on the forecastle, the carriage made into a car, on which were to sit Neptune and Amphitrite, and between them the Triton; in order to keep all secret, a sail was run across the forecastle to screen Neptune and his gang from observation. Just before the appointed time, all who were likely to undergo the dreadful operation of shaving were ordered below, the gratings put on, and a constable stationed to prevent the ascent of more than one at a time; a wise regulation, for our numbers were nearly equal, and had they shown fight, might have conquered; a rope was rove through a block on the main yard arm, to one end of which was secured a handspike, astride of which sat a man with his hands fastened to the rope over his head.

…

The first of the ship’s company that were shaved, who was brought up blindfolded by the whole posse of constables was the armourer, a weather-beaten honest old Hibernian, who had been a farrier in the Peninsular Army for many years. At the reduction, he had found his way as armourer of some small craft, and thence to our ship; on his entering for our ship, so anxious was he to be within the given age, which was thirty, that on being asked his age he gave it as eight and twenty, although fifty six was written in legible characters on his old cribbage face, which throughout the ship’s company had gained him the cognomen of old eight and twenty. On this man then the barber had to perform his first functions; a bucket was filled with all the cleanings of the hen coops, pig-stys, &c. and with it a due proportion of tar had been mixed; with a large paint brush dipped in this villanous compound, and his razor, close to him the barber stood waiting the signal. My first question was “what is your name my man?” “John S—-, your honour,” at the instant of his opening his mouth the brush went across it, when the face the poor creature made it is impossible to describe, “phoo what do you call that?” “what do you call that?” I again asked the old man how old he was, “eight and twenty your honour, and so I am; oh I will spake no more, I will spake no more.” As a last effort to make him open his mouth, I said if you mean to put him overboard, mind have a good rope round him for perhaps he cannot swim. Terrified at the idea of being thrown overboard the poor fellow said “I cannot swim, oh, I cannot swim;” but as the brush again crossed his mouth, he uttered with his teeth closed, “I will spake no more, by J—s I will spake no more if you drown me.” Amid a roar of laughter two men tripped the handspike on which he sat and sent him backward into the sail where the bear was waiting to receive him; it was soon over, he escaped and stood by to see his shipmates share his fate. At the time of his being shaved he was not aware who Neptune was, when he found it out I could not get him to speak to me for some time; at length Irish good temper conquered, and we were friends again.

John Bechervaise, Thirty-six Years of Seafaring Life p.146-150

Long may King Neptune reign!

Epilogue

After I left HMS Southampton, the Navy instituted new fitness requirements and Ten Bellies was forced to leave the service. No one cried. Did I mention how mean he was?

I lived with Jacko in five different houses and he was my best friend for a long time, even after we both left the navy. I lost touch with him when I came to the States. If anyone knows his whereabouts, tell him I am trying to track him down.

I’m writing down some memories.
You can start at Chapter One if you like or just keep reading here.

— 1982 —

New Entry training in the Navy was the hardest thing I have ever done.

There was a spate of movies about military training in the early 80s: Stripes, An Officer and a Gentleman, Heartbreak Ridge, Full Metal Jacket and many more. They all emphasised the brutality of military training but what we endured at HMS Fisgard was as hard as anything they showed on the big screen.

They picked us up at Plymouth station and took us over the Torpoint Ferry where we heard the chug-a-lug-a-lug of the chains for the first of many crossings, and as we arrived inside the gates of HMS Fisgard, they split us into one of six divisions. I was in Frew Div.

We were the biggest entry ever because Mrs Thatcher’s government realised that if you are going to fight a war on the other side of the world, you need engineers. The Navy called us artificers — ‘Tiffs’ for short — and we were signing up for a four-year apprenticeship plus five years return of service.

Each New Entry class was assigned two apprentices from a previous entry to show us the ropes. There were 25 of us in our dormitory (our ‘mess’) aged from 16 to 21 — Jimmy Mac was only 15½ — and we started gently enough.

