Colin Clarke – Part 3 Training

So, we used to get given a docket, it was called a Part 3 Book, so you’d done your Part 1 and Part 2 Training in shoreside, now you’re Part 3 Training was actually about learning to be a Submariner onboard your submarine, and this docket covered all the different systems onboard the submarine, and various other sorts of Drills and Procedures to learn etc and you just went through it kind of systematically really.

Working through the systems, learning to understand them. So, it might be the Hydraulic System, it might be the Electrical System, and then you’d get tested on that by one of the Engineers onboard, get that signed off and at the end of it you then have got this whole document signed off and you would sit a formal examination to pass your Submarine Qualification Board and get your submarine Dolphins.

Which is a great sense of achievement eventually to do that, and it took a little bit longer than would be the norm because the submarine was doing alongside.

It was alongside for a lot of maintenance, so some of the stuff you needed to do at sea, that you couldn’t do, so that’s why I say it took a bit longer than normal.