Duration: 2 hours 52 minutes 4 Seconds
Simon: My name is Simon Perry and I’m the interviewer here today for the Submariner’s Stories, the oral history project, and it is the 25th of March 2022, and I’m in Fareham and I’m with …
David: David White.
Simon: David, can you tell me your date and place of birth?
David: Yes, I was born in Erith in Kent on the 1947.
Simon: And what were the names of your parents?
David: Bert, Albert and Freda.
Simon: And what did they do?
David: My dad was a Welder. He started off before the War, he worked at a large Engineering Company in Erith called Frasers. He went away to War and did his time in the Navy as a Submariner, and when he came back, they held his job open for him, I think they were obliged to, and he decided on a little bit of a career change and he took up welding and he became, from what I can gather talking to his colleagues and friend, a very, very capable and competent Welder and he moved then to the British Plasterboard which is now known as British Gypsum, also in Erith, which is just on the outskirts of London. It kind of … the London boundary, it used be in North Kent. I think it’s now in the Greater London Borough of Bexley. It’s right on the Thames, so we grew up right on the river, and his factory was right on the river as well. [Telephone rings]. I can ignore that. Shall I stop it.
Simon: We can break at any time, so if you want to get it then it’s up to you.
David: It’s never for me. I’m just thinking about the noise (laughs). It will stop in a minute.
Simon: We’ll wait for it to ring and then … that’s all good. Ok.
David: Is that the sort of thing you want?
Simon: Yeah, that’s perfect.
David: I can ramble, haul me back.
Simon: Ok. So, your dad was in the submarines in the War then?
David: He was, yes, yes, and it’s interesting because people assume that that’s why I joined and to a lesser extent it is. He never ever said to me, “Oh you should join the Navy” or “you should do this and that” but he told such good stories about his time on the submarines that when I left school at 15 in 1963, I kind of thought … I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. My mate had joined the Army so I saw instantly the glamour of a uniform, some money in your pocket, and I thought ‘Well, I’m not going to join the Army but I’m going to join the Navy’ and eventually I think I’ll volunteer for submarines.
Simon Ok.
David And that’s what I did.
Simon OK and how was school, when you were school age?
David School was fine. Again, I was educated in the same place, I lived there pretty much all my life from, as far back as I can remember until I left in ’63 to join up. School was fine, secondary modern education, I went to Barnhurst Juniors and Infants and Junior School and then Brook Street Secondary Modern School, all boys in those days but it was a huge school, literally cut in half, girls one side, boys the other, never the twain.
Simon No mixing?
David None whatsoever.
Simon Right.
David No, well none that the Masters knew about anyway (laughs).
Simon Right (laughs).
David And I had a modest achievement at school. Very, very basic school leavers exams, I think probably equivalent to an ‘O’ Level in English. I always struggled with Maths but English, Geography, History, I was fine with all of that. I excelled at spelling for some reason and like I say, yeah, I stayed there until I was 15. That’s the only job I ever had; I joined the Navy at 15. Before that I done the normal thing, I worked for my local Butcher as his delivery boy on a ‘Del Boy’ bike or a…
Simon ‘Sit up and Beg’ sort of thing
David ‘Open all Hours’ bike, you know.
Simon Oh yes, right, basket in the front?
David Not Del Boy, Granville.
Simon Ok.
David With a basket on the front. So, I did that for a couple of years and I
walked his dog, a beautiful Boxer and every Saturday morning I used to take him out for a couple of hours, so between that and the delivery I earned a couple of quid.
Simon Is it true what they say about, you know, as fit as a Butcher’s dog?
David He lived very well but yes, he wasn’t overweight, because I used to get it in the neck if I didn’t take him, have him out long enough so he got his money’s worth out of me.
Simon Right.
David But he was a nice guy and he gave me my first ever wristwatch [dog barks] and I’ve had a passion about wristwatches ever since, I’ve got a collection upstairs. I was instantly fascinated by this little, tiny thing and what it was able to do, you know, just keep going all day every day with just a little wind and tell me the time and I loved it and it sparked the passion I still have to this day.
5 minutes and 3 seconds
Simon Right.
David (Laughs). So, I’ll always remember Mr Wreath, the Butcher.
Simon And what, growing up by the river, what was that like then?
David Smelly in the ‘60s. There was talk of if you fall in the river you’ll have to go to hospital and have your stomach pumped out because it was that manky. Now, whether that’s a apocryphal or not I don’t know but this was in the time of polio of course. I grew up with iron lungs, were often on the News, so we did go to great lengths not to fall in it but it was great walking along the shingle, watch the ships go up and down and of course many years later I went up there on a submarine and my dad, and he got all his mates from his factory and they all lined along the Jetty and gave us a wave, because we went on a visit to the Port of London.
Simon Did you?
David Yes so.
Simon So, what you were up on the casing for that were you?
David I wasn’t, not as a Chef.
Simon Ok.
David No that’s not true, the Captain, I had forewarned my boss that this was probably what my dad would do and out of the blue the Captain did pipe down and said, “Tell the Leading Chef to come up to the Bridge” and he said, “So where does your father work?” and I said, “There, that’s probably one of them blokes jumping up and down over there”. So, he said, “Well go on, give him a wave and then off you go” because it’s not a Chef’s place up there.
Simon Right, a nice touch.
David (Laughs) So that was fabulous, yes, it was great. So yes, growing up on the river, we didn’t go to the river that much, I mean the house wasn’t on the river, we lived in a place called Northumberland Heath which is probably a 20-minute walk down to the waterside, so it wasn’t something we did all the time but it’s like here, I mean I’ve lived in Gosport for the last 20 years, no 40 years. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been and sat on Stokes Bay. You just take it for granted but it’s a lovely view on your commute to work every day.
Simon Right.
David Out and back, to go along Stokes Bay and when you have visitors you can always say to them, “This is the best way to come.”
Simon Right.
David It’s a lovely vista, especially on a day like this, it’s beautiful.
Simon I drove that way today actually, yeah it’s good.
David Yes, yes. People say, “Oh, how lucky you are,” but you don’t use it, you know.
Simon: So school, you just thought ‘well I’ve had enough of this’?
David Yeah, I wasn’t academic and I knew there was no point in pursuing further education and my parents almost certainly couldn’t have afforded it anyway so it was a case of, you know, get out and earn some money and get a career.
Simon And what made you go towards the Navy, then? I guess it was Navy first was it?
David Um, yeah, like I said, my mate joined the Army and I saw the attraction straight away of, you know, he came home on leaves and told good stories. He had money in his pocket, smart uniform. He said he’d met a decent bunch of blokes, so I thought ‘maybe the armed forces isn’t such a bad thing’. As I mentioned earlier, my dad had told some good stories about his time on the submarines, even though this was war time and people were trying to sink him, no-one ever did that to me, not knowingly anyway. So, it just struck me, why not, you know. I think it was an epiphany sat in school one day, thinking I don’t know what to do, and of course it doesn’t take much thought to join the Forces, you know, it’s, you know, National Service had probably not long finished and I don’t think there was any real issue in getting in, although I did … I have to say, one thing my dad did say was, “Why are you joining up as a Chef?” or Cook as they call them, um, and you know, like all 15-year-olds, I know best you know, I wouldn’t be told. He said you know, “You should get a trade, you know, be an Electrician or an Engineer”, but academically I think if I’d even … I think I mooted the point at the Recruiting Office and they said you need certain maybe ‘O’ Levels or ‘A’ Levels, which I didn’t have and I wasn’t going to stay in school long enough to get them so it limited my choices I guess, to less technical branches.
Simon So you went along to the Recruitment Office, said, “Hey, I want to join up”
David Yep, I said, I went to Blackheath Recruiting Office, that was my nearest one in South East London and my dad took me on the motorbike and there’s another thing, I’ve still got my motorbikes and I think that all comes from being brought up on a motorbike and side car, and he and I shared many passions actually and motorbikes is one of them, so yeah, he took me up there when he realised I was serious. Mum wasn’t happy, didn’t want me to go but dad was very supportive and sort of talked her round. That was in the summer of, autumn ’62 and then I got sent up to the Embankment for a Medical on HMS Discovery, the old explorer ship.
10 minutes and 12 seconds
Simon Oh right, because it’s tied up against the Thames now.
David Is it?
Simon Yes.
David I’ll never forget that day, we got down to Erith Station and the thickest pea souper, the old smog’s we used to get and there were no trains so we, dad … we didn’t have a phone, you know, typical council house upbringing, you know, but he went to a call box and phoned the place and they said, “That’s ok, if the fog lifts tomorrow you come up tomorrow, we’ll fit him in” and that’s what happened. The next day it was clear and so we went up and I had my Medical. I was five foot and I think an inch and a half and that inch and a half was, just got me in, I think you had to be five foot or five foot one.
Simon Oh, that’s the minimum is it?
So, I was a shrimp you know, eight stone, soaking wet you know, no seven stone I think but I, I was fairly fit, so I got through the Medical no problem, then I had an Oral exam, written exam, an interview and I got through all of those and the following Spring dad got a letter saying he’s been accepted and he’ll be joining up on the 15th of July 1963 which I did. So, I got … he took me down to Erith, put me on the train and train up to London, went across London to, and nearly all the Gange’s juniors have done this, across to Liverpool Street and you get on a train up to Ipswich in Suffolk and then there’s a whole queue of Royal Naval coaches, horrible old things with hard bench seats, you know, no tipping or nod to luxury at all, horrible and we were all shuttled down to Shotley, which was the home of HMS Ganges, the boys new entry Training Establishment.
Simon Ok, so that was into the Royal Navy?
David Yeah.
Simon And that was … you were saying at the Recruitment Office, they suggested you going and being a Chef?
David Well they gave me a couple of options but just to sort of rewind a little bit, my mum, for most of my childhood, suffered from mental illness and in fact my dad had what we call a nervous breakdown then, I think we’d now call it PTSD because of his time in the submarines and I think he had a fairly aggressive war. He served, he was on HMS Truant, Trusty, Rover, Unshaken and they were all in the thick of it, either in the Med, in the Far East and in the North Sea, and I know he was depth charged and I think that probably had a belated effect on him, so the times that he, the two times that he went into hospital, and I don’t mean to visit, I mean one time for about a month and then another time for five weeks, at a Mental Hospital in South London, near Sidcup called Belmont and he only came home weekends, so I found, I’m second eldest of five, I was coming in from school and doing my best to help my mum. Then the times that my mum was in hospital with her mental illness, sometimes we, the Council would give dad a Carer, and some of them were lovely and some of them were just indifferent and never, ever anyone bad, I was lucky like that but again it fell upon me to do some cooking and that’s … and I found I quite enjoyed it. Now whether I enjoyed the cooking or I enjoyed the praise that I got afterwards and the odd half crown, you know, ‘well done son that was a good dinner, you know, go and get yourself something’ but I think that’s what leant me to, to that. Also, of course it’s not rocket science to work out that if you’re working down in the Galley, it’s nice and warm, you ain’t going to be working up top and you’re never going to be hungry and if you’re any good at your job you can make yourself very popular, er, and I think all that had gone round…
Simon Even at that young age?
David Well yeah, because just cooking for my family, the buzz when someone says, “Oh that was really nice” and you had to take it both, if sometimes say “that was crap, that was horrible”.
Simon (Laughs).
David And you could feel quite hurt but to be told, “Well done, that was really nice” and there’s a real satisfaction in that, so I thought yeah, I can see the advantages of being a Chef, a Cook, and so I joined up as a Junior Assistant Cook, Second Class. I don’t know if you can even envisage a lower rank than that can you?
Simon I don’t know (laughs).
David (Laughs). I think it’s one above a sea cadet.
Simon Right.
David Possibly so anyway that’s what I was. So, I went to Ganges, very standard. You’d spend four weeks in the Annexe, just to acclimatise and getting used to being away from home, you got blokes crying themselves to sleep. Some blokes went home, couldn’t hack it but you do that month, you get all your initial kit, you have to sew, in Ganges you sewed your name into everything; socks, underpants, vests, everything. Shirts, trousers, you got a bit of kit, you either sewed your name in it in red embroidery, chain stich, and if it couldn’t be sewn, like your kit bag or something, then it was stamped with a stamp and paint and then at the end of that four weeks you got the basic rudiments of marching, a bit of drill and then after four weeks you were considered acclimatised and you went across to what they called the Main Establishment, to spend the rest of your year there. You were there for 12 months and so we, it was quite a ceremony. You fall in on the Parade Ground, all your kit’s been taken over that morning in a couple of lorries and then you fall in and you march from the Annexe out into the road and then Shotley’s only a little town on the end of a spit of land between the River Stour and the River Orwell, near Felixstowe, and so you march across the road, up the High Street and then into the Main Establishment and that’s you then, settled in HMS Ganges. I went into Blake Division, Eight Mess, top of Long Covered Way and I had a very interesting year there. Because I was such a short arse, um, I did get bullied. A lot of people have a lot of stories about bullying on The Ganges. It never bothered me, it kind of … it grows you up a bit.
Simon From people senior to you, is it?
David Yeah, or normally people bigger than you because you’d be surprised at the range of sizes of 15-year-old boys. Now some of them could have been 15 and five or six months and maybe some of them could have been a week off their 16th birthday but even so, we had a bloke called, I probably shouldn’t name names should I?
Simon I’m not sure.
David His name was Dave Vowsden, big Scouser and I thought, he’s 20! He was big guy and he boxed in his hometown of Liverpool for a Youth Club and he was twice my size, but he wasn’t the bully. One of our class leaders, he threatened to beat me up once for a Mars bar and he would have knocked me senseless. I thought, you know, discretion, but I know now, I wish now that I’d just stood up to him because I know most of the time, that’s all it takes with a bully and if I’d just got up and either threatened him or just punched him in the mouth, I so wish I had but you know, when you’re 15 and five foot two you know, but it wasn’t a common practice. Some people have said, “Oh Ganges, hot bed of bullying.” It wasn’t and it certainly grew me up and a year later I strutted out of there a much different bloke that crept in there. It was … some of it was great, some of it was ok and some of it was horrible. Leaving, going home that first leave, I’d never been so homesick in my life.
Simon What from, after you had to leave to go back to Ganges?
David Yeah, so when I first joined up it was all the excitement and I never had any pangs of home sickness, um … this, I’ll tell you this and I’ll leave it to your discretion whether it needs to go in or not, because of my mother’s ill health I had a bit of a tough time at home and I think that was another possible factor for thinking, I think, the best way is to get away from here. Joining the Navy also ticks that box, but when I got home my dad had completely changed. He started treating me as a bloke instead of a schoolboy, and this was in three months and I walked … you had to go home in uniform because when you first joined up they pass all the civvy clothes that you wore when you joined up and send them home, so all you’ve got is your uniform, so you can’t have blokes strutting round in designer jeans and some other blokes in really tatty old school trousers, it’s a great equaliser to make everybody wear the same thing. So, I had, went home in uniform and I got indoors and dad was decorating my bedroom and his face lit up.
Simon Really?
David Yeah, he’d never seen me in uniform before and that was the first time and within a day, he was ok for me to smoke at home. Now, I don’t even think he was happy with my older brother smoking in the house but it was like I could walk on water. Mum had been out and done her special shop, I mean my siblings still laugh about it now, “Don’t you touch those sugar puffs, they’re for David”, you know (laughs). So, then when I had to go back three weeks later I felt wretched, I hated going back but like everybody, within a couple of days you’re back into it. The good thing about Ganges is they kept you busy, you never had time to sit and dwell and think about stuff. I found I was a very good shot because obviously you’re in the Armed Forces so one of the first things you do is you start getting familiar with weapons and I was really good with a 303, even, again, it was nearly as big as me but I think I had a bit of a knack and so I did a little bit of shooting for Ganges.
20 minutes 48 seconds
Simon When you say for them, what is that, for a team?
David To represent them, yes.
Simon Ok.