They took us for a warm-up run in the morning and we marched over the road to HMS Raleigh to collect our kit and we marched back carrying a heavy suitcase and a full kit bag. The rest of Fisgard was empty until Sunday night and we spent the weekend learning how to iron our uniforms and polish our boots and brasses.

When Sunday evening came, apprentices from previous entries started arriving in dribs and drabs. They were all a little bit drunk and they all wanted to inflict the same torture they had endured when they first arrived.

The most common torture was to make us hang from the beams. Our dormitories were World War II huts and the beams were the angle irons that held the roof up. When someone shouted ‘Up on the beams!’, we had to climb up and hang there, with the angle irons cutting into our hands. They always added some cruel twist like ‘Space Invaders’ where we had to shuffle across the beams while they threw pillows at us to knock us down. Anyone who fell had to do 50 sit-ups or 50 push-ups and climb back up again. I must have done 200 of each that evening while someone beat me across the back with a steel bar the whole time.

At one point, a bunch of apprentices from another division came looking for someone to challenge their champion to a nipple-biting competition. Their guy was maybe 7’6″ and looked just like Jaws from the James Bond movie. They had heard that we had a big, black guy who might be a contender. I think Rupert was the only black bloke out of 300 New Entries – and he was the best of us – but to his credit, he declined to fight. Craig was willing though. Craig fought valiantly and lost a bit of blood, but he still had both his nipples by the end.

Pipe Down (bedtime) was at 11 pm and we woke at 5 am to the sound of clanging dustbin lids.

“Two minutes! Boots and Ovies! Go!”

We had to dress in our work overalls, put on our combat boots and go for a run. This would happen two or three times some nights but we got to lie in until 5 am that first time. We had to jog in double time as a squad — like you see in the movies. We’d stop now and again for 30 push-ups or 50 sit-ups and, eventually, we were introduced to the static tanks.

The static tanks were concrete tanks, about 30ft long and 8ft wide, that collected rainwater for fire fighting. They had not been cleaned since World War II and were full of dead bicycles, broken glass and green slime. We ran — hip deep — through every tank, and swam though a few more. We were lucky enough to be there in September; in January, they had to break the ice first.

New Entry training lasted a month, and this cruelty continued until the very end.

In between classroom learning and fitness, we’d march over to HMS Raleigh to watch a training movie. The movies we watched had all been made decades earlier and were all about the horrible sores that would grow on our cocks if we caught venereal disease in Hong Kong, or how we might die from accidentally setting off a missile if we tested its resistance without unplugging it first, or maybe about the third degree burns we would get on our genitals if we pissed on the 440V cables where the electricity came into the ship. If we fell asleep during the movie — and who wouldn’t fall asleep after 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night? — we’d be woken with the biggest kick up the arse or a smack across the shoulders with a walking stick.

Marching back to HMS Fisgard from the movie theatre was always an adventure. HMS Raleigh was the New Entry establishment across the road for everyone who wasn’t a Tiff, and everyone there resented us because we got paid more than they did and got promoted faster. This was their one chance to give us shit before we were all promoted to petty officer. One time we were called out by Lieutenant Shovelface for less-than-perfect marching, and he had all 300 of us doubling around the parade ground for half an hour and we missed our dinner. He made a big speech at the end about what a disgrace we were.

You are a disgrace to yourselves.
You are a disgrace to HMS Fisgard.
You are a disgrace to the Royal Navy!

Any time we had to ourselves, we spent ironing our uniforms or polishing our boots. We had a ‘kit muster’ every week, where we had to put items of uniform out for inspection, with each in the size and shape of the ship’s book. We had extra kit musters as a punishment, when we broke any rules.

Worse than this was getting ready for P.E. (physical education), when we’d use half a can of starch until our t-shirt and shorts could stand up on their own. We’d head over to the gym in our underpants, carrying our shorts so we wouldn’t bend them until after the inspection.

P.E. lessons were fun! Seriously, I enjoyed them, but God help you if you couldn’t climb a rope.

In two movements…claim your… ROPE!
With the right hand on top…as high as you can reach…upwards and inwards… GRASP!
Two shifts… CLIMB!
On the right… make… FAST!

We had to climb the rope and stand up on it, holding on with just one leg. There were two men in my class who could never climb that rope, and they got beaten with a big stick.

Four weeks of New Entry training passed quickly and our families came down to watch our Passing-In Parade. We marched past to ‘She Wore A Yellow Ribbon’ before going out to celebrate with our families, boys no longer.

Chapter three — In the Workshop — is here:

— 1982 —

HMS Fisgard is where artificer apprentices (‘tiffs’) did their basic training. There were three types of artificer — marine engineers (engines and mechanical stuff), weapon engineers (guns, missiles and anything to do with electronics) and aircraft engineers — and we did our common training at Fisgard before being shipped off to more specialised training elsewhere. Most tiffs spent a year at Fisgard, studying mostly academic subjects and learning to use machine tools in the workshop but, as an A-Boy (A for Accelerator), I had to complete everything in eight months.

On the first day in the workshop, they gave us a big block of mild steel, a big metal hammer and a cold steel chisel. We had to turn the big block of steel into a smaller block of steel, and we started banging away.

We banged away for about a week and fun this was not. I hit my hand with the hammer so many times that I was pouring blood most days. It was after I hit my hand for about the 17th time that I swore I would quit if they sent me to be a marine engineer. Our spec was to make a perfect cube, accurate to 1/10th of an inch. Once we’d achieved that, they took away our hammer and chisel and gave us a file instead.

Our next task was to take our cube of mild steel and make an even smaller cube, accurate to 3/1000ths of an inch this time. I was no better at filing than I was at chiselling and I soon doubted my commitment to Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. I tended to make curved surfaces with my file rather than flat ones and Alastair bailed me out more than once. Alastair would slide the file just four or five times and make everything perfectly flat — but I’d soon round it off again.

We did about six weeks of filing and had to make all kinds of widgets from brass and steel. The grand finale was a steel block with a cutaway which a block of brass would slide through smoothly. I got there in the end.

Lathe next.

I was pretty good on the lathe. We made some complicated stuff with steel, aluminium and brass, knurling and threading, interference fits to 1/1000th of an inch and lots of interlocking parts. I was so proud of my final job that I kept it for about 10 years. God knows where it is now.

After the lathe, we did drilling, forging, casting, milling, hardening, tempering, annealing and, finally, welding. For every job you did in the workshop, you got a grade. If you got under 40, you failed and had to repeat it. If you failed three jobs, you were on the next train home. If you got over 80, you became an proud member of the Over 80s Club and the Captain presented you with a certificate to put on your wall. I got 79.5 in welding but had many adventures along the way.

We did mostly gas welding with acetylene but there was a little arc welding too. We cut steel plates in two and then we joined them back together again. Then we joined them at right angles. Then we made a box. Mild steel melts at 1400°C which is quite hot so you can probably imagine how many times I burnt myself. Weld, weld, weld. Weld, weld, weld. I put the job down and immediately picked it up with my bare hand because I’d forgotten it was 1400°C. Fingerprints gone and I sat with my hand in a bucket of water for fifteen minutes.

When you are welding two plates together, you make a little puddle of molten steel where the plates touch and you have to keep feeding the puddle with a filler rod. The filler rod is about a foot of mild steel that you gently poke into your puddle. If you poke too much, you end up with a lumpy weld. If you poke too little or the puddle gets too hot, the weld falls out and you end up with a big hole in your job. If you do it just right, you move the puddle along the join, feeding it just enough to be beautiful.