David Yeah, but I didn’t continue with it. You had to get up early to do anything extracurricular and maybe I was just a lazy little git! Again, I loved it when I was doing it but I didn’t want to do it before breakfast at 6 o’clock in the morning so I missed a few and they dropped me. I mean that’s fair enough, that’s my own fault but I had a little bit of an attitude and I’ve always had guns since; only air guns, obviously I’ve never bothered with bigger. Licenced myself to do it but I love shooting. I never shoot things that breath, I just punch paper but you challenge yourself all the time, see how good you can get, so that stayed with me and of course we then started to have … Ganges was a mixture, ‘cos you’re only 15 Ganges was a mixture of Navy and School so every morning, you did academic studies, you were marched down to the School and you did Maths, English, Geography, History, the whole nine yards as if you’d stayed on at school and then the afternoon, you devoted your time to Naval things, so you started doing specialist training, so I’d spend an hour each afternoon in the Cookery School learning the very basics of cooking but then you’d go down the Seamanship’s School and you’d learn knots and splices. You’d go down the Jetty and you’d learn sailing and pulling, rowing, all teamwork you know. There was very little done in Ganges that’s individual, it’s to mould you and get you used to the idea, you’re in the Navy, you have to work as a team in just about everything you do. I wasn’t athletic or sporty so I wasn’t inclined very much in that way but the one thing I do remember, and all Ganges boys remember is climbing the mast. 142 foot three inches to the button.
Simon Wow.
David And it’s a classic mast, hang on I’ll show you a picture of it. In fact, no I’ll even show you a picture of me up it. I thought I’d dig out some photos. So, this is Parent’s Day, I was in Ganges from ’63 to ’64 and this is the Mast Manning on Parent’s Day, so that’s the mast.
Simon Oh my Goodness.
David That’s 143 feet 3 inches to the button and I was second one in on the upper yard so one in from that end is me.
Simon Right.
David Yes.
Simon So it’s, it’s not a straight up pole as I’d imagined at first?
David No you go up.
Simon It’s like the layout of an old sailing ship.
David You go up the rigging. It is, it’s a mast from the old ship HMS Ganges.
Simon Oh is that what it is?
David It is her main mast, yes.
Simon Right.
David And you had to do it.
Simon So what is that? That’s like 30, 40 people up there.
David Oh at least isn’t it, yeah.
Simon Yes.
David And you go up to the beat of the Royal Marine Band so…
Simon Oh really?
David They play dun der dun dun dun, dun der dun, and you get, der der dun.
Simon Climb up one by one, right.
David Der dun, perfectly synchronised, it’s spectacular to watch. I think they filmed it on Blue Peter one time so if you ever wanted to watch it you just Google You Tube, Mast Manning at Ganges and you can see that and it’s synchronised beautifully. We practiced for three months, nearly every morning, before Parent’s Day.
Simon So what was that like the first time going up there then?
David Terrifying! (laughs). Terrifying, no-one…
Simon The wind was blowing or…?
David Er, yeah, I don’t ever remember … I mean the only time that the mast was shut was very high winds but the, the pinnacle if you like, was to be, look at that guy, that’s the Button Boy, that’s a bloke stood on there, saluting.
Simon Right, Goodness. He’s standing on top of the thing?
David He’s stood on a wooden disk about, maybe a foot, 15 inches in diameter but it’s got a lightning conductor sticking up and he just holds it with his knees but the mast…
Simon No hands?
David No he’s, he’s doing this, saluting, but the mast moves about a foot either way in winds but then that would be banned in any kind of wind. Now, I never stood on it but most of us managed to shimmer up there and at least touch it, but I didn’t have the guts to climb up there and stand there. That guy is a Scotch fellow called Jim Peggie, who was our Button Boy and then when he comes down there’s a rope from the very top and he grabs hold of it.
Simon Yes.
David And he slides down the rope, hand over hand, you can’t slide, it would burn your hands. Hand over hand all the way down to the bottom, you jump off at the bottom, you run up to the Captain, he salutes the Captain and the Captain presents him with a crown which is the old five-shilling piece.
Simon Yes, for being the Button Boy?
David For being the Button Boy, yes.
Simon Right. Wow that’s mad.
David So that’s something I’ll always remember.
Simon Yes, that’s great.
25 minutes and 25 seconds
David Mast manning and yet we used to do it recreationally then, you know, Saturday afternoon, they’d make a pipe, you know, the Mast is now open and you could just go up there and climb up. The view, as you can imagine. You’re right on the coast of the Orwell and the Ouse and the North Sea, you could see right across to Harwich, Felixstowe, fabulous views.
Simon Wow, wow.
David And you could see right over to Ipswich as well so that was good fun. And it tested you, you know, you thought …
Simon Was that part of, when you went back after three months was one, your parents are saying lovely things to you and as you say it’s a complete change of attitude, what you were now, sort of the grown up, but also you’d realised within yourself that you were able to do things that you hadn’t thought possible?
David I think yeah, well, when I joined I couldn’t swim and you have to be able to swim in the Navy so I went to what the call backward swimming lessons and it was meted out like a punishment. You had to get up at 6 o’clock and go backward swimming and you had to go every morning and … which meant you were last for breakfast which often meant there wasn’t very much left so the incentive was there to pass your swimming test. One day I was adrift, that’s a Navy word for late, er, slept in because … that’s the other thing is they imparted on you this real sense of responsibility, it’s your duty to get there. Your mum’s not there to wake you up, or “Come on dear, out of bed”, you know you have to be there, it’s your duty to be there and you arrange for a shake and…
Simon A shake is someone waking you up?
David Someone waking you up, so a Sentry will come in, he’s got a big clipboard of all the people he needs to shake and he shakes you. “Sign out”, you sign out and he’s gone if you just do that, you’re back to sleep so the onus is on you so I rocked up late and the Instructor says, “Where you been?” I said, “It’s not my fault” I said, “I slept in.” “Laddie” he said, “Everything’s your fault.” He said, “If the Mess had fallen upon your head, still your fault, because it’s not my fault, that means by definition it’s your fault. Top board.” And I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “Up you go, top board, jump off.” I said, “I can’t swim!” He said, “It wouldn’t be a punishment if you could swim would it!” And I crapped myself, you can edit that out.
Simon No I’m sure you did.
David But I never … so I’m stood on the ladder and I eventually got up there and I’m thinking ‘He won’t make me do this, I’ll drown’ you know because you know, when you’re at the top board, and Ganges had this huge Olympic size pool, I mean it must have been 20 feet, I’m thinking, but you don’t see the top of the board, you see the bottom and it looks miles down so I’m stood there and I said, “I can’t do it.” He said, “If I come up there…” he said, “You will go down head first.” I said, “No I can’t do it” and he put one foot on the ladder and I… like a sack of shit you know, fell into the water. So, I’m there and I’m [sounds of spluttering] and he’s got this pole and he’s holding it just out of my reach and I’m [noises of trying to reach] and eventually I hit the side and he said, “You told me you couldn’t swim lad.” He said, “Well you can now” And I think a week later I passed my test, and the test was, you know, to don a pair of overalls, swim two lengths of the baths and then tread water for two minutes so simulate a ship sinking and you’ve got to stay afloat, swim away from the ship and then stay afloat long enough to get picked up by a raft or a boat or something. And oh, passing that test, you now can stay in bed ‘til quarter to seven, and you can be first for breakfast so …
Simon Right. You ate well the next day did you?
David It was one of the highlights of my year there, there were several, um, I used to love PE, we had great PE, Physical Training Instructors, in the Navy we called them ‘Club Swingers’ and they instilled such confidence in you and we’d regularly go throw ourselves at this fort in Orson, chuck ourselves off, knowing he’d catch up, put me down and you’d run around and he’d catch the next one and the next one and then we’d start doing it all day, you know doing little displays, and I loved that as well, um, the seamanship side of it, again I think I was thinking ‘I’m a Chef, I ain’t going to need this’ and in all honesty I never did need it but of course they have to teach it because you’re in the Navy.
Simon Yes. Also, you had it in your mind that you were going to go into the submarines so…?
30 minutes and 5 seconds
David It was in the back of my mind, yup. Now obviously you can’t join the submarines until you’re an adult, so I left Ganges, I went to Chatham which was the Royal Naval Cookery School, HMS Pembroke and I did six weeks, what they call Part Two Training there so there I qualified as a Chef and then the top two in each class became Officers, Cooks and I was top of my class and I became an Officer’s Cook and I got drafted to HMS Fulmar. It’s now called RAF Lossiemouth but then it was RNAS Lossiemouth, Royal Naval Air Station Lossiemouth, right up on the Moray Firth near Elgin in Scotland and that was brilliant because you know, you thought Ganges was the Navy [telephone rings] so that was calling the whole world and his dog Sir, saluting everything that moved, yeah the Navy proper and it’s, oh don’t call me Sir, call me Chief or call me PO, er, and it was so different, so what I thought was fairly casual and informal and because we were up in the wilds of Scotland and we were fairly self-sufficient, it was, it was great. I worked in the Officer’s Galley and so, in fact I was attached to 809 Squadron, so I would sometimes find myself working nights, doing what they called night flying suppers so guys, pilots on night flying exercises would then land and come in about 2 o’clock and they needed to be fed so we would be doing night flying suppers, and that’s where I really learned to cook then, especially as an Officer’s Chef. I was so lucky, I never worked in a big ship’s Galley cooking for eight, nine hundred. I always, between submarines as well when, you know, when you come off a submarine you go and work in HMS Dolphin or wherever and I always worked in the Wardroom Galley which again, you know, you’re only cooking for a couple of hundred people as opposed to five, six, seven hundred, thousand and it’s a different type of catering as well. There’s much more emphasis on garnish and presentation than there is for the lads. So, I went up to Lossiemouth, I had a brilliant 18 months up there and that’s when I thought ‘I should have joined the Air Force’ because I have found I loved anything to do with flying and I still do and my brother and I, I think it was only just before Covid that we stopped going to Air Days and Air Displays. I love Farnborough and Fairford and Mildenhall and we used to go to those, every other year you know, so I can watch aircraft come in and land and take off and fly around all day. So, maybe I should have joined. I mean, I’ll tell you a story. In HMS Ganges we were on what they call an X Bed, it’s an expedition so you go away for a long weekend and you live under campus and you rough it. Where did we go? RAF Wattisham and this was a front line, Lightning Squadron.
Simon: What the plane Lightning?
David Yeah the English Electric Lightning, still my favourite aircraft of all time, one of the fastest jet fighters ever produced in it’s day. No, it was the fastest in its day but what it did have, with it’s re-heat, it’s afterburn, it had this ability to climb just like a rocket, so our alarm clock at 6 o’clock every morning was the morning sortie taking off over our tents, yeeumm! And it was fabulous and you watch, what they do is they get up to speed, they don’t move, up wheels and then they carry on, they get faster and faster and then they just go whoosh.
Simon Really?
David And they disappear up into the clouds.
Simon Wow.
David And then, er, the first day there, we, because we didn’t have time to set up our tents and everything, we ate in their Mess Hall and we’d gone from eating on trestle tables, seating about 50 guys and loads of them in the central Mess Galley in Ganges to tables of four with tablecloths and cruets and I thought, ‘Crikey we’ve come into the Officer’s Mess by mistake’. No, no this is just where the erks eat. The RAF is modern ok. I learnt very early on in my time that the Navy is so steeped in tradition it can almost hold itself back you know. I’ll tell you a little story. Is this too much?
Simon No not at all.
David Ok, when you … every time you join a ship, if you’re a Junior Rating wearing a, what they call square rig, you have to tie a new cap tally onto your cap so HMS Ganges, HMS Fulmar, HM Submarines, HMS Dolphin, er, not so bad once you join submarines because you just wear HM Submarines permanently, whether you’re ashore or on a boat, it’s a mark of qualification but certainly blokes going from ship to ship to ship, and you have to tie it in a tiddly bow over the side of your head so when I got to Chatham, I ain’t tying up, you know, and I said to my DO, I said, “I’d like to make a request to see the Commander.” He said, “Why?”, he said. I said, “I’ve had a good idea.” “What’s that then?” (laughs) He said, “Trust me, you won’t be the first person that thought of it.” I said, “Why don’t they make these cap tallies on elasticated, so the bow is already tied, elasticated means it’ll fit all sizes of hat and it’s just off one and on the other, everyone’ll be standard.” He said, “Ok, alright then” and so he put in a request, and I was marched before the Commander, salute the Commander. Requestment. Junior Assistant Cook White. “Yes White, what is it?” I said, “I’ve had an idea Sir I’d like to suggest.” “Go on then.” I told him and he said “Lad” he said, “Sailors have been tying cap ribbons since 1877. You think after four months in the Navy, you know…” No… “Four minutes in the Navy, you know a better way of doing, get out of my sight!”
36 minutes
David Now that, I think that was a brilliant idea, I still do but that’s how the Navy is, tradition, whereas the RAF, because it’s such a new service, it was only formed just after the First World War, they’re not hampered by tradition so they’re modern, so yeah. Many times, in my life I thought, ‘I should have joined The Air Force. But my mate Dave who lives down in Wiltshire, I only met him when we were working in the Escape Tank but he served in Aircraft Carriers and he said, “Knocker, you would have loved them” he said. You know, when you finish work you can go up on what they call a Goofer Deck and just watch these fast jets landing, taking off. He said, “You would have loved it” because he knows my passion. So that’s me and flying.
Simon Yeah. So, after the, so you, up, up the…
David I’m up Lossiemouth.
Simon Officer’s Mess?
David Royal Naval, yes I was in the Officer’s Galley, attached to 809 Squadron and it’s there that I put in a request to join submarines and my DO, I had to go and see him and he said, “Well” he said “you can’t join the submarines until you’re what they call Able Rate, so the rating system in the Navy, if you join up as a Junior is, you’re a Junior, then you’re an Assistant Cook, then you’re a Cook and that’s what’s known as an Ordinary Rate, ok. So, if you’re a Sailor you’d be a Junior Sailor, an Ordinary Sailor and then you go, you get rated up to Able Rating, which is one before Leading Hand, that’s the first rank that carries any authority. As a Leading Hand you’re in charge of the Sailors under you, but you have to be Able Rate, so it’s a one up from the Ordinary Rating which is one straight after training and that’s at 17 and a half. It’s not a qualification.
Simon Oh it’s an age thing?
David It happens at an age.
Simon Oh Ok.
David So they said, “You can’t join submarines until you’re an Able Rate or you’re 18”, so if you were very slow and you blotted your copy book you could still be an Ordinary Seaman at 18 but you could then join the submarines. He said, “So you’ll have to wait.” And I said “Ok” and so I did, I had a very pleasant 18 months at Lossiemouth, had my 18th birthday up there and then they said, “Ok, your draft chit has come through, you’re going to HMS Dolphin for submarine training.”
Simon Is that unusual for someone to go from the Navy to then work with the RAF then, or was it just to do with you being a Chef? When you moved from … when you were training as Navy training?
David Er, no, ok. When I left HMS Pembroke, I went to a Naval Air Station. I was still a Navy Chef.
Simon Oh it’s a Naval Air Station.
David It’s Royal Naval Air Station, Lossiemouth, also known as HMS Fulmar. You know Daedalus?
Simon Yeah.
David That used to be RNAS Daedalus.
Simon Ok.
David Er, no, RNAS Lee-on-Solent, but they all have a name of a ship so that’s HMS Daedalus.
Simon Right.
David So Lossiemouth is now RAF, but in those days, it was a Naval Fleet Air Arm.
Simon Ok, thanks for explaining that.
David Royal Naval Air Station, so I was still a Navy Chef in a Naval environment, cooking for Naval Pilots.
Simon Ok.
David As opposed to Air Force Pilots. Ok?
Simon Got you, so then you get right, ok, go to the submarines.
David Yeah.
Simon What, what was the next step?
David So I come down to get drafted to HMS Dolphin and you join HMS Dolphin for, and it says, you know, HMS Dolphin (SM Training), so it shows you’re not joining HMS Dolphin as Ship’s Company, as a member of the crew if you like, you’re there for training, so you’re in a class of 20 and so you all join up the first Monday, you know, these guys have come from all over different Ships, different Establishments and you all come together and you form a group, a class for submarine training so then your day is basically Submarine School all morning and all afternoon, er, within that six weeks that you’re doing your submarine training, and it’s, it’s nearly all classroom, so you’re learning the theory, how a submarine works, how it’s built, how it’s operated and what your job in it will be, and the reason that Submariners get extra pay, they get Submarine Pay, is (laughs) the drama queens would have you think that it was danger money, well it isn’t. It’s the extra knowledge pay. Now a Chef, I imagine, on an Aircraft Carrier, wouldn’t even be able to find the Engine Room but on a submarine, as a Chef, I still have to be able to go into the Engine Room and isolate a valve, isolate an air group, isolate a hydraulic burst. I have to be able to do those things because if, you know, you ain’t got time when you’re under water, to send for a Specialist to come and stop a leak. The bloke there’s got to be able to stop it so you have to have … be good at your own job and have a working knowledge of the whole boat, the systems, and that’s why you spend all this time in the classroom and a lot of time cramming at nights, learning Hydraulics systems, Cooling systems, Fuel systems, Main Ballast systems, all the workings of a submarine. So, you’re there for six weeks and after you’ve done two weeks in the classroom you have to go to the Tank and do you’re very first Submarine Escape Training and of course…
41 minutes and 27 seconds
Simon You know that’s on the horizon, you can see it getting closer?
David Oh absolutely, I mean everyone knows, everyone’s heard stories about it, um, and most of them, I think they’re just designed to frighten you because that’s what Matelots do, but yeah, every day you walk down past the Tank to get to the Submarine School, they make you walk by it and you know, it’s a 100-foot column of water in there and at the end of four days I’ve got to go in the bottom and go to the top. Now when my dad did it, the tank was only 38 feet high.
Simon Was it?
David Um, this replaced the old tank in 1952, well no they built it in ’52, it commissioned in ’54, and so yeah, you know, because you haven’t been in there, you haven’t seen it, you haven’t done it, your mind just runs riot and two weeks before we did it, a guy died and so the Tank was shut for about a month while they had the inquiry and everything else so ours was put back two weeks.
Simon Which I guess then there’s, that incident happening, your trepidation is even higher?
David Yeah, absolutely because I mean, you know, you hear all the horror stories, you know, if you don’t blow out your bloody lungs will burst and you’ll turn inside out and of course that’s not how it happens at all and now, having been an Instructor there on and off for 10 years I now know the science of it, but that’s what you think when you get there and of course the Instructors are all bloody posers, strutting around with their goggles and nose clips and everything, thinking that they’re God’s gift, but you know, they’re also very, very professional. I know I would say, that but even going back to that day in 1967 when I first did the Escape Tank as a Trainee, they were so professional and you just felt, ‘I’m alright here, all I’ve got to do is what I’m told’. And so, we got through the Tank without any disaster at all and it’s true, you know, it’s, there’s this old adage that the first time you go in there you’re papping yourself. The second time you think, ‘Mmm, this ain’t so bad, I can do this.’ By the last time on the Thursday when you finish the deep run, most of them say “Can I do that again Chief?”
Simon (Laughs)
David So it’s a very quick transition, from abject terror to, “I wouldn’t mind doing that again” and of course you then have to go back every two to three years to re-qualify. You don’t do as much, you just do a single 9 metre ascent and then you do a suit ascent from the bottom and so the second time I went back to re-qualify when I was on the Oracle, because you …
Simon Oh can I just ask about the first one?
David Yeah sure.
Simon When you’re doing for the first one …
David So the first…
Simon … that was a free was it?
David The first time, um, yeah, yeah you do two ascents from nine metres, what they call a free ascent and it’s not, no, free ascent, I’ll tell you about a free ascent in a minute. This is what they call a buoyant ascent, Ok, so you’ve got a life, make, like a Mae West round your neck, tied round the waist and you inflate it when you leave the submarine, so then as you’re going up this gives you the buoyancy to go up through the water, so you don’t have to do any swimming. What you do have to do, though, is blow air out as you’re coming up because as you’re coming up, the air inside your lungs is expanding and if you don’t get rid of it, your lungs burst. Now they don’t burst like a paper bag, they’re not built that way, they’re millions of little air sacs but all those air sacs can rupture, and they let air into your bloodstream and you end up with things like the bends and you drown in your own blood but so long as you get rid of that air at the right rate, which you’re taught very well, then you’re fine. So, you do two of them at nine metres, then you go down to 18 metres and you do one at 18 metres and that’s the end of your buoyant ascents. Then you go into the 100-foot lock but then you wear the immersion suit that everybody would wear today to do a rush escape ok, so you put this big orange suit on and it’s a flotation suit and its double insulated skin so when it blows up it insulates you against the cold but there’s a hood on it with a clear Perspex visor and there’s a hole at the bottom of the visor. So, you climb into a single tower, big enough just for one bloke and you plug into the air supply, they shut the bottom lid, they flood it up. When the water gets up to the vent level they shut the vent, then pressure starts coming on, you clear your ears, the tower equalises, the upper hatch pops open and phewp, out you go. This automatically disconnects, it seals itself so now you’re hurtling up through the water at about ten feet, ten feet a second, something like that, and now your head is in this bag of air so you don’t have to brrrr, blow out, you can breathe normally. The mere fact that you think you’re breathing normally, you will be breathing out far more than you’re breathing in, so it all happens for you. You reach the surface, you lift up, because the air in the stole is expanding as well so that’s bleeding out of two relief valves, so when you get to the surface, you flip these valves up and then you lock the air that’s in the stole there so now you’re guaranteed buoyancy and if you need to you can just [blowing noise], blow into it and inflate it and then you unzip your hood [unzipping noise] and open it up and there’s you on the surface, floating on your back, just waiting for rescue. [Aeroplane flies overhead]
Simon Mmm.
David So, when you first do it, you do two nine metre free ascents, er, buoyant ascents, one 18 and then a submarine section suit ascent, rigid ascent. When you go back as a re-qual, you just do one nine metre and the suit from 100 feet.
Simon Ok.
David So the second time I went back I thought ‘this is fun.’ Then when I was on HMS Orpheus, I mean this is fast-forwarding a few years, we started working a lot with the Royal Marines because we, we were the first boat to do a trial of what they call a five man exit and re-entry chamber. Normally when we sneaked into places and dropped Royal Marines, SBS, SAS, off to do their sneaky stuff, they would take their little canoes out of the lower Torpedo Hatch and then we’d sneak in.
Simon They’d go out through the torpedo hatch?
David Not the torpedo tube.
Simon Oh the hatch.
David Oh no, the hatch that you load the torpedoes down.
Simon Right.
David Ok so they would take these little canoes out. This is what the Cockleshell Heroes did, they raid on Saint Lazarre. So, they bring their canoes out and they’re all black-faced and guns hanging off of them and grenades, Christ knows, daggers everywhere, and then we’d launch them and then they’d paddle off and do their dirty work. We’d retire and dive and then maybe 24 hours later…
Simon You had a pre-set time because there’s no communications?
David Well there is. We’ve got a periscope. They’ve got a red torch.
Simon Oh Ok.
David So we then start looking, or the Captain is the only person, or whoever, looks at the periscope when we dive, other than if he invites the First Lieutenant to have a look, so then you look for pre-arranged signals and they’re very, very careful signals because if they were captured, then they could be tortured to give away that signal, so that could be the enemy, so they are all trained to give something slightly wrong.
Simon Right.
David And then we would know that, so you’ve got to be very alert. So, you get that signal and then you surface very quietly because you know, you’re in enemy territory and then you go in and they row out and then they stab their canoes and they sink, they come up back on the submarine, down below, we back out and dive again. So, that was meaning the whole submarine had to be on the surface and it’s vulnerable, so on the Orpheus we had … they built this five-man diving bell under the casing so we could go in at periscope depth so the only thing we’ve got out the water is the periscope. They would all go into this five-man exit and re-entry chamber, shut the lower lid, flood it up, they’re in frogman gear. Their boats are all strapped because they stopped with the canoes and went into little inflatables. They’re all strapped to the outside of the submarine, so we didn’t have to surface and because we were doing all that run in, a lot of the Tank Staff were with them and I kept saying to the boss of the Tank, “I’d love to come and work as an Instructor in the Tank for my next job.” “Oh, alright then” he said, “We’ll see what we can do.” I fed them well, mashed him up as they say and when I left Orpheus I got a draft to the Tank.
50 minutes and 11 seconds
Simon Right, we’ll come on to that because I’m really…
David Of course.
Simon Everyone that I’ve spoken to has told me how important food is on the submarine.
David Without a doubt, without a doubt. So, finished my submarine training and I got my first draft which was HMS Oracle, um, and I was on there for nearly four years and course I was still learning my craft. I’d never had a ship, that’s when I found out I get sea-sick, wasn’t a great help and that was another good reason for me to be in submarines because I’m not the world’s best Sailor and of course they spend so much time under water and once you get below about 200 feet it’s flat calm.
Simon: What was it like the first time you got on board then, the submarine?
David Well my first submarine was a yellow one, because I joined Oracle when she was in the Dockyard in the middle of a refit and she’d been painted with this, what they call, yellow chromate paint and The Beatles hit, this was 1966 was still…
Simon At the same time?
David Very vogue.
Simon Right.
David So, if I’d had a camera, I would have certainly loved to have taken a photograph of that but yeah, we were in the Dry Dock and I mean to see a submarine out of the water, it’s phenomenal because alongside you don’t see much of them. They’re icebergs. Most of it is underwater, even when it was surfaced so to go down into the Dock bottom and see this thing above is phenomenal and then when you have a Nuclear Submarine and then a Polaris Submarine it takes your breath away, I tell you, it’s mind blowing but anyway. So, I’m on my first submarine and so it’s just two of us, me and a Leading Chef and he was an old, wizened old Submariner called Tansy Lee. There’s another nickname, anybody called Lee gets called Tansy.
Simon Right Ok.
David And he showed me the ropes, he was very good, he was a good mentor. If I had any criticism of him I think it would be a little bit lazy in so much as what I found with … because you’re always working with another Chef. If you’re the young Chef, Baby Chef they call it in submarines, then you’ve got a Leading Chef and if you’re the Killick Chef you’ve got a Baby Chef and it’s surprising how many people only want to do the minimum, and I think cooking is like most things, if you can read, you can cook, but to cook well all you’ve got to do is care and want to do it. If you go in there with the attitude of ‘All I’ve got to do is feed these guys and I could do that, but the quick way is to do this’ you know, the food will never ever be anything more than mediocre.
Simon And that impacts the whole of the boat?
David Well, food takes on the most disproportionate importance you can imagine. Six weeks at sea, especially in a bomber where, a Polaris Submarine, you dive the whole time, not like every couple of weeks you might go in somewhere for a run ashore or a jolly. Days and nights just meld into one long Patrol and the only things that happen, three times a day that’s different is food and so people do, it takes on a disproportionate importance, it’s the strangest thing, and I’ve got loads of recommendations upstairs that said he was a good Chef and, because every time you leave a ship you get a write-up, and I actually got head-hunted one time, but anyway, to get back to it, it’s important but so long as you care you can, you know, the old adage is what’s the choice today Chef, take it or leave it? I’ve always despised that. I mean you cannot expect the whole crew to like one thing, so of course you’re going to put choices on, you have to. In the old days, certainly my dad’s day, there was no choice, there was no Chef. One of the Sailors just opened up loads of tins of meat and put it in a pot with veg, stirred it all up, they called it Pot Mess and that was it. It was hot and there was plenty of it, so that was fine but there is no excuse for that in modern submarines with great big fridges, great big freezers. I mean storing a ship, to store a submarine to go to sea is phenomenal evolution.
Simon So was this … the first one was a diesel was it, you were on?
David The first three submarines I were on were diesel.
Simon Ok.
David That was Oracle, Porpoise and Orpheus.
Simon But they were quite limited, sorry you were saying?
David Yep, yeah, yeah, very limited.
Simon: Please say the names again?
David Yeah, Oracle, Porpoise and Orpheus. So, Oracle and Orpheus were ‘O’ Class, Oberon Class submarines, and Porpoise was the name, the Porpoise Class submarine.
Simon Right.
54 minutes, 54 seconds
David But they were all SSKs ok, so little hunter killers, diesel electric submarines so electric propulsion under water, diesel batteries on the surface to both charge the batteries and the modern ‘P’ and ‘O’ boats, the Porpoise and Oberon Class that I was on, did away with direct drive. In my dad’s day and even the later ‘A’ Boats and ‘S’ Boats, they could couple the diesel engines directly to the propellor so on the surface the diesel engines were partly charging the battery but partly driving the propellors and that’s why the ‘A Class, which is what Alliance is, down the Submarine Museum, they were amongst the fastest diesel boats we produced because they could directly link the diesels to the propellors. The ‘P’ and ‘O’ boats did away with that, we could only drive with electric motors whether we were on the surface or dived, so on the surface we’re running diesels to charge the battery to drive the electric motors that are driving the propellors and that was the way they worked.
Simon And the space is limited on the diesels wasn’t it?
David On the diesel boats yes, yeah.
Simon So the food is, how did you get involved with putting the food down?
David Ok, so we had very, I mean they know the importance of food at the design stage so for example, on my last boat, Orpheus, I had a great big freezer, a third of the size of this conservatory I suppose.
Simon Oh that’s considerable like that.
David If, if, if, oh no, obviously not as high. Maybe as high as that shelf but maybe out to here?
Simon So that’s like five foot…
David Yes, yes five foot high.
Simon By seven, seven foot. [aeroplane flies overhead]
David … and then that width and that depth and all racking in there and so me and my young Chef would climb in there and then I’ve got a couple of Sailors that I trust so the whole crew, this is what they call a whole crew evolution except Stokers. Stokers never get involved, you’d think they didn’t eat but they never, nothing to do with them. They used to say, “You don’t help us fuel the ship”, well that’s just plugging a pipe in and sucking diesel for a couple of hours, but it was always a bone of contention and the Senior Rates don’t but all the young, all the Sailors, get involved in storing the ship so I have it swung over onto the casing, it comes in shakeons so I book a crane for that day.
Simon Why are they called shakeons?
David A shakeon, it’s like a miniature … it’s like half of a container that they put on a ship but we used to call them shakeons.
Simon Ok.
David I think that might be who makes them because I think that was the name stamped on the side so you’ve got double doors open up like that and it’s a mini container that you’d see on a ship. So, I’d book the crane that’s normally doing torpedoes and he’d bring that over and drop it on the casing. Then I’d have one of the Leading Sailors up top, start, this is all the frozen stuff, then he’d start passing it down and we would chain it all the way from the casing, down the accommodation space hatch, through the Control Room and then down into the fridge and the freezer and next to the freezer…
Simon How many people’s that though, 20, 30 people doing that?
David Yeah 30 people I suppose.
Simon Right Ok.
David And of course next to this freezer you have a smaller one which is a Cool Room, maybe half the size, so that’s for all your fresh, you know, your dairy, your butter, your cheese and stuff like that.
Simon Ok.
David So you come it down, now, what makes a difference between a Chef who’s interested and one who isn’t, is the one who isn’t just chucks it all in. Now, if he throws everything in the last thing he packs is mince, then that’s all you’re gonna get …
Simon (laughs).
David … because when we sail, you open the door and it’s there. There is no walk-in and, “What shall we have today?”, that doesn’t happen until about halfway through the Patrol. That fridge is filled to the door so whatever’s there, that’s what you’re going to eat so if you think about it, you pack it alternately.
Simon In an order, so the reverse order of how you’re going to eat it?
David Yeah, try and keep a selection of everything to the end so that you can eat, and what happens is the young Chef, that’s his job, eventually he starts to tunnel his way through. At the top, obviously he can’t go underneath, but you start eating your way at the top so the first day, week, you’re doing a freezer run, you put some big arctic jacket on, because you’ve got an Engine Room Artificer moaning like hell because you’re keeping the freezer door open, so his fridge plant is running more than he wants, so he only wants you to go in there once a day so if you forget something and you have to nip in there again you try and do it when he’s not around. So, you have to shut your Chef in because the time it’s going to take him to get everything, so he puts an arctic jacket on, you post a Sentry outside and if he’s not banging on the door to come out in five or ten minutes then he opens up and checks on him but that’s what you have to do.
Simon Is there a light inside? Or use torches?
David Yes, but again the food’s up to the lamps so it, a little bit of light, but yeah eventually … and then right at the end of Patrol you wander in there and you have a look, we’ll have some of that and some of that and that.