All the time you are feeding your job, your feeder rod is getting shorter and shorter and eventually you have to grab a new one. After a while you have a whole bunch of these little six-inch rods so, of course, you weld them together to make a foot-long rod again. One time, Alf got lazy and didn’t stop at a foot. Remember how welding makes things hot? Alf started using his newly-welded, enormous, two-foot long filler rod which he accidentally tucked behind his ear burning all his hair off and giving him big burn blisters acrosss his head.

To light our welding torches, we had these little oil lamps, like something out of Aladdin. One day, when our instructor was away, I wondered what would happen if I filled the lamp with acetylene. It turns out that nothing happens. So I added a little oxygen and it made the biggest bang I ever heard and the lid of the lamp hit the ceiling of the workshop thirty feet above me. Every person in the workshop turned to glare at me and my teacher came running.

What the hell was that!?

“Oh, nothing”, I said as the burning wick from the lamp gently floated down from the sky.

I wonder if they still leave 16-year-olds alone with acetylene and welding torches.

The rest of the year in the workshop passed without incident — except that I grew about 5 inches and had to buy new overalls.

At the end of the year, the Sorting Hat smiled on me, assigned me to Weapon Engineering and sent me to HMS Collingwood in Hampshire. I’ll tell you all about that soon but I have a few more little Fisgard adventures to share first.

Chapter two — New Entry Training at Fisgard — is here:

Or you can go back to the day I joined up.

I’m writing down some memories.
You can start at Chapter One if you like or just keep reading here.

– 1978 –

I fell in love with J*** on the first day of class at Chis & Sid. I was 12, but I was shy back then, and didn’t get around to talking to J*** for several years.

Class 2P was the most social group of kids you could dream up. We did everything together. We went to the disco every week. We went to each other’s birthday party with a Party Six of Heineken or a bottle of Cinzano Bianco. I even got to dance with J*** a few times but nothing ever came of it because I was still too shy to talk to her and anyway, she had a boyfriend.

We were together for the next two years, but we were split up for the last two years. We all still hung out together most weekends. We often went ice skating at Queensway in London, and I got to hold J***’s hand as we skated together around the rink. We even went to the seaside on the train.

— 1982 —

I left school at 16 to join the Royal Navy, but everyone else stayed on to do A-levels, and I lost touch. But just before Christmas, I received a fancy invitation to Prize Day at Chis & Sid. I had won prizes for coming first in maths and for lots of O-levels.

I was due home for Christmas Leave on Prize Day, so I accepted the invitation. It was six hours on the train from Cornwall with a ferry ride and tube ride on top of that, but I thought I‘d make it.

Mum picked me up at Sidcup Station and drove me to the school, but I was an hour late already, and we had to run the last bit. The headmaster was already making his ‘Well done, everyone! Have a good Christmas…’ speech as I burst through the doors at the back of the hall. Mr Hahn spotted me in my Navy uniform and grabbed the microphone from the headmaster:

“…and the prize for maths goes to… Kevin Lawrence.”

After the prize-giving, I was invited to a party — still in my uniform — and everyone wanted to hear my Navy stories. Later that evening, David said, “Hey! There’s a party in the Sixth Form Centre on Wednesday. Why don’t you come? We’re allowed to bring beer, wine and cider. No spirits though!”

I got the bus down to the school on Wednesday afternoon, and all my old friends were there. We drank and we danced until Dexy’s Midnight Runners played Come on Eileen! and we all held hands in a big circle. J*** held my hand!!!

We held hands all night, and we danced to the slow ones together. And we kissed.

The next evening, I decided to ask J*** out. I was terrified. I had never asked anyone out before.

I called from the phone box at the top of Sidcup Hill, and my hands were shaking as I tried to get my 10p into the slot. I dropped it twice. But J*** said ‘Yes’ and we went to see E.T. the next day. J*** became my girlfriend.

We went out to the pubs in Bexley Village every night of my Christmas leave until, filled with sadness, I got that lonely train back to Cornwall.