Simon Yes.
60 minutes 6 seconds
David So that’s the freezer. Then next door you’ve got the Cool Room, at sea level, you can take enough things like salad gear, for, that will keep for about a week, your butter and all that, that keeps for ages. Your eggs will keep for two or three weeks before they start being a bit, less than fresh, you wouldn’t bake with them but the diesel boats were very rarely at sea for more than two or three weeks and so we constantly were topping up our store so every time we’d go in, Coxswain …
Simon Go into a Harbour?
David To Harbour, or on a visit, anywhere, the Coxswain would come down and say to you, “Right, what do you need?” You’d say, “Well I want the basics, I want spuds, milk, salad gear, bread” because that, the big one was bread, so I always took fresh bread and I’d also freeze some bread because once the bread’s gone you’ve got to start baking it.
Simon Right.
David Now there’s a little-known problem that only a Submariner knows about baking bread. You can spend hours kneading it and getting air into it, you then put it in the oven and the Captain starts snorting, so that’s sticking a mast up that sucks air down through the boat and that allows you to run those diesels at periscope depth. Every time the mast dips below, especially if it’s a bit rough, you pull a vacuum in the boat and your bread goes [deflating noise] and you’ve spent ages and sweating cobs putting air into this dough to get it to rise with the yeast and then the Captain starts snorting and you shout out, “Oh that ****ing little berk, are you winding me up?!”
Simon (Laughs)
David ‘Cos, if you haven’t got a good Planesman to keep the boat level and it dips and there’s a little, it’s like a snorkel, a little float shuts so you don’t suck water down into the engines. Before, in the time it takes him to stop the engines it sucks half the air out of the boat and your bread just goes zzzzzzz (laughs).
Simon (Laughs)
David So that’s very frustrating, and of course the other thing is, although I was a Chef, as I say, first and foremost you’re all Submariners, so one of my jobs was on the hydroplanes.
Simon As well as… right.
David Yes, oh yes, yeah.
Simon Is that what they call Sailors then? The, the, is that, is that the role?
David Yes, yeah, Sailors but that’s, you know, they would be doing that on the surface, you know, steering the thing but once you dived all those Sailors have got other jobs, so they would be um, they’re Sonar, Radar, Radio and Torpedo so they’ve all got jobs so they’re all in three watches so you’re four on, eight off, four on, eight off. So, then when you start doing the hydroplanes, if, um, the Radar guy can do it but if the Captain wants Radar raised then he goes on, into the Radar Shack and starts looking out for ships and that so they say, “Chef” or the Steward, “Onto the fore planes” so you’d find yourself there, choo choo choo, planing.
Simon What’s that like, doing the steering then?
David Good fun, yes.
Simon Yeah.
David Well, good fun on a nice day. If it’s rough it’s, because the Captains get incandescent with rage if you don’t keep them spot on depth.
Simon Right.
David But.
Simon Why’s it so important to be at a certain depth then?
David Well if you dip the periscope you can’t see.
Simon Ok.
David And if there’s a ship chasing you.
Simon Coming your way, right.
David And it’s hurtling down on you, the Captain doesn’t want to lose visibility for a second because, you know, what they do is they just do a constant sweep, all round look, and if he’s trying to do an attack, he wants to get that periscope up for seconds to avoid an eagle-eyed lookout on the surface ship seeing it, so it’s up, range is that “Get me down” and he’ll push the periscope down. “For f**k’s sake Planesman”, you know. Sorry, my profanity.
Simon That’s alright.
David “Bloody hell”, and they tend not to swear. The real gentlemen tend not to swear anyway but they have the vocabulary don’t they? “If you wouldn’t mind Chef, getting me on depth for at least part of your watch I’d be immensely grateful” you know.
Simon (Laughs).
David And it just withers you and makes you feel about that big and you know, and you get the shouters you know, “Get me up! Get me up! Get me down!” you know, because also, if you then over correct it and the submarine comes up a bit he’s then sticking a load of periscope up and the whole world can see it, so it’s, says very fine and you’ve got to … I meet a bloke every month down at our reunion and the RNA, Roy Dixon, I was a very young Chef on the Oracle and 20, 19, 20 and he was a Radio Supervisor, the RS, and me and him together, we were such a team. We, he was on the after planes. Now they control the angle of the submarine and the fore planes control the depth ok, so you, can you envisage that, at the front you’ve got hydroplanes and at the very end you’ve got hydroplanes so if he puts them to rise it’ll cause the submarine to tilt.
Simon Downwards?
David Yes and if he puts it rise, it’ll cause the submarine to rise but if you go along and I do this, the submarine goes down, because he will make, follow them so the submarine will go down and if I do that it’ll go up. So, the Captain might say, “Zero bubble, keep 500 feet” and you’re at periscope depth …
65 minutes 27 seconds
Simon Could you translate that, zero bubble?
David Ok, he wants to go down without any angle. So, if the Captain says “20 down, keep 500 feet” he wants you to put 20 degrees of bow down angle on and steam down to 500 feet and level off at 500 feet. He will often say…
Simon Zero bubble would be like, like you have on the level?
David Yes, it’s an inclinometer, it’s like a spirit level but it’s curved.
Simon Spirit level, thank you.
David It’s like a spirit level but it’s curved, and it’s called an inclinometer.
Simon Ok.
David Ok, so when the bubble’s dead zero, the submarine is perfectly level and as soon as you put any kind of angle on, the bubble will start, well the bubble doesn’t move, the bubble stays exactly there but the inclinometer moves doesn’t it.
Simon Right.
David So it gives the impression that the bubble is moving that way. Of course, it never moves, it’s always at the top so the Captain will say, “10 down, keep 120 feet” so the After- Planesman is then responsible for making sure you put 10 degrees on and no more. The Captain could say, “Zero bubble, keep 300 feet” so then the After-Planesman will emulate exactly what you’d do, so the submarine would go down dead level. [Aeroplane flies overhead] Some weapons don’t like to have angles on them. On the Polaris Submarines we often would do zero bubble depth changes to, because some of the Polaris missiles don’t take nicely to angles.
Simon Right.
David This sounds like my darling wife.
Simon Ok.
David So I’m sure she’ll come out and say hello. So anyway, so even though I was a Chef I still had to do my turn on the planes.
Simon So the food preparation, that goes on hold or somebody else is doing that?
David Oh no, no, no, you do.
Simon Hello.
Mary Hello.
David Hi Darling. This is Simon.
Simon Yes.
Mary Hello.
David That’s Mary.
Simon Hi.
Mary Pleased to meet you.
Simon Likewise.
Mary I was just going to say do you want a drink or …?
David Do you want a …?
Simon A tea would be lovely yeah, thank you.
Mary Tea?
Simon Yeah, thank you, yes.
David I’ll have a cup of tea thank you Darling.
Mary Shall I leave biscuits there?
David Yeah why not.
Mary Ok so you want tea?
David Yes please.
Mary And you want tea?
Simon Thank you, yes.
Mary Milk and sugar?
Simon Er, just the milk thank you.
Mary Just milk?
Simon Yes.
David Thank you Sweetheart, how did you get on?
Mary I got on lovely yes.
David Oh well done (laughs).
Mary New nails!
David (laughs). Yes, so where were we?
Simon So you were saying, I was saying that when you were off doing the planing.
David Yes, oh yes, yes.
Simon Someone else was doing the food?
David No, no this is still, you know, if one of you is on the planes and the other one, who may have been off watch will then have to go in the Galley and cook.
Simon Ok.
David So it wasn’t very often, it was only like I say, when someone else.
Simon Somebody else was doing that.
David The guys that normally did the planes were closed up.
Simon Ok.
David A good example…
Simon It’s another good example of you needing to know everything that you do, yes.
David Absolutely, yep, absolutely and another time, you know I could be up in the Torpedo Compartment checking, because the other thing about diesel submarines was not all the stores went into the space provided because you sometimes would have to take them off. If you stored for war, you would build a fourth deck throughout the submarine, of boxes of tinned food because you could have to stay at sea much, much longer than the submarine was designed to do, so I would give everybody a bag of flour and they’d stick that under their pillow.
Simon Really?
David We would build a false deck throughout the submarine so everybody, even, I mean the tall blokes stooped anyway but for this time, everyone stooped because you were all raised that far off the deck.
Simon So what’s that, that’s sort of 12 inches.
David 12 inches.
Simon Right.
David Because a standard box of, a two and a half tins of peas, beans, tomatoes, whatever, they’re two tins like that, on top of each other, in a box of 12. Very stable, very stable platform to walk on but you had …
Simon I guess you had to step up and down as you ate the food did you?
David: Yes, yes.
Simon Right.
David Well you would try and plan it a bit better than that and, and …
Simon Oh right, have a walk through?
David: Make a walkway.
Simon Ok.
David But you had to leave holes because every four or five hours somebody’s got to go down into the Battery Tank and dip the Battery and take readings, so that means that hatch has got to be raised and lowered all the time, so you can’t put stores on top of it. So, you’ve got all these stores and a hole. Now, a lot of the time a submarine is at sea, especially at night, it’s in what we call black lighting and any light has got to be red.
Simon So what’s that, infrared or ultraviolet?
David No just red lamps.
Simon Just red? Ok.
David Red painted bulbs.
Simon Right.
David Yes but you know, it doesn’t show everything up.
Simon So you’ve got to remember where it is. (laughs).
David You’ve got to be careful and then if you have an emergency and you start running everywhere, people used to get broken ankles and sprained ankles and Christ knows what.
Simon Mmm.
David But yes so you know, I’d be up in the fore-end checking on my spuds or a lot of dry goods I could store up there and if there’s a flood I’ve got to know how to isolate that, it’s no good sending for a Plumber, you know?
70 minutes 14 seconds
Simon Yes.
David Or a fire, you can’t phone 999. I’ve got to know where the extinguishers are, which extinguisher to use if it’s an electrical fire or a hydraulic fire and I’ve got to be able to act on it and do it so that’s why Submariners get extra pay, nothing to do with danger, just extra knowledge that my contemporary General Service doesn’t have to have.
Simon When I saw the Galley on the Alliance…
David Yes.
Simon It’s small.
David It is and that’s pretty much what the ‘P’ and ‘O’ boats were like, slightly bigger, slightly bigger.
Simon Ok, and there’s how many people in that space which is, I don’t know, like three by two foot maybe?
David Yes, well normally it’s just the one Chef, because one Chef’s working and one Chef’s off.
Simon Ok.
David You both would work in the morning, so a typical day then, in the Galley on a diesel boat, the Chef that was duty last night is responsible for breakfast, so he gets up at half past five, turns the ovens on, because everything’s electric obviously, and they all take time so turns the ovens on, turns the hotplates on and prepares and cooks breakfast. Whilst he’s doing that he’ll probably start, make a start on preparing lunch. Now, vegetables are prepared, if they’re fresh, in the Messes. Spuds, the lads peel spuds for each Mess because that’s a long job and you know, it’s a job that they can take off the Chef, but everything else the Chefs do. So, you would make a start and while you’re cooking breakfast and feeding the crew their breakfast you’d make a start, so for example, let’s say you’re going to do a curry, so you get all the meat chopped up and sautéed off and start cooking that and you get all the spices and, so that would start cooking. If you’re going to make a steak and kidney pie, so you get your meat cut up, get that cooked off and maybe get your pastry made, but then you serve breakfast, then when breakfast is done and you’ve cleaned away the other Chef will come down and you’ll both work in the morning, so one of you will crack on and do the rest of lunch, or you’ll both do it, but one of you, the other one who’s duty, if he gets a moment will then start preparing dinner that night. So again, if lunch was say a Quiche Lorraine, salad, er, and Scotch eggs or chips and beans, so you know you can do that, but dinner that night might be curry or fish and chips so the other one can carry on. Then after lunch, when lunch is served up and all cleared away, the guy who got up for breakfast, he’s finished so he can now shoot off and go and watch a movie, get his head down. I had a theory, and a lot of my mates had the same theory, time spent asleep is time not spent on Patrol.
Simon Right (laughs).
David So an obscene amount of sleeping was done, certainly on the diesel boats, certainly by me and a lot of my mates. So, you go and get your head down and then the Chef would then crack on and prepare dinner. If it was a fairly simple meal he could probably have a couple of hours off in the afternoon himself and then he’d go back, he’d cook dinner, you’d go back and help serve it because it’s always quicker to serve dinner with two Chefs in there and then you’d both wash up and then that’s you finished. Sometime in the afternoon you’re going to go down to the freezers and get all the meat out for the next day so that’s all thawed out ready for the next day and the odd time I can remember a young Chef saying to me, waking me up at 5 o’clock and saying, “I forgot to get the meat out last night” so you have to do a frantic menu change and maybe get some mince out which you can break up into manageable lumps and it’ll thaw out in a couple of hours and then you can get that cooked and you want to thump them you know because you’ve spent ages prepping your menus you know.
Simon How far in advance do you plan menus then?
David On a Polaris and a Nuclear Submarine I’d plan a whole six-week, eight-week Patrol.
Simon Wow.
David I’d take a menu book to sea with me because you’ve got to have that to know how to provision…
Simon Right.
David … the ship, you know.
Simon Yes, and how to, right, is, when provisioning means how you’re going to store it?
David Yes, how much you’re going to order.
Simon Yeah.
David So the beauty of the Polaris Submarines is there’s two crew systems, you know, three months on crew and then three months off crew. So, in the off crew, do my menus and then start planning my provisions and my order list, you know, what I wanted to order.
Simon So do you … are there certain food you serve on certain days so there was…
David No, I’ve never subscribed to that. I’ve watched documentaries fairly recently I think on Turbulent and they say, “Oh Thursday’s always curry and Friday’s always fish and chips.” Monotonous. If you haven’t got enough imagination that you have to repeat a dinner in a week, I don’t think that’s very good, so I never subscribe…
Simon I can see why you were popular onboard then (laughs).
75 minutes 2 seconds
David I never subscribed to that; I think that’s mundane. Again, that’s the kind of lazy way Chefs used to do it you know, yeah, Friday’s always fish and chips, Wednesday’s always curry. The only thing I would do is I would always do a roast on a Sunday, but I would also do another choice just in case, because once you get to know your crew, like for example, only about maybe five or six blokes on the whole submarine would like braised sheep’s hearts, but that’s not a reason not to do them, that’s a reason to only do a couple.
Simon Mm mm.
David So, but I would know a Chef who’d say, “Right, tonight we’re having sheep’s hearts, or steak and kidney pie.” Now A that’s two lots of offal and you’d better do 90% steak and kidney pie, but he wouldn’t, he’d do half and half, so the poor blokes who come off watch at the end of the, half way through the meal..
Simon Right.
David They’re left with nothing but sheep’s hearts. But that would be a lazy and easy way to do it, ‘cos you don’t have to think then, you just do half and half don’t you?
Simon Right, right. Oh, thanks very much.
David But if you think about it … thank you darling.
Mary You’re welcome, do you want that door shut?
David: I’ll leave it to Simon, I’m fine.
Mary Do you want the door to?
Simon I’m OK for the moment thanks.
Mary You’re not in a draft if I leave it open?
Simon I feel OK at the moment yes.
Mary You’re OK?
Simon Yes thank you.
Mary We’ll leave it open.
David Yeah we’re good. Thanks darling.
Simon Thank you.
David So yeah, I never subscribed to today’s Monday, Monday’s fish and chips, you know, I don’t like that.
Simon Ok. So, one of the other things was, I come across sort of quite unusual names for dishes of things
David Yep.
Simon That, have you got a list of what the names were and what they would be known as in submarines?
David I’ve not got a list but I know them.
Simon Ok.
David I mean, in fact, many, many years ago when I was on the Oracle, I mean do you live round here?
Simon South of the Isle of Wight.
David Oh right and how long have you lived down here?
Simon 17 years.
David Right, well way back, much longer than that we had a Radio Station here called Radio Victory and it was a local Portsmouth station …
Simon Yes.
David … and one of the presenters was a lady called Rosie Mumford and she came to sea with us for the day and she just wandered through the boat and interviewed people in each section and she was talking into this mic, she said, “I’m now entering the Galley and I’m speaking to Cook Knocker White” and she said, “Oh I hear you have some interesting names” and I think she had to edit the whole lot.
Simon (laughs)
David So I’ll tell you what they are
Simon Ok.
David And you can do what you will with it.
Simon Ah ha.
David So, the most basics, if you’re going to have a fry up, you know, bacon and tomatoes, we would call that a ‘train smash’ for obvious reasons, you’ve got the meat and the tomatoes.
Simon Ok, Ok.
David Train crash, train smash. There’s, do you know what, if I said to you pork luncheon meat or spam, would you know what I meant?
Simon Yeah.
David A tin of processed meat.
Simon Yeah.
David We would slice that up and dip it in batter and they’re called spam fritters but the lads call them ‘elephant’s footprints’.
Simon Right, why’s that then?
David Well it’s round and it’s been smashed.
Simon What it’s been squashed?
David Yes.
Simon Oh right.
David It’s got that sort of shape. ‘Cow Pie’ obviously for steak pie. Rice pudding, now if you put pineapples in it, they would call that ‘Piss Holes in the snow’.
Simon (laughs).
David If you put currants in it, they might call it ‘Niggers in the snow’.
Simon Right.
David And I know we aren’t meant to use the N word; I’ll leave you to do with that what you will. Er, sautéed kidneys on fried bread? ‘Shit on a Raft.
Simon Right (laughs).
David That’s what it’s called. It’s always called that. Kippers …
Simon But that wouldn’t be what you’d have on the menu? It wouldn’t be official?
David I would put ‘Shit on a Raft’ on the menu because they wouldn’t know what sautéed kidney was.
Simon Right, Ok.
David No I would definitely put ‘Shit on a Raft’. Now, a diesel boat didn’t publish a menu.
Simon Ok.
David The bigger boats, the Polaris boats and the SSNs did but on a diesel boat, bloke just came into the Galley, said, “What’s for lunch Chef?” and you’d tell him, easy as that. The Steward might write something out for the Officers in the Wardroom but even then, he’d still put ‘Shit on a Raft’ or ‘Yellow Peril’, you know, which is smoked haddock. ‘Spit-Head Peasant’? Kippers. There’s one very gross one, for black pudding, I’ll leave that to your imagination. Um, what else did we have? ‘Cheesy Hammy Eggy’, there you go. So, it’s a slice of either toast or fried bread. Because I was refined, I did toast. A lot of chaps would do fried bread and then a slice of ham, a slice of cheese, grill it so the cheese melts over the ham, then topped with a fried egg on top of it and the lads would murder for that.
Simon Right.
David Murder for it, very popular. ‘Cheese Ush ‘is another one, which is like a submarine version of a Quiche Lorraine, tend not to put a pastry case on it because I find you end up with a soggy bottom. I think it’s an art to cook a pie or a flan with pastry on the bottom and not get it soggy. What you need is a proper perforated pie tin, and the Navy didn’t run into that, so I didn’t do a pastry bottom so you just get a load of grated cheese, milk, eggs, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper, finely chopped onion, mix it all up in a big bowl, beat the life out of it and pour it into a red hot dish like you would a Yorkshire and bake it in the oven and it comes up and it gets a lovely golden skin on it and it comes out like a souffle, a fairly dense souffle and I got drafted to a submarine because of that.
80 minutes 40 seconds
Simon Really? It just preceded you did it?
David Yeah it did, well no because the bloke knew me. Ok so I was on HMS Porpoise with a very, very fine Naval Officer called Jim Taylor, he was the First Lieutenant, the XO as a Lieutenant and his wife was Elizabeth, so he was married to Elizabeth Taylor and they came … she came from my neck of the woods, near Erith and they were in fact married in the same church as my mum and dad in a place called Belvedere. I got on very well with him on the Porpoise and in fact I’ve got a lovely photograph here. We had a family’s day on Porpoise, now when we had a family’s day on the Oracle I took my wife, my young new wife and even though we were dived in a flat calm she was still sick as a dog. If anyone was a worse traveller than me it’s my darling wife. So, when we had a family’s day on Porpoise I said, “Do you want to go?” and she said “Nope.” So, I phoned my dad up and he said, “Yeah love to” so I took my dad to sea on Porpoise.
Simon Ah, wow.
David So that’s us dived, now the lovely story I’m going to tell you about Jim Taylor is that my dad had just had an eye removed there for a tumour caused by a detached, no, the tumour caused a detached retina, so they took the eye out and he was convalescing at this stage and I’d mentioned it to Jim Taylor, the First Lieutenant. I said, “I’m going to bring my dad to sea but he’s only got one eye, is that Ok?” He said, “Yeah course it is.” I said, “He’s not been told he can’t drive or anything.” He said “Yeah, not a problem” because they are fussy about taking people to sea unless they’re fully fit. For obvious reasons, if they had to do an escape. And that’s the same guy that called me up when we sailed past my dad’s factory on the Thames.
Simon Oh yes, right.
David An absolute gentleman, an absolute gentleman. So anyway, he was mad keen on my cheese ush, loved it so fast forward two years and I’m working for Captain Oliphant. Now Captain Oliphant was the Captain of HMS Dolphin at the time and I was his personal Chef at his house, and every three months, every quarter, he’d have all the Submarine Captains to dinner and by this time Jim Taylor was now the Captain of a submarine, HMS Orpheus and so had their dinner and he said, “Oh, could I just pop down and thank the Chef?” He didn’t know it was me. And Captain Oliphant said, “Yeah”, and I think generally most of them come down and thank you, so he comes down and he says, “Ah Lead Cook White” he said, “I wondered where you were hiding, I thought you were on a boat.” I said, “No.” He said, “Do you want to come on Orpheus with me?” I said, “No thanks Sir” and two weeks later I got a draft to there.
Simon Did you?
David Yes.
Simon After no thanks?
David Yeah, and he said, “I miss your cheese ush” and that’s what he said he got me onto Orpheus.
Simon Ah, right.
David I like to think I was slightly more competent than that, but that’s what he always said.
Simon Right.
David So yeah. Is that enough names of dishes?
Simon That’s good yeah, that is good. I’m thinking now, where we are. So that’s been a lot of good depth. What, what should I be asking about the food that we…
David (laughs). Good depth?
Simon Yeah, the food that we haven’t touched yet?
David Um, well really, like I say, menu planning I think … everybody can tell you, on a boat, as a general rule, who the Captain was, who the First Lieutenant was, who the Coxswain was and who the Chefs were, because they’re the people that affect their day to day lives.
Simon Yes.
David A bit I could ask, you know, a guy I meet at a reunion, “Who was your Chief Stoker on Otter?” Not a clue. “Who was your Chef?” “Freddie Fox.” It’s just, it’s the importance that it takes on.
Simon So everybody wants to your friend do they?
David Yeah I suppose.
Simon Yes.
David To a certain or lesser extent, until it comes to storing ship and then they all want, they don’t want to know. But you know, you have to get your boss to say and see, your boss.
Simon But isn’t that where the friendships are made?
David I guess, I guess, yeah. Because you know, your boss on a diesel submarine isn’t the Chef, it’s the Coxswain. You don’t carry a Supply Officer or a Cookery Officer like you would on a ship, you just have the Coxswain who’s, what the Americans call Chief of the Boat, so he’s responsible for discipline, morale and without a doubt, food and morale go hand in hand.
85 minutes 20 seconds
Simon Right.
David Well fed boat, happy boat, everyone’s happy. You get other horror stories of lazy Chefs or unimaginative Chefs or Chefs who actually completely cocked it up and come close to running out of food because most Captains will not come in early, because that is such a blot on their copy book, they’ll just go and enforce rationing.
Simon Right.
David And I’ve heard stories of blokes coming back off of a Patrol, you know, starving. They’ve lost a decent amount of weight and you’re not doing any real effort out there. There’s no real, you know … alright the Polaris boats and that all have multigyms and exercise bikes and that but a diesel submarine, it’s a very sedentary life unless you’re a Stoker in the Engine Room wielding spanners but most of us spent eight hours a day in our bunk, eight hours a day in the Mess watching movies, reading, writing or whatever and eight hours at work, so not a great deal and these guys had lost weight and when we used to come in and de-store, you’d have a huge lorry would come down and take all your food off because you’re never normally at sea for as long as you expect. They reckoned he de-stored in a carrier bag.
Simon (laughs). Right.
David Two tins of pilchards and a tin of teabags or something like that. He lost his rating, he got punished, he got reported, put in the rattle as we call it in the Navy, and demoted for gross negligence of duty and deservedly so. But yeah, you plan your menus ahead, you get to know what your crew like, like I say, I could put sheep’s hearts on but I know to only do enough for about five people. I know lots of people don’t like offal, so I’d do a steak and kidney pie but I’d also do a steak pie.
Simon Right.
David So they’d get a choice. And not everyone likes curry, so blokes would do curry or Nasi Goreng, well, you know, not everybody likes oriental food so if you’re going to do a curry, do a roast or fish and chips, it doesn’t have to be … Chefs would say, “It’s all fish and chips on Friday.” You know, poor sods who don’t like fish and chips.
Simon Right.
David So you know, you get to know your crew within a few months and so you can balance your menus ‘cos the other thing you desperately want to avoid is waste. You don’t want loads of food left over.
Simon What would happen to that then? Would they have to blow it out the …?
David Well you would try and réchauffé it, which is a culinary term for reusing it as cold meats or something but as a general rule you haven’t got room to keep it so it goes down the drain and we have this …
Simon And to drain means expel it out of the boat?
David Well, that’s another little nest if you like. We have an amazing thing, it was amazing to me then, I think a lot of houses have it now, called Peter the Eater, which is a garbage disposal unit at the bottom of the sink.
Simon Ok.
David So whatever food you throw down there it just gets churned up into a liquid, into a soup and then it goes into what they call Sewage Tanks and Slop Drain Tanks, so every night at about 6 o’clock the submarine has a huge shit.
Simon (Laughs) Right.
David Ok, so when, the old boats, certainly my dad’s boats, you used the Heads and each Toilet, Heads a Toilet, each Toilet was it’s own little pressure tank, so you used the loo, you then phoned the Control Room and got permission to blow it out and of course if you were, certainly in war time, if you were in any way near the enemy, permission would be denied because it’s a noisy process and the one thing that gets a submarine sunk is noise. Silence has always been the watch word and even now I react very badly to sudden noises. My poor darling wife drops a tray in the kitchen, oh, what was that you know and it affects you.
Simon From the days of it being so important?
David Yes, yep, and I know I’m not alone in that, a lot of Submariners say because you know, we spend half our life creeping around in our socks at what they call ultra-quiet routine.
Simon Right.
David Because noise travels so well in water, that you’ve got to make the tiniest noise and you can be detected, so you wanted to go to the loo, you couldn’t flush it, so now, modern submarines you have this huge sewage tank, so all the toilets are linked to it so it’s at atmospheric pressure so you use the loo, you flush it, it’s got a pistol and course it’s sea water, because another thing, is fresh water’s a very precious commodity and we can come on to…
Simon Even on the Nuclears?
David No, on the diesels.
Simon On the diesels, right.
David Which I’ll come on to why I would often go eight weeks without a wash, even as a food handler but we can talk about that, but yeah fresh water was a premium so it’s flushed with a seawater hose and then you just press a flap and it’s like in the train, you know, a little flap opens and down it goes into a Tank and then every night you get the pipe, domestic routines, blow all slop drain and sewage, heads of bathrooms are not to be used until further notice so then all the Heads are locked off and the a pressure is applied, high pressure air is applied to this Tank and then the discharge valve is opened and everything gets blown out to sea, the lot, so everything from the Galley, human waste, everything is just blown out to sea and then all sealed off. You then have to vent. Because you’ve used high pressure air, that Tank is now full of high-pressure air, and everything that’s clung to the sides of the Sewage Tank so when you vent that air in its straight out of the shit tank.
Simon (Laughs) Right.
90 minutes 54 seconds
David: Now it comes through huge charcoal filters, but nothing gets rid of that, and where is that filter? Right outside the Galley.
Simon That’s a good bit of planning isn’t it!
David Isn’t it? Who thought of that? Right outside …
Simon Somebody who hadn’t been on board.
David Yeah, yeah, the Heads and Bathrooms on most of the diesel boats, unless the Galley was for’ard, if the Galley was aft, that’s where the Heads and Bathrooms were.
Simon Right.
David Go figure.
Simon Goodness.
David Yeah.
Simon So then you got a period of time where you’ve just got to put up with the smell and get used to it then?
David Yes, yeah, I mean if you’re on the surface it’s fine, the engines will yaffle that in five minutes and it’s gone, but if you’re dived it’s no fun. But yeah, to go back to water rationing, you know, diesel boats, they, obviously you take on fresh water when you sail but you get through that quite quickly but then you’ve got to make it and the way diesel boats make it is through Distillers and they run Distillers and they literally distil seawater.
Simon Distil in the same, as the way you do with a spirit?
David Yeah, yeah, yeah, you bring seawater in, boil it, it condenses and what condenses is fresh water and then you catch that.
Simon Capture that.
David: And put it into tanks, and what’s left is a brine, very, very strong seawater and you ditch that over the side. However, Distillers are noisy, they’re noisy bits of kit to run so the Captain won’t run them if you’re on an exercise where you’re trying to avoid detection, so then you go onto strict water rationing. Now it didn’t happen very often but if we did go on a proper War Patrol, er, the Captain would say, “Right, the bathrooms are out of use” so no-one can wash, you can’t do any laundry and the only person allowed to wash their hands and face is the Chef.
Simon Right.
David And I can remember walking through the Control Room one day and the First Lieutenant saying to me, “Chef, have you been washing your hands again?” and I said, “No Sir, I’ve been making bread.”
Simon Right.
David “Oh that’s alright then.” Now wouldn’t you think they’d insist that their food handler would wash their hands every two minutes? But again, it’s the sense of we’re all in this together and we can’t have, you know, the Captain can’t wash his hands so how can a lowly Chef? Well, hang on, you’re putting in your mouth what I’m handling, but no that was the mentality.
Simon Right.
David So I often, yeah, we would go to sea and wear the same things for six weeks. No that’s not true. Like I said, most of the diesel boats, two or three weeks and you’re in somewhere and then you wash yourself to death, you know. I mean you know the stories are legion where blokes would come home off Patrol and they’d have to empty their holdall into the garden.
Simon Did you have that when coming back and having the diesel inside, sort of in the clothes?
David Yes, yep, yep, yep. My daughters can remember I’d sometimes bring stuff home from the submarine. When you get back, pretty much everything you de-store food-wise has got to be ditched because it’s, stinks of diesel and petrol and it’s contaminated.
Simon Oh right, I hadn’t thought about the diesel getting into the food? Right.
David Yeah, nothing escapes that smell of a submarine and my daughters can remember … and if they eat a Penguin biscuit now, they expect it to taste of diesel.
Simon Right (Laughs).
David (laughs). ‘Cos I sometimes get a box of biscuits and I think, ‘Ah I’m not going to throw these in the bin, there’s nothing wrong with them’ so I’d take them home.
Simon To your taste, you couldn’t taste the diesel?
David Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely but the kids would go, “Oh dad, they’re horrible.”
Simon Right (Laughs).
David (laughs) But yeah, everything gets pretty much chucked, except tinned stuff obviously, nothing permeates that, but any sort of fresh food or dry provisions.
Simon Right.
David And it’s a terrible waste so that’s another reason not to overorder but you daren’t run out. Captain would have your guts for garters, or your boss, you know.
Simon What, so, you did all the time on the diesels, what was the shift, why did you shift to Nuclears?
David Promotions.
Simon Ok.
David Yep, ok, so the diesel boats, their compliment was a Leading Cook and a Cook, so once you get your POs right, once you become rated Petty Officer, you either go back to General Service or you go to Nuclears or Polaris because there is no billet for a Petty Officer Chef in a diesel submarine.
Simon Right.
David I mean it’s interesting, I got my Rate while I was Orpheus so I was on there as a PO Chef and I had to move into the Senior Rates Mess which, they’re not catered for so they found that a bit awkward but yeah, they’re one of the few submarines that had a PO Chef for a little while and that probably happened with all the Killicks who got their Rate if they were actually on a submarine when they got rated up. So, then I had to make a decision, ‘cos like most of the diesel Submariners we thought, ‘Oh these Nukes and Polaris, they’re all poofters’ and all this and in actual fact it’s the only way to go to sea. It’s the most comfortable, and they’re true submarines.
95 minutes 39 seconds
Simon Because of the size or …?
David Oh the size and the amenities. They make more fresh water than you can shake a stick at. You can have a couple of showers a day which is unheard of in a diesel submarine. The two shower cubicles on Porpoise were for beer, and they were stacked with beer, when you sailed. There was no chance that you could have a shower but on a Polaris Submarine or a Nuclear Submarine they make more water than they can use and they throw it away, so you can shower all day every day if you want to, so that alone is brilliant. You don’t sleep in the same Mess that you live in. Nuclear and Polaris Submarines have bunk spaces down, I mean the word three deck is a joke to an old diesel Submariner. There is only one deck on a diesel submarine, but down in three deck the most sumptuous sleeping accommodation.
Simon Three deck is three down is it?
David Yeah, so you’ve got the top deck, which is your Control Room, control services, two deck is accommodation and then three deck is sleeping and machinery spaces.
Simon Right, where’s the Galley in those then?
David On two deck, as part of the accommodation, so you got a Galley and then, I mean, again, on a diesel submarine you eat, sleep and live in that one area, that Mess deck. The middle bunks fold down, so the bottom bunk becomes a seat and the middle bunk is the back that you lean on, so you can’t stay in your bunk if you’ve got a bunk that forms a seat, until everyone’s gone to bed.
Simon Right.
David You’re stuffed. But that’s seniority.
Simon I was going to say, is that the most junior ones?
David Yeah, junior guys get those bunks, yeah. But even as a Baby Chef, I got a good bunk in the passageway because of the hours that I had to keep. So yeah, so you, I mean … some of the stories, you know we had, the Killick of the Mess on Oracle, a bloke called Griffin, he used to wake up, light up and get up, so he’d get a shake with a cup of tea, because he was the Leading Hand in the Mess so quite senior, even though he was a Junior Rating, very senior. Three badges, been in submarines forever, he’d get his pipe out [blowing noise] like that up [tapping] and then he’d get and he had to be careful where he put his feet because he could stand in someone’s porridge …
Simon (laughs).
David … or because that table, people have already started eating breakfast and he’s gotta climb out so he’d say, “Make Way” and they’d move their breakfast out the way and he’d climb out, sit down and then somebody would bring him his breakfast because he was the Killick and that’s how he used to get served. Everyone else had to go and get their own.
Simon Right.
David So yeah, so you’re sitting there, you’re eating your breakfast, sitting on what might be your bunk, then when they have a movie, that’s all done in the same place, so if they’re all watching a movie and you’re knackered, you can’t go to bed, unlucky, you just have to suck it up.
Simon Yeah.
David Whereas on a Polaris submarine or a Nuclear propelled submarine, they’ve got a separate Mess Deck, where they would have movies and eat, a Dining Room, completely separate to their sleeping accommodation so, and of course they are true submarines, they don’t have to surface for air, so they are true submersibles and diesel boats you say, ah, you know. I tell you there isn’t a more comfortable way to go to sea.
Simon Right.
David And especially with the Polaris with three months on crew, then three month off crew where you were virtually a free agent, you could do what you liked. Blokes went on hand-gliding courses and parachute courses and things like that because they had to try and find things to do. This was all because of the American system. When we adopted the American Polaris system, one of their conditions was you have to have two crews, because these submarines can stay at sea virtually forever. In a nuclear Submarine, never ever …
Simon So two crews is so you’re fresh when you come back to it or just because you’re away for so long?
David No because you can’t be away, you know, the Americans, you know, they did all the psychology and um, psychometric testing and everything else and they were, you know, a submarine that can stay at sea forever, they haven’t invented a bloke that can do that yet, and now a woman either but in my day it was strictly a stag you know, but yeah, the weakest link in all of this is the man and then very close after that the food. Well, yeah, she could actually be supplied at sea. Surface ships do it all the time, what they call razzing, replenishment at sea. Big Tanker comes along, chucks hoses over for fuel, hoses over for fresh water and big cranes or big wires and they just transfer stores, so a ship can stay at sea forever, but the man can’t so the American condition was that you have to have two crews, so the submarines spend most of the year at sea but the crews only spend half of it.
100 minutes 24 seconds
Simon Right, yeah.
David And it works.
Simon So when you shifted to that you made the decision, sort of bit the bullet, ok, I’m going to leave diesels, go to Nuclear …
David Yes, yeah.
Simon … quite different to how you expected it to be?
David Very. So, I left Porpoise with a Draft to the Tank, so I spent four years in the Escape Tank, my first stint there and all Tank Instructors will tell you the same, best job I ever had, the most satisfying job. To get a bunch of frightened trainees at … on a Monday morning and they’re obviously apprehensive and when they leave there on Thursday having finished it with this huge grin on their face that sort of says ‘Cor mum, you want to see what I’ve just done’, it’s such a good feeling and you’re teaching them something that might just, one day, save their life.
Simon Right.
David I know it’s all theory but one day, it only wants one bloke to make a successful escape and you’ve been part of that.
Simon Did you teach anyone that had to do an escape?
David No, we haven’t had a submarine accident since we lost the Affray in 1951, and that was, all hands were lost in that but the only submarine escape that’s happened in my time was when HMS … another ‘A’ boat, the … anyway, she sank alongside it, Dolphin and I was duty that night and again I was working in the Wardroom Galley and so this bloke came in, I didn’t know him from Adam and he said, “I need you to make six, no make it 12 gallons of soup” he said, “and muster about a dozen loaves of bread or any rolls you’ve got and once it’s all ready, give me a call on this number. I will send a Land Rover and a Driver round and we will come and pick that soup up, put it into urns and take it down to the Jetty because we’re going to be working all night ‘cos a submarine has just sunk alongside.” She was alongside Dolphin and she was shore-charging, so she had big cables going through the hatch but she’d also trimmed down so they broke the rules really, but what they should have had was a Sentry on that hatch so that if that hatch got too close, or let’s say a big Liner comes out the harbour and throws a big wash, if water starts going down there it chops, oh sorry. [knocks recorder – short pause to check] He chops those cables so they can shut the hatch, and that’s exactly what happened. She trimmed down too low and because of the cable fouling the hatch they couldn’t shut it, she flooded and she sank but she sank in 18 feet of water alongside the wall. The conning tower was still just sticking out above the surface. There’s some great pictures on You Tube you’ll find it. I’m so cross that I can’t think of …
Simon No-one on board though was there?
David Yeah.
Simon There were people onboard?
David Yeah there was, in fact it was worse than no-one on board. There was a group of Sea Cadets being shown round because this happened during the day. So you had about four or five members of crew were showing these Sea Cadets round, so they all acted very quickly and they all did the right things and they shut all the water-tight bulkhead doors, threw these kids off, fairly unceremoniously and most of the blokes scrambled, out but the guys that needed to shut the right hatches and stayed in the submarine and went down with her. Perfectly knowledgeable.
Simon Yes.
David And so the Escape Staff went down the Jetty, conducted, and they waited until the next day I think because it was just turning dark and they thought ‘there’s no point in getting them out in the dark’, you know.
Simon Because they were ok, had plenty of air?
David More air than you can shake a stick at you know, a huge torpedo compartment, no water coming in so they’re absolutely fine but, and of course the idea was let’s see if we can raise her first, so that’s what took all night. So, in the end they thought ‘No we can’t’. Artemis, Artemis, yes. So, in the end they said, “No we can’t raise you, you’ll have to do an escape” and then they did a textbook escape. In fact, it was not textbook, it was horrendous because no-one ever thought of escaping from a submarine in such shallow water.
Simon Right, so you’re not going to be going up at such speed I guess?
David No, not that, it’s how long it took to flood the submarine because if you’re at 200 feet and you open a valve, that water comes in so fast it could cut your arm off.
Simon Right.
David So at 20 feet it trickles and gurgles in, it took hours to equalise and when they opened the hatch, the water level was only up to about there and the pressure equalised, the hatch opened at it flooded in, but they got out absolutely fine.
Simon Right.
David So no lives were lost but no, I’ve never, and no-one I know has taught someone who has had to put it into good use.
Simon Ok.
David Thank God.
Simon And did you teach people from other countries as well?
105 minutes 12 seconds
David We did yeah, yeah. We taught Aussies, we taught everybody who bought our submarines, so you know, Aussies, Canadians, the Germans, Israelis, Italians, and we had such fun, it was so funny, I mean when I say it was a great job it gave us so many laughs, like when, when you come to the Tank top, have you ever been in the Tank?
Simon Yeah.
David When you get in the Tank there was all signs around saying you know, ‘Blow out all the way up to the surface, two taps in your stomach, blow harder, put your hand on your mouth, blow less’, you know there were all these signs but of course, when different, like the Israelis came we had to hang their signs up, and all the Israelis came out the top of the Tank and they’re going; we’d hung them upside down.
Simon (laughs).
David We didn’t know what Hebrew’s meant to look like, and we’d hung them all upside down. So, things like that, I trained … and of course before the Israelis, the Navy came they would send Instructors over to act as interpreters, like, you know, a lot of Israelis didn’t speak English. A lot of them do but a lot of them didn’t so they would send Instructors over who had great English and we would teach them almost Quasi Instructors, so that when we’re talking to the trainees, they’re translating but they know what we’re saying. They’re not trying to do it by rote, they know what we’re saying about equalisation, the pressure coming on, clearing your ears, you know, how to do it and so, and so when the Instructors came we each got one and I, I got one, one year, a guy called Ori Desacnic and I trained him for six weeks to be an Instructor and he was a super guy, they were all Officers and in fact he ended up being, ending up as a Submarine Commander in the Israeli Navy, but yeah, so we had these different Navies, and it used to stagger me that they flew people from Sydney to do this regularly and of course eventually they built their own Tank and a lot of our Instructors then went over there to help them build it and then, not physically build it, as soon as it was built, help train up Instructors but I was at sea when that happened so I dipped out of that one, but yeah.
Simon So you volunteered to do that, or what, what was the route to being at SETT then, for you?
David Oh, all volunteers. So, I was on the Orpheus working with the bootnecks and, having done two re-quals and decided I actually enjoyed it, I thought I think, because I also knew that they got a lot of money. You got minute money. You got a penny for every minute you spent in the water.
Simon Really?
David Yeah.
Simon Ok.
David And that builds up over a few years you know. Taxed of course but even so, and it was a very self-contained job. Nobody bothered the Tank. We used to infuriate the PT staff because we used to wear PT instructors rig, PTIs they’re called, so a white vest with blue ribbing on it and blue, um, not uniform trousers but like twill trousers and plimsolls and a hat, and that’s exactly the uniform that the PT instructors wear and they’re exclusive, they’re very elitist in the Navy.
Simon Are they? Right.
David They couldn’t bear the fact. The only thing that differentiated them was they had the club swingers badge on their T-Shirt and we didn’t but from the back we looked like a PTI and they hated that and we used to beat them at volleyball. That was the other thing I loved. One of the things in the Tank, the science of it is, we are limited, very limited to time at the bottom, so you can only spend 20 minutes at the bottom in any day.
Simon In the water?
David In the water, under pressure at the bottom. You can spend 90 minutes at 18 metres and 9 metres and above you can spend all day because you’re not under any real pressure, it dissipates easily but 20 minutes on the bottom. And that was a day. Well, the Institute of Naval Medicine got involved because it was found that to be able to maintain that you had to have a lot of Instructors, which meant a lot of them, a lot of the time were unemployed but you needed that.
Simon: Resting or …?
David … to give people time on the bottom, so the Institute of Naval Medicine got involved and they said, “Right, if you do fairly active physical exercise for an hour at lunchtime, you can do another 10 minutes on the bottom” and you know, the purse, the bean counters worked out that could save them a few Instructors and pay, you know, so that’s what we did. So, we tried all sorts of stuff, we tried five-a-side, I can’t kick a ball to save my life. Running, boring, but we found volleyball, everybody liked it and it’s very fast and you come back soaked. You know, in the winter, play in the Gym, in the summer, on the outdoor volleyball courts and we got so good we beat all-comers in Dolphin. We beat the Germans, the Germans sent over a team, no, I lie, they beat us, but virtually every team, every Sports Day in Dolphin, we weren’t allowed to compete in the end.
Simon Really?
110 minutes 21 seconds
David Because if you play something every day you get good at it, and you know how everyone else plays.
Simon So the idea there was getting more oxygen into you?
David The more exercise you get you get this, it’s not getting more oxygen, it’s getting rid of these little bubbles that are formed in your bloodstream.
Simon Ok, the nitrogen?
David Yeah, yeah.
Simon Right, Ok.
David So, physical, strenuous exercise dissipates it quicker, so we could then do another ten minutes in the afternoon, so we could get 30 minutes of bottom time. Or 120 minutes at 9 metres and below, you know, so it was great science and brilliant, and again … I don’t know, how are you off for time?
Simon Yeah, I’m fine with it as long as you are?
David [shows photograph] Yeah, I’m second from the left, that was the Navy volleyball team.
Simon Ok.
David Do you recognise me? Does it look like me?
Simon Second from the left?
David Yeah.
Simon I don’t recognise you.
David I’m very handsome.
Simon This one here?
David: Yeah.
Simon Yeah.
David The second one.
Simon Yeah ok.
David Yeah the short, right in the front, shortish.
Simon Ok. [Telephone rings]
David Yep. That’s me actually in a Galley, cooking on a diesel submarine.
Simon Right.
David Now I know it could be anywhere but take my word for it.
Simon Yeah. Ok.
David That’s two pictures of HMS Oracle.
Simon Ok.
David And I challenge you to find me on the second one.
Simon Ok, challenge failed (laughs).
David Yeah, Ok, I’m in a blue uniform.
Simon Ok.
David If that helps, as opposed to number eights. I’m kneeling down on the Jetty.
Simon Ok.
David Yep?
Simon Well that’s one of two (laughs).
David Yeah that’s right.
Simon 50/50, I’m going to go left.
David And that’s where I met Mary.
Simon Oh is it?
David Yeah, the submarine went into Derry. Mary’s from Derry and that’s where I met her, 1968, and so we’ve just celebrated our 53rd anniversary.
Simon Right.
David And that’s me getting my long service and good conduct medal off Captain Hayhoe.
Simon So that’s a question on … did Mary know what she was marrying into, when, because it’s quite a different life to what a lot of people do in life isn’t it?
David Yeah, yeah. I mean that’s an interesting question.
Simon Did you forewarn or say, you know, it’s not quite the same as it might be otherwise?
David No, I don’t think I did. I mean Derry was a famous place for submarines and the Navy to go in. I mean we had a Naval Base there, HMS Sea Eagle, but ships used to go in there all the time so I’m … they had an expression for girls that regularly went out with Sailors, they called them ‘Navy Dolls’, so I think there was an awareness of what being married to a Sailor must be like, ‘cos they had a Navy Base there so they would have had girls married there, living there.
Simon Yes.
David That’s Oracle up in Scotland, those two.
Simon It’s big, isn’t it?
David Yes but that’s a tiny little diesel boat.
Simon Is it?
David Yes. This is my…
Simon What’s that up at the front there then?
David That’s a sonar dome.
Simon Ok.
David Inside there is what looks like a radar but underwater it’s a sonar dome and it’s just, it’s your ears, and that’s my team. I’m on the extreme left, on HMS Renown, a Polaris Submarine, so that’s just the Supply Team, whereas on a diesel boat there’s two of you. There we had a Supply Officer, a PO Steward, PO Chef, Chief Stores and all the Chefs. I had a Killick and three Chefs, um, a Stores Assistant and a PO Stores, a PO Steward and two Stewards, and a Supply Officer.
Simon Was it because there was like three times the number of people on board?
David Yeah, well 120 but it’s just a much, much bigger evolution, a much … Galley was huge, you know the Galley wasn’t, probably nearly two thirds the size of this.
Simon So that must have, for change from that being the tiny one to that?
David Yes, yeah, massive, oh what a culture shock.
Simon Did it feel freeing?
David Er no not for me because I didn’t work in the Galley. I ran the Galley. I entrusted the running of the Galley, I delegated that to the Killick Chef which he did a very good job of. No, I had too many jobs to do. I was a professional one-man Control Planesman so that was my job. Three times a day I was on watch in the Control Room, plus I had to do all the book-keeping, menu planning, base musters and stores so I wouldn’t have had time to go in the Galley anyway.
Simon What’s the base musters?
115 minutes 3 seconds
David Maybe every month you and the Supply Officer go in and do an inventory of everything that you’ve got, and report back to the Captain, “Captain, we still have endurance for maybe another 37 days.”
Simon Ok.
David So he knows all the time, because again, this continuous at sea deterrent that we sign up for is absolute. You cannot come off Patrol until the submarine that’s relieving you is on station and a SET QRA, er, weapons readiness alert, quick reaction alert. If something happened to that ship on its way out, you can’t just say, “Time’s up, we’re going home.” You’re stuck there so you get a signal, what they call a repent and that is the biggest killer of morale ever known to man is you’re getting ready, you’re going to be surfacing in two days’ time and then going home and you get a signal saying you’ve been repented, you’ve got to stay another week. Ok, so you live with it but then suppose that submarine has another problem and something stops. I mean it wouldn’t always be our submarine. You can be relieved by an American Polaris submarine but if that submarine has a real problem you could get repented for another week. You could get into the situation where you would go on to strict food rationing and then you could be in a situation where the Captain would put an armed Sentry on the provisions store and the fridges.
Simon Wow, wow.
David Yeah.
Simon Did you experience that?
David No, no.
Simon Ok.
David But that provision was there for it, because people will do anything.
Simon If they’re hungry?
David To satisfy their hunger.
Simon Right, right.
David And so there was, and of course the victualling would change drastically because the Navy only has to keep you fit to fight. It doesn’t have to keep you happy; it doesn’t have to keep you well fed, and fit to fight is amazingly meagre rations. So, it would turn people’s worlds upside down.
Simon Right.
David But apparently, people who’ve, who’ve come close to experiencing it say, “You just get used to it.” Look at lockdown. How quickly we just fell into it. Who would have thought that we’d accept such deprivation of liberty? And apparently it’s the same. People’s mentality changes, but it would be that strict, or it could be.
Simon Well you’ve got no choice really have we either, so.
David No, no.
Simon Yeah.
David But this is a good picture because there’s a whole story in this. I bought my first house because of being in the Escape Tank.
Simon Oh right? Ok.
David So …
Simon Oh that’s great.
David You won’t find me there, so I’ll show you.
Simon They’re survival suits are they?
David They are, and they are … we’re testing a brand-new type of survival suit but, er, I can’t see upside down, that’s me.
Simon Oh ok, yes.
David So that’s in Haslar Creek.
Simon Yeah.
David Yeah, let me just check. Yes that’s me.
Simon Right.
David At 7 o’clock.
Simon They look like crocodiles somehow.
David They do, but they’re quilted, and as I said they’re double skinned so when you pull this CO2 bottle, it [inflating noise] inflates it, and you blow up like a Michelin Man. Ok? So that’s that suit I was telling you about that you come up in the water in. So, we’ve all got our visors sort of folded back but you can see the top half of it. So, we were doing … we were tasked with trialling this suit so what we decided to do was we’d get ourselves sponsored for a children’s charity, so we got people to sponsor us for the number of hours we could spend in the water. Now when we teach submarine escape, we say, “This suit is good for 24 hours, mid Atlantic, unless you vomit yourself to death’ because it’s rough because there’s nothing worse than laying on your back in rough sea. But it will keep you, not warm but not hypothermic for a, quite a good few hours. This is June, balmy day, in Portsmouth Harbour.
Simon Right.
David In fact in Haslar Creek, and that’s how many of us got back in, got into the water. Now, that was about 4 o’clock on Sunday. The huge …
Simon 20 or so people there.
David Yeah. And they’re all instructors from the Tank. The huge mistake that they made was the timing because the majority of those guys had been at the PO’s Mess giving it some of that. Now, when you’re floating around in the ocean your biggest problem is passing water because, when you have a pee, it collects in the small of your back in that suit, if you’re laying down, it will. When that gets cold that’s your kidneys immersed in cold liquid, and they don’t like it and they start to shut down. Because these guys have all been out there … I mean you wear a huge nappy, good for about 10 pints they reckon, or three pounds if you want, but they all started peeing within a few hours. The next day there was only two of us left in the water. Now this is balmy Portsmouth Harbour, June day, so God knows how it would have been really like in the mid-Atlantic. So anyway, next day there’s only two of us, me and Pat Masters left in the water and they sent someone out from the local Radio Station to interview us and this bloke stuck a microphone up my nose and he said, “What you been thinking about laying here?” Oh no the first question he asked me, he said, “What are you going to do when you’re getting out?” I said, “I can’t tell you.”
Simon (laughs)
David (laughs). He said, “So what you been thinking about laying here for nearly 20 hours?” and I said, “Well the truth of the matter is” I said, “I’ve been”, my wife and I were trying to buy our first house, but because we hadn’t been saving with a Building Society we can’t get a mortgage because in those days, you had to have been saving with a Building Society before they’d lend you money.
Simon Right.
120 minutes 45 seconds
David To prove that you were a reliable person. There were lotteries, you could get your name drawn out of a hat, I mean this is probably all alien to you but yeah, you had to have been a regular saver before they’d consider you for a mortgage. That went out on the radio the next day and the Managing Director of Laing Homes overheard it, so he wrote to the Captain of HMS Dolphin and said, “Put me in touch with this chap”, he said, “We have funds, I’ll give him a mortgage.”
Simon Wow.
David And he did so I met with him, and he said, “Ok here’s what we’ll do.” He said, “I’ll knock” … it was a brand-new house in Lee-on-Solent and it was £19,500 and he said, “Well we’ll lose the £500 quid.” He said, “I’ll turf it for you front and back” because when you buy a brand-new house, all you get is the dirt normally and he said, “and we’ll do a nice finish on the front, put a nice front door on” he said. All I … because I said, “What do you want?” He said, “We just want a bit of publicity.” I said, “Well the Navy’s not very good at that” and he said “I’ve spoken to the First Lieutenant of HMS Dolphin and he said so long as it doesn’t involve you telling us anything. He said, “Photographs, they’re fine.” So, there were two or three photographs. I looked for them, I couldn’t find them. One of them is I’ve got, I put that suit on and went down to about 10 feet. The guy from Laing Homes stood at the Tank top with a set of keys and I …
Simon (laughs).
David … let go, and I popped out the water like a ****ing performing seal.
Simon (laughs) You didn’t!
David And grabbed them and that appeared in their paper.
Simon Right.
David And then I had a couple more photos of him handing over the keys to us at the front of the house, so if I hadn’t had been in the Tank I probably wouldn’t have bought my first house when I did.
Simon Wow. Wow wow, wow.
David So right place right time.
Simon What a great story.
David So if I … and the reason I was still in the water next day is I’d been Duty so I couldn’t go to the Bar so I couldn’t have had a drink.
Simon Yeah.
David And that’s two of us who were Duty were the only two left the next day.
Simon Right (laughs).
David (laughs). Now there’s a good story isn’t it?
Simon That is good.
David And that’s why we’re in this house today, because of that.
Simon Right. Goodness.
David I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you much about food but er.
Simon You have.
David It’s, yeah? Anything else?
Simon You have, yeah, yeah there’s been loads of it. Well, I guess there, when you went to the Nuclears you were sort of more senior and it was more managerial as well as …
David That’s why I had to leave diesel boats, because of promotion, so once you become a PO and then a Chief, you can’t stay in submarines, diesel boats.
Simon Ok. So, when you were at the SETT, was it, you were just SETT, you weren’t doing the Chefing as well?
David Oh no, no, you’re just a Submarine Escape Instructor.
Simon Ok, yeah.
David And that’s another very interesting point. The Instructors are made up from virtually, virtually every branch in the Navy, so my fellow Instructors were Stokers, Chefs, Stewards, Stores Accountants, Coxswains and the reason for that is, is this. If you teach someone to do any kind of underwater activity with a Diver, it gives the impression that that’s a very specialist person who’s doing it. Oh yeah you can do that, you’re a diver.
Simon Ok.
David But if you go to the Tank and you see your old PO Chef is now an Instructor there, you think, ‘Well if he can do it, I can do it.’
Simon Right, right.
David So it lays any myth about it being secretive or elitist. It’s showing to teach Submariners with Submariners. They know that we know what they have to do at sea, and of course as I said to you over the phone, every few years we’d go to sea and do trials so I’ve actually escaped from a submarine from 400 feet and I did a trial with the American DSRV and I got rescued from a submarine at 400 feet.
Simon Well tell us the first one about escaping.
David Yeah, so every, you know, four or five years I think, we would prove to ourselves, to the Fleet and to, most importantly, to Submariners, that the system actually works so we would go …
Simon The theory’s covered?
David Yep, yep we’ve done it.
Simon We’ve practiced it loads so let’s see it.
David In the Tank. See the Tank is warm, brightly lit, I mean it’s bath temperature because as Instructors we’re in there all day with, wearing only a pair of trunks, so if you got cold you’d be more worried about your own wellbeing than the wellbeing of the trainee, so it’s bath temperature, it’s balmy and, and it’s brightly lit and you’re surrounded by Instructors. Now that is slightly different from the stark freezing cold terror of a sinking submarine.
Simon Right.
125 minutes 9 seconds
David And everyone agrees that. Fair do’s. So, we’d take it to sea on a running submarine and show the whole Submarine Service that it works because it gets trumpeted, let people know. So, off we go, and we go up to somewhere in Scotland, to a Loch so you’re not worried too much about tides and things like that so it’s very controlled and the submarine will go along and bottom, normally at about 400 feet. If you go deeper, there is a depth below which it becomes experimental, or trials and they have to pay you extra money which they don’t like to do.
Simon (laughs)
David It’s bad enough they’re already giving you Tank pay, so they bottom out at around about, I think when I did it, it was 408 feet and then, maybe a dozen Instructors will then do the escape and we also say to the crew, “If anybody wants to have a go, you can.” So, you normally start off at about 200 feet, so you do your escapes there, so you’ve got everything up top; you’ve got a Safety Boat, you’ve got a Recompression Chamber and everything you’ll need if anything should go wrong, and then you work your way down and we got down to …
Simon So then it comes, the submarine comes back up, picks you up?
David Submarine comes up.
Simon Takes you down again.
David You all go back onboard, back down and do it again.
Simon Ok, right.
David And that was great fun and that was spectacular, so you go into the escape tower, this, 400 feet right. So, you check your suit like a paratrooper checks his parachute I imagine. The last thing you want is tears, holes, anything that’s going to lose this air sack that you’re going to depend on. I mean it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it ripped because you’d go back to Phase 1 and blow out [blowing noise] to the surface. So, you check your suit and then when your turn comes you come in and the first time you do it of course you’re nervous, you’re doing it in a nice warm Tank, now it’s 400 feet in the ocean or …
Simon And pitch dark as well.
David Oh you don’t know a darkness like it and that’s the other point I was going to make so you flood up, you know it’s …the thing you have to realise is how quickly you must be pressurised because you cannot spend, at 600 feet you’ve got 18 seconds to pressurise and make a direct ascent. Any longer than that, you’re gonna get the bends.
Simon Oh really?
David So if you start having pains with your ears they can’t stop. Oh, you can in trials, you can hammer and they’ll stop and drain you down, but the real thing, you just suck it up, and I mean burst eardrums isn’t the end of the world.
Simon Relatively, yes.
David They heal in about four, five weeks. Your hearing’s very rarely impaired and a very small price to pay to get out of a submarine, so it’s very short, sharp pain and then they’re free flood.
Simon Right.
David It’s easy after that, it’s bliss when they go because then you don’t even have to clear your ears anymore. So, you climb in the Tower, they clang when they shut that lower lid and you think, ‘Oh what am I doing here?’ You plug in and then you [banging noise] two bangs is enough, it starts to flood and you’ve got a little vent pipe so you keep an eye on that and as soon as the water gets up to that level they shut it inside the submarine and that’s when pressure comes on you [noise] and you’re really pumping, and then all of a sudden you feel a cascade of water comes in, ‘coz what’s happened is you’ve equalised, maybe the water’s three or four feet below the hatch, but equalisation has happened, they’ve wound the hatch open, it’s also spring-loaded and you feel all the water gush in and then wild horses wouldn’t stop you ‘coz you’ve got all this buoyancy in there so bang, out you go.
Simon Is there someone feeding you out?
David No, no, no, it’s only a single tower, one man in it.
Simon Ok.
David So now you’re hurtling somewhere. You know you’re going fast, but you don’t know if you’re doing that, that, or even that, so what we were told to do by blokes who’d done it before, is cross your legs and that’ll make you rifle up.
Simon Oh, spin round.
David ‘Cos you could easily go up like that, well somewhere up there is the very hard hull of a ship.
Simon (laughs) Right.
David Which you (laughs) really don’t want to hit, so they said, “Cross your feet and keep your hands tight to your sides and you will spiral and it will make you.” So now you’re hurtling up …
Simon Are you feeling dizzy when you’re spinning around?
David No, no, no, no, no, and it’s … I mean we all did it, as we come out, hold on, try, to experience that dark that might I be out of the sea, part of the submarine but it’s black, it’s a blackness you can’t imagine. So, now you’re hurtling up through the water at about 11 feet a second and then out the top of your visor you see this green glimmer and it gets brighter and brighter, bright, bright, bright, bright, and then [hitting noise] and you pop out like a Polaris missile and flop back down in the water.
Simon Are you, so what you literally come out the water do you?
David Oh yeah, by certainly more, just, more than your waist. 11 feet a second, you pop and then the first thing you do is hold your hand up to show you’re alright and then a Gemini comes [zooming noise] and drags you unceremoniously in and they take you straight back to Gemini, unzip you and sit you by the Recompression Chamber for two minutes to make sure you’ve got no adverse reactions.
Simon Right.
David And that’s it.
130 minutes 17 seconds
Simon And, and, you’re sort of having some trepidation before doing it?
David Oh yeah absolutely.
Simon Even though you’re totally trained?
David Yeah, yeah.
Simon Of course, you’re trying to help.
David You’re the Trainer but this is the first time you’ve done it in cold, dark water. You know, but yeah, it was exhilarating, there’s no other word for it. And you know, something I’m very, very proud of, and then, the next thing we know we have, get involved in this exercise where they fly the DSRV over. Have you ever seen?
Simon That’s the sort of rescue sub?
David Yeah, yeah, have you ever seen ‘Grey Lady Down’?
Simon No.
David No, that’s a good movie, you watch it, an American submarine sinks, Nuclear Submarine and it’s stuck on the bottom and they send this DSRV, there’s two, Avalon and Mystic and they’re, certainly in the ‘80s when I did it, they’re futuristic, they’re out, obsolete, not used now, they’re museum pieces, but in our day they were space age, futuristic, all very NASA-orientated. For example, their trimming is done by mercury. I don’t think that’s a secret anymore, so as soon as the submarine does that, mercury flows and makes a contact, starts to pump.
Simon Ah, right.
David And it rights it and that thing can stay stock still, and hover in the water, and so basically what happens, we went out on HMS Repulse, um, and we had the DSRV piggy-backed on the back of us and in fact there was a story, and I know it’s true ‘cos I saw it. There was a Peace Camp at the Submarine Base, Ban the Bomb protestors, and they took a photo of us going out to sea with the DSRV on the back and it said oh, looks like Submarine Renown has had an abortion and she’s taken it out to sea to throw it in the water (laughs).
Simon Goodness.
David They were quite vitriolic.
Simon Right.
David So anyway, we sailed on Repulse, now this was the first time I’d ever set foot down a Polaris submarine and I knew my future probably lie in there but again, from a diesel boat it was spectacular, the room and everything and of course we had loads of Americans on board because it’s an American system. We go out, we dive and we dive near HMS Otter. So, all us Instructors then go back to the after-escape compartment, climb into it, shut the lower lid. This is at about 400 feet and then they flood that little compartment between the submarine and the lower hatch, it’s like a skirt so they flood, that and eventually it breaks the seal and she lifts off and then she goes zoom.
Simon That’s the DSRV itself?
David The DSRV.
Simon Right.
David With 22 of us on board.
Simon Right.
David And she just goes along and finds the submarine, comes along, mates.
Simon Oh really?
David But when we lifted off and the crew must do this and scare the shit out of everybody. When she lifts off she’s still got some air trapped in that skirt and she gets rid of it by yawing.
Simon Right.
David Like that, but they don’t tell you, and we wondered …
Simon All of a sudden it’s tipping on the side?
David Yep, we wondered when, in the beginning, why we had to put like rally harnesses on.
Simon Right.
David And they said, “Oh you’ve got to buckle up” and it’s four points; over there, two there and a big central parachute release thing, and then we lift off and all of a sudden we go yeeeaww.
Simon (laughs) Right.
David And you can see the crew giggling, bastards. So anyway, so then we come across and we find Otter and of course we painted big white rings around the hatches to make it easy for them.
Simon So someone’s piloting it?
David Oh there’s two Pilots and a crewman. Yep.
Simon Ok.
David And it’s, and they’re flying it like an aircraft and they come along and they just very gently settle down and then they pump some water out and they get what they call a soft seal and then once that holds for five minutes then they pump it all out, get a hard seal, open the hatch, bang, bang on the submarine’s hatch and at 400 feet, they open their escape hatch.
Simon Wow.
David Which would normally be to the ocean.
Simon Right. So that’s got to be some trust there hasn’t it?
David Oh, dear and I mean it’s one of the greatest achievements of my life, other than becoming a dad and sticking at marriage for 50 odd years, that, that features up there with them. To stand on a submarine casing and you know it’s at 400 feet and there’s maybe little bits of dirt trapped between the skirt and it lets a little shard of water come in and it hurts.
Simon Oh, right. ‘Coz the pressure’s so immense?
David Even, yeah, even through that thick suit.
Simon Like a needle is it?
David It’s like a needle, and they say, “Be careful, it could cut your suit.”
Simon Wow.
David It doesn’t matter here, um, but if you’re doing it for real and you were going to escape, that would be an air hole.
Simon: Right.
David And they said you know, if that hits your bare skin, if it’s a big enough jet it could cut your skin as well, but to stand, you think, ‘I’m stood on the casing of a submarine here and it’s 400 feet under water,’ and then you climb down in the submarine and once you’re all in, they shut the hatch and you feel this ‘domp’.
Simon Right.
David As it lifts off and off it goes and it did that twice.
135 minutes 16 seconds
Simon So that was to show this is how we can rescue people?
David Yep, yep, it was just a confidence building thing. We had this moratorium of understanding. I mean the Americans would virtually go to the aid of any Western submarine, anywhere in the world, or they did with DSRV, they must have something similar now, but they loaded it into the back of this huge great C147 Skylifter or something, on that …
Simon That’s a plane or a helicopter?
David A plane in which a huge truck drove with this thing on the back of it and it landed at Glasgow Airport and they offloaded it and then they had to drive it up to Faslane and to do that, they had to shut more roads than you can chuck a stick at, they had to remove lamp posts.
Simon Really? (Laughs).
David Trees, where it wouldn’t go round corners.
Simon Right.
David And so it completely disrupted Glasgow life for a couple of days. But that shows the intent is there.
Simon Ok.
David And the same that way, so even if the submarine has landed on the side of a mountain like that, she comes along and just goes dong, doosh and mates and does it.
Simon Did that ever get used in the end?
David Not in anger, not to my knowledge, no.
Simon No, Ok. Wow. Exciting.
David: So, I’ve been so lucky for a Chef, I’ve done some amazing things in my time in submarines, and I’ve got some great memories and great mates, as we all have, you know.
Simon Well that’s one thing I need to ask, about the solidarity and…
David The camaraderie.
Simon Camaraderie, yeah.
David It’s, it’s infectious. I mean we’re going to see friends, um, next weekend down in Wiltshire. I first met him in the Escape Tank. I never served on a submarine with him but we had, got on so well in the Tank. I go to my Reunions, normally it’s the first, they’ve changed it now, it’s the first Wednesday in every month and I see guys that I might not have seen for 20, 30 years will suddenly turn up and I was on a boat with them and it’s great, you have a few beers and you chin-wag. We have diesel submarine Reunions where only diesel Submariners go. There’s one in Plymouth and one in Gateshead every year. They’re great fun and, yeah, last time I went up to Gateshead I saw guys I hadn’t seen for 30, 40, 50 years. I left Oracle in ’70, so I hadn’t seen them, so if that was three, four years ago, 48 years since I’d seen them, and it was, and even though they’re 48 years older they look to me, the same! My old Killick Chef, George Purcell, he looks, he’s huge but he sounds the same and I know him.
Simon You’re sort of mentally taken back to how he looked at the time?
David Yep, yep, yep. He says, “I remember the time you nicked my bloody rum in Gibraltar!” F***in’ hell.
Simon Still remembers?
David Yeah, 50 years ago (laughs).
Simon Right (laughs)
David So yeah, the camaraderie is great and Submariners have something that our General Service counterparts don’t have and I do not say that in a disparaging way, it’s just life, it’s just fate. We have to know more about our ship than they do. If they get bombed, they may have a few hours to get off while it sinks. We don’t have that luxury. We can’t send for the Fire Brigade; I have to know how to put a fire out. It’s as simple as that. What is it? It’s logistics.
Simon Yeah, well its survival.
David It’s, it’s the nature of the beast. It is what it is, but a Chef on an Aircraft Carrier doesn’t have to know how to shut off from a hydraulic leak and he wouldn’t know, but he doesn’t have to.
Simon Yeah. One thing that, this is being funded by the High Street Action Zone.
David Ok.
Simon Of Gosport.
David Yep.
Simon So what are your memories of being in Gosport, of, you know, the time ashore? You were, I guess during SETT you were living in the house that you bought because of the flow tank?
David Well eventually. So, we got married in Londonderry in 1969, we moved to Scotland for a few months and then we came down to Gosport and we’ve lived in Gosport or Fareham ever since. Other than going back up to Scotland for a couple of years, so we moved down to Gosport, we lived in married quarters in Rowner, in Anvil Close, er, from ’70 to ’75. From ’75 to ’80 we lived in Gold Close which was one of the Married Quarters which has now been pulled down and much newer housing has been built along Nimrod Drive there, and then in ’80 I bought my first house because of that fortunate incident in the floating in the Tank. Then we moved, when I first went up, joined HMS Renown in Scotland, my wife decided that me commuting every weekend when we were off crew was a strain she didn’t want me to have, um, I think she was more worried about the milage on the car but anyway, she decided to put the house up for rent and so I brought my wife and daughters up and we lived in Scotland for a couple of years and that’s where we met our other best friends. I was on Renown with him and they were living in Scotland as well and we became friends with them and we were on holiday with them this year in Cornwall.
140 minutes 54 seconds
Simon Right.
David So friendships do last, there’s no doubt about it, but Gosport’s our home. My children were born here, they always think of it as home even though my youngest daughter’s been in America now for 25, 30 years, er, but my other daughter lives in Fareham so she’s Gosport, Fareham born and bred. They went to St Edmunds School. I can remember of course when you could drive down Gosport High Street, long before it was a pedestrian precinct and you could park outside Littlewoods or Woolworths and do shopping and the Ark Royal was the go-to Pub on the corner there opposite the ferry and the Portholes chip shop, fish and chip shop but we have fond memories. Can I be honest?
Simon Yeah.
David I’m saddened at the state of Gosport High Street now with the charity shops and the empty shops. I think it’s a shame and so anything that could be done to revitalise that, renovate it, restore it, I think could only be a good thing because I think it’s sad at the moment. Although we moved up here in 2013 so I don’t go to Gosport High Street anything like I used to. I’ll be down there in a couple of weeks’ time for the memorial for HMS Affray. That last accident I told you about, where we lost all members of the crew. We have a memorial every year so that takes me down to Gosport, it’s held on the front, there’s a little memorial stone tablet down there, so I’m down there two or three times a year. I go down there for Remembrance Sunday and a couple of other occasions but yeah, unless it’s changed in the last 10 years, I think it was looking quite sad and tired.
Simon So when it was in its heyday, what are your memories of it then?
David Oh it was great, I mean, everything you needed was in Gosport. You know, the High Street shops were proper shops you know, they weren’t all the chains. There was a Wimpey, you know a Burger Bar, that was exotic and of course there were so many Pubs in Gosport. Gosport was famous for all its Brickwood’s Pubs and a lot of them still stand.
Simon Was that the Brewer was it?
David That was the local Brewery.
Simon What was it called?
David Brickwood’s.
Simon Brickwood’s, right.
David And it was not regarded with any great affection.
Simon Wasn’t it? (laughs).
David No, no, people used to think ergh. I mean there’s pub down Forton Road called The White Swan and that’s always been a Free House, so they can sell and they’re predominantly they were a Courage house, I mean it’s gone now but that was next door to the … when I worked for Captain Oliphant as his Chef he was in, he lived in Vincent House which is … do you know the old HMS Vincent? HMS St Vincent?
Simon I don’t, no.
David Ok, Mumby Road, um, once you go past The Crossways, you know The Crossways? Where the old Bingo Hall is, The Criterion? So, you come in from you know, do you know Forton Road?
Simon My geography’s not good.
David Oh no sorry, you’re Isle of Wight.
Simon Yeah, sorry.
David I’m thinking you are Gosport, right, yeah, Ok, so, there was a Boys’ Training Establishment, just like HMS Ganges at Shotley, right in the heart of Gosport, called HMS St Vincent, and that shut down about the same time as Ganges, when they raised the school-leaving age to 16 there was no need to take boy entrants anymore and continue their academic education. Now when I was at Captain Oliphant’s house, he was living in what was the Captain of HMS St Vincent’s house, called Vincent House, excuse me [drinks water]. His official residence in Alverstoke wasn’t particularly suitable for him and because Vincent House was empty he said, “I’ll have that until you decide what to do with it.” Beautiful big, fabulous sort of six-bedroom stately house and I had downstairs quarters, you know, the kitchen and the pantry and everything was downstairs and then up, first floor was the dining, beautiful, magnificent dining room and the entertaining they did, I mean I learnt a lot in that job. I’ve cooked for Foreign Admiralties, Admirals, senior Naval Officers, minor Royals, um, so, and he was a great guy to work for. She was a stickler. There’s an adage, not an adage, what’s the word? There’s a, a thought process in the Navy that when you get a retinue job, when you work for a senior officer, ‘cos they tend to have their own staff, they have their own Chef, two Chefs sometimes if he’s an Admiral, their own Steward, two Stewards, in their residence and they used to say, “You either get a great Captain and the wife’s a pain in the backside,” or the other way round, you know, the wife can be absolutely charming and he’s a pain. You never get both good and she was very demanding and … but we were so lucky because he, he lived in Haslemere, so he spent all his weekends away so we had every weekend off, unless they were entertaining but that was few and far between. They did most of their entertaining during the week, Thursday nights or Friday nights, but Friday night or Saturday morning, off he went and you didn’t see him again until Monday so that was a great job, but I learnt a lot from her, even though she was a pain. She was very knowledgeable ‘cos she’d lived that kind of life, they’d had Chefs since she was a child. [aeroplane flies overhead] His father was an Admiral so he’d been brought up in that way.
146 minutes 29 seconds
Simon Right.
David So she knew, she taught me an awful lot about cooking, so that was a good advantage and I still love to cook now.
Simon So … so did you, when you were there then, you had social time, you weren’t married then so you had a social life?
David Oh no, no, we were married.
Simon Ok.
David Yeah, I was living in Gold Close, one of the Married Quarters in Rowner.
Simon Ok. Ok.
David Sorry is that going to upset that?
Simon No I think that’s ok.
David Ok, no we were living, so I was home every night.
Simon Ok.
David And every weekend normally.
Simon ‘Cos I’ve heard sort of stories of people going out, having some crazy nights in Gosport of you know, Pubs and all that sort of stuff.
David That’s never been me.
Simon Right.
David I’ve always questioned the wisdom of going to a Pub and paying £3.00 a pint when you can buy it in Asda for 30p a can, you know.
Simon (laughs) Right.
David I’m not a drinker. I mean I love a drink, but I’m not a hardened drinker in Naval parlance and I’ve never, ever been a Pub-goer.
Simon Right.
David My wife’s a good Irish Catholic and never been, she would never have wanted to go to a Pub and I wouldn’t have wanted to go to a Pub on my own. So, we weren’t in that cadre. Some of our friends did, er, and I, yeah I’ve heard stories but I couldn’t give you any first-hand accounts, ‘cos I’m boring like that I’m afraid and it wasn’t …
Simon Well you’ve given a lot of accounts on lots of other things.
David It wasn’t my bag to go pissing up all the time.
Simon (laughs).
David And in all honesty I rarely could afford it, you know.
Simon Yeah. That’s good, thank you very much. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about you think we should have covered?
David Um, I don’t think so, I mean I wanted to talk to you about, you know, oh yeah there was one thing, just carries on that anecdote. When I took my dad to sea in that photograph.
Simon Yeah.
David This is me trying to illustrate what a great guy that Jim Taylor was, I mean you’d almost think I was in love with the bloke but I wasn’t but one of the few Naval Officers who really inspired me because he was a gentleman. He didn’t speak down to you like so many of them do. He could, if he was pissed off with you, you knew all about it, but you could engage with him in conversation and he didn’t, he wasn’t aloof but nobody thought a jot less of him, but anyway, so we come to the end of Families Day, I’m in the Galley preparing dinner and I heard this pipe, it’s a broadcast, “Would Mr White, the guest of the Leading Chef please come to the Control Room.” I, nobody had said anything to me about it so I thought ‘What’s going on here?’ So, I stopped what I was doing and I saw my dad go by and he looked at me and went [makes gesture] and I said, “I have no idea.” He probably thought I’d set something up, but I hadn’t, so I followed him into the Control Room and Jim Taylor, who I would like to say he was the First Lieutenant, Norman Hodgson was the Captain. He said, “Mr White” he said, “I hear you’re an ex-Submariner, wartime” he said. “Yes” and he called him sir, “Yes Sir” and he said, “Have you just lost your eye?” and he said, “I have.” He said “Right, well if you would get on to the for’ard periscope using your good eye of course”, because the for’ard periscope’s only got one eyepiece. The after periscope is binocular and has two. It’s a big search instrument whereas the forward small periscope is for attack. He said, “Get on to the for’ard periscope” he said, “and when you’re ready, just shout surface” and my dad surfaced the submarine.
Simon Wow.
David Whilst looking, now in his wildest dreams he wouldn’t have done that when he was serving.
Simon Right.
David And he for sure never thought he’d do it after he left the Navy. And so that’s what that bloke did for my dad, and for me, after that he could walk on water. And of course, my dad dined out on that for the rest of his life, so can you imagine every Reunion. “Eh, Knocker, are you the bloke who surfaced the boat?” He said, “I am, yeah.” So, that’s the kind of bloke Jim Taylor was. An out and out gentleman, and then I had him as my Captain on Orpheus ‘cos he found me at Captain Oliphant’s house for my Cheese Ush and dragged me there.
Simon Right (laughs). Yeah.
150 minutes 46 seconds
David But he remained a gentleman all the time, even though he was a Captain. But no, I don’t think there’s …
Simon That’s a great story.
David It is a great story isn’t it.
Simon And so he saw it breaking through the water.
David He just saw the whole submarine come up.
Simon Right, wow.
David Which I’d never seen, I’ve never surfaced a submarine and I spent 22 years in them.
Simon Right (laughs).
David Whereas he was in them for five years. But I was so pleased for him, and so grateful to Jim Taylor for doing that.
Simon Fantastic.
David What a thoughtful thing to do. To remember he’s lost his eye. I mean I probably bore them all, you know, “Oh my dad was in submarines during the war” but I always tried not to. But I was very proud of what he did. He was a Sonar Operator and he was on HMS Truant when they sank the Karlsruhe. His Captain was a guy called Haggard, er, Hugh Haggard and he was related to H Rider Haggard, the Novelist who wrote ‘She’, ‘2 thousand, 2 million years BC’, you ever heard of Rider