— 1983 —

Our romance blossomed for the next couple of years, and we wrote love letters every week. Later that year, I was drafted closer to London, and I could travel up from Portsmouth to see J*** almost every weekend.

It was cool to be a teenager with a full-time salary, and we could do things that most teenagers can’t afford. We went to tons of concerts. Kool & the Gang. Wham! Queen. Elton John. Spandau Ballet… I still have all the brochures. And nightclubs! J***’s favourite was The Empire, Leicester Square, and it took me years to get over my allergy to disco music.

J***’s family took me on a horse-riding holiday to Wales every Easter and for a week in Annecy, France, every summer. We had the perfect romance until I joined my first ship, and they sent me away to the Falkland Islands for six months.

— 1985 —

When I got home from The Falklands, J*** and her mum came to meet me as we came alongside in Portsmouth Dockyard. The band played Rod Stewart’s I am Sailing and we kissed like Romeo & Juliet.

Our romance carried on where we left off — but it wasn’t quite the same.

J*** had a job now in a bank in London and had new friends from work. I still went to meet her every weekend and we still went out on the town every Saturday night but things soon began to get awkward.

We had already booked a holiday together but I think we both knew our love affair was coming to an end. We had one last wild fling on Las Playa de Las Américas but when we got home we agreed to go our separate ways.

A few months later, I got a phone call out of the blue. It was J***.

Live Aid was special.

You probably know that Bob Geldoff rounded up the greatest bands in the world to perform at Wembley Stadium with a simultaneous concert in Philadelphia. They’d announced on the radio that the tickets were all sold out but J*** went up to Wembley anyway and they had a few left. With 72,000 other lucky ticket holders, we went to see the best concert in the history of music.

We had the best seats in the stadium — just to the left of the stage — and the concert was truly amazing. At most concerts, artists play their new stuff that no one ever heard before but at Live Aid they were at their best because there were two billion people watching on the telly.

All my favourites were there: Sade, Elvis Costello, Paul Young, Spandau Ballet. We all cheered when Freddie Mercury stole the show and we all cried when they played the Drive video by The Cars while children starved in Africa. Everyone there remembers the teddy bear who did laps of the stadium in between sets and we all cheered with each toss into the air.

When the finale came around and we all sang Do They Know It’s Christmas?, we sang and we sang and we sang. We sang those last two lines over and over; all the way down Wembley Way to the tube station and halfway back to London on the Tube. What a day!

After Live Aid, J*** and I rekindled our romance for a few more months and went on one more trip to Annecy with her family but we had a massive falling out the night before we left. We practically broke up the first day we got there and didn’t speak to each other for the whole week. What a horrible week that must have been for J***’s family!

– 2010 –

Time moved on and we didn’t see each other again until many years later when I was visiting from America and met up with a few old school friends at Hall Place in Bexley. We’ve met for lunch a few times since. It’s fun to reminisce about the old times.

I sometimes wonder if we might’ve made it if it weren’t for that trip to the Falklands. At the time, we thought we would last forever but, looking back, I don’t think our romance would have survived. First love is always special but we had our separate lives to live. I am glad mine turned out the way it did and I hope J*** can say the same.

First love is special though and looking back at those early memories brings a twinkle to my eye.

I had just turned 21 when I joined the nuclear submarine HMS Revenge.

I was one of two petty officers responsible for all the sonar systems on board. The other dude, Mark, was a year or two older than me. As you can probably imagine, sonar systems are pretty important to a submarine so it was a big responsibility. But no one on a sub has just one job. I had four. My main watch-keeping position was OPSO.

If you have ever seen a movie of a submarine in action – wait!…. here’s one!… – you may have noticed that there are five key roles in the control room of a sub and one more further back in the engine room.

This is a recruitment film deviously crafted to tempt disaffected but smart young men to run away from home and become engineers in the Royal Navy [they got me! – ed]. Skip to 17:10 to see a submarine that may very well be HMS Revenge. Fun fact: The sub on the inside is different from the one on the outside!

The officer of the watch (OOW) is in charge of the whole boat, looks through the periscope and makes all the tactical decisions. The other four folks report to the OOW.

The after-planesman steers the boat — “Come right, steer one-seven-four, sir!” — and keeps depth, a responsibility he shares with The Panel  watch-keeper — “open main vents, sir!” — who continually monitors the submarine’s trim, opening and closing valves to keep the boat level. Back aft, the stokers take care of the main engines and generators and, of course, the nuclear reactor. Last, and very definitely not least, there is OPSO. Me.

When a sub is underwater — which is most of the time — it is almost completely blind. That thing you hear in movies with the Ping! Blip! of the sonar every 10 seconds does not actually happen. Soviet submarines used active sonar but NATO boats didn’t so if you hear a sonar ping in the middle of the North Atlantic, it’s probably from a Russian boat or a surface ship. The only way to know what was out there was to listen very carefully.

HMS Revenge at dawn

Most of the listening was done by 16 year old boys with headphones and they would report everything they heard: carpenter fish, snapping shrimp, and underwater pigs mostly. If there was another ship, they’d guess at their speed from the sound of its propellers “Large merch. Bearing zero-eight-five. Speed 4 knots.”. We had no range information at all. We could guess the distance of a ship based on how much its bearing changed but even that was of no use if the ship was coming straight at us. If a ship had cut its engines, we wouldn’t even know it was there.

OPSO’s job (my job) was to keep track of all the targets reported by the sonar department — including all the whales and dolphins and fishing boats that would start their engines, motor for ten minutes then cut their engines — and recommend a safe course to the OOW. Oh! And — this was at the height of the cold war remember – report possible enemy submarines. On a bad day, there might be dozens of fishing boats, several large merchant vessels and a Russian Spy Ship to keep track of.

While OPSO was my Job #2 and took up most of my working hours, Job #3 was the most glamorous.

Polaris Missile Launched from HMS Revenge

When a ballistic missile submarine is called upon to fire its weapons of armageddon, the missile launch makes a lot of noise, instantly announcing the submarine’s presence to every enemy submarine for hundreds of miles. Its role changes instantly from dealer of destruction to recipient of it and the boat needs to defend itself to survive. My Job #3 was to kill those other submarines with torpedoes before they killed us. Lots of video game practice helped hone my torpedo-guiding skills.

If Job #3 was most glamorous, Job #4 was the most terrifying as I was in the attack squad of the firefighting team. Fires happen surprisingly often on ships and submarines and they are quite dangerous, what with all the hydraulics and the fuel and the explosives everywhere. We’d be called out to fight a fire at least once a week. Maybe once a month it’d be a proper, big, scary fire.

One big difference between a surface ship and a submarine is that, on a ship, when there is a fire, only the designated fire-fighting team reacts to it. Everyone else just carries on eating their dinner or cleaning the bathrooms or whatever. On a submarine, fires are a much bigger deal and the whole crew joins in the fun of fighting the fire.

There are two main teams in the larger fire-fighting team. One team dresses up in fearnought suits — big woolly suits that keep you toasty warm even when you are not walking into a fire — ready to do the main work of fighting the fire with the main hose and a waterwall. The attack team just grabs a flimsy little mask and a fire extinguisher and runs into the blaze while the main team is suiting up.

I remember my first big, super-scary fire in an auxiliary machinery room (AMR) filled with diesel generators. We had already had several smaller fires since I joined the boat, but they were little affairs and extinguished quickly. After the excitement of the  “Fire! Fire! Fire!” on the Tannoy and the scrambling to grab a mask and get to the fire first, there was always a kind of anti-climax when the first dude on the scene was able to put out the fire straight away. This one was different though and it was clearly going to be a big deal.

At the Fire! Fire! Fire! alarm, I ran as usual to grab my mask from the pile but, as I reached for the very last mask and steeled myself for the battle ahead, a burly stoker PO named Mitch, 15 years my senior, put his hand on the same mask. He looked me in the eye and said “I think you’d better let me have that, son”. I didn’t argue and he ran into the burning AMR leaving me mask-less and safely away from the flames.

No one died that day and the fire was extinguished without too much drama but, ever since then, I have had a healthy respect for people who run into burning buildings for a living. That memory came back to me this morning when I read the interviews of the first responders to the plane crash at San Francisco Airport over the weekend.

From KQED,

Firefighters said they encountered smoke, leaking jet fuel and passengers coming down on chutes when they arrived. Lt. Christine Emmons said Monday at the news conference that she and her partner ran up a chute into the plane and found four passengers trapped in the back. The conditions in the plane were changing rapidly, with the fire coming down on rescuers and the smoke thickening as the trapped passengers were pulled out to safety, she said.

Lt. Christine Emmons

and

Lt. Dave Monteverdi, who had also run up the chute, said someone had to be extricated after one of the bulkheads fell on top of him. When the firefighters entered the plane, they were surprised to find San Francisco police Officer Jim Cunningham already there, not wearing any protective equipment. Several of the public safety officers who spoke gave him a special shout-out for heroism. Police Lt. Gaetano Caltagirone also entered the plane, following Cunningham. “I couldn’t let him go inside the plane and just be there by himself,” he said.

People who fight fires for a living are amazing but I have a special regard for whose who, like flight attendants Lee Yoon-hye and Kim Ji-yeon have firefighting as job #4 – after handing out ginger ale, picking up your trash and getting unruly passengers to please turn off their electronic equipment now.

From Yahoo News

One flight attendant, Kim Ji-yeon, 30, put a scared and injured elementary schoolboy on her back and slid down a slide, said Lee, in the first comments by a crew member since the crash of the Boeing 777. A pilot helped another injured flight attendant off the plane after the passengers escaped.

Jiyeon Kim

Lee herself worked to put out fires and usher passengers to safety despite a broken tailbone that kept her standing throughout a news briefing with mostly South Korean reporters at a San Francisco hotel. She said she didn’t know how badly she was hurt until a doctor at a San Francisco hospital later treated her. When Lee saw that the plane was burning after the crash, she was calm. “I was only thinking that I should put it out quickly. I didn’t have time to feel that this fire was going to hurt me,” she said. Lee said she was the last person off the plane and that she tried to approach the back of the aircraft before she left to double-check that no one was left inside. But when she moved to the back of the plane, a cloud of black, toxic smoke made it impossible. “It looked like the ceiling had fallen down,” she said. http://news.yahoo.com/asiana-attendant-describes-dramatic-evacuation-101658097.html

Brave people, firefighters. Especially when they are flight attendants too.

Burning Plane at SFO

I promise to serve my God, the Queen, the Commonwealth and the Sea Cadet Corp and to obey the orders of my superior officers. I will proud of my uniform and smart and seaman-like in wearing it. I will always do my duty.

It was a long time ago now but I remember it clearly.

Paul, Peter, Matthew and I were all dressed up for the first time in our new, smartly-pressed sailor uniforms standing before the Commanding Officer and the whole ship’s company of TS Caprice to speak the Promise that would launch an amazing three-year adventure in the Sea Cadet Corps followed by six years in the Royal Navy.

For the first four weeks after joining the Sea Cadets, we had stood at the back of the hall during Colours and Sunset wearing the civvies that marked us as new entries not yet entitled to wear the navy blue uniform that our more seasoned shipmates wore. For a long month, we learned how to take care of that uniform, enduring lessons on where, exactly, to put the seven creases, how to tie a lanyard and how to wear a beret without looking like you had a blue pancake on your head. After that month, we knew what all the badges meant and how to tie a reef knot and a bowline and who to salute and we all knew which brush to use first when we shined our shoes and we could march (after a fashion). Only then were we issued our uniforms and ready to make our promises.

One minute to Colours, sir!
Ship’s Company, turning aft, right and left TURN!
Colours, sir!
Pipe the Still!

On the Tuesday before our Big Day, we rummaged through musty sacks of hand-me-down uniforms searching for that special pair of bell bottoms that were only slightly enormous and the lanyard that wasn’t too frayed and when we got home that night, most of us had our first encounter with an ironing board. Getting those seven creases sharp and evenly spaced but not shiny turned out to be quite a palaver. Several damp tea towels and a jug of water later, I had merely created a cloud of steam while the heavy blue serge conspired with gravity to guarantee that my attempts at getting my uniform smart and seaman-like ended in failure.

After much practice, I was able to look like a proper sailor and I was proud of my uniform as the last part of The Promise required.

I will be proud of my uniform and smart and seaman-like in wearing it.

The first part of the promise was a bit trickier.

I promise to serve my God…

Like most English kids of that era, I always put Church of England in the religion box that appeared on every official form. Need to refill your prescription? What religion are you? Need a new passport? What religion are you?

I stopped believing in God on September 5th, 1973 but I didn’t start writing atheist on the forms until I arrived at BRNC Dartmouth, the college for Naval officers in 1988. When I first joined the Navy, my ID tags said C of E. By the time I left, they said ATH.

As far as I know, very few of my school friends believed in God but we were taught to write C of E on those forms anyway and to make promises that we had no intention of keeping. I found this harder to do as the years went by and by the time my own kids were old enough to make promises of their own, I found it impossible to let them make promises that were false.

American readers may remember the case of the gay Eagle Scout who was thrown out of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) because he was gay. But he was not actually thrown out because he was gay but because he was an atheist and he did not agree to the scout’s principle of Duty to God (though he was gay too and they did not like that at all).

As a result of the controversy, the Boy Scouts of America changed their policy to allow gays to join. They later decided to admit girls too and, even later, trans kids. Still no atheists allowed though.

The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to a God. The first part of the Scout Oath declares,

“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.”

The Scout’s policy statement clarifies that you don’t have to be an actual Christian or even believe in God as such. Buddhists and Native Americans are welcome as well as a long list of other religions. Boy Scouts of America recognizes around 35 faith groups including Islam, Judaism, Bahá?í Faith, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Sikhism and 28 varieties of Christianity. No atheists or agnostics are allowed though.

When my Little Clown was a lad, two of my friends ran the local scout troop while I coached the soccer team for all three of our boys. My friends suggested that Little Clown should join the scouts.

“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.”

When I expressed my doubts about making a promise that I knew to be false, they thought I was stickling unnecessarily. They said that no one really cared whether you believed in that stuff. It was just some words that you had to say to get in the door.

The Sea Cadets have recently updated their handbook to clarify that the promise made to God can refer to any god or none at all. As long as you promise.

The Sea Cadet Promise: I promise to serve my God, my Queen, my country, and, the Sea Cadet Corps and to obey the orders of my superior officers.

Note: My God refers to an individual’s own faith and is intended to apply equally to those from all faiths or none. (Sea Cadets’ Ethos, 2019, p4)

I’m glad they straightened that out.

In the 21st Century, teenagers in the UK are overwhelmingly non-religious. I wonder how many have been excluded from wholesome organisations because of their non-belief and I wonder how many were forced to make a promise that they did not believe.

I joined the Navy as an artificer at HMS Fisgard on September 3rd, 1982 for a four-year apprenticeship in Electronics and Communications Engineering.

Sadly, HMS Fisgard no longer exists and the navy no longer relies on trained artificers (engineers) but the memory of our time on and under the waves will sustain for a little longer.

Non manibus solem sed corde.
not only with the hands but with the heart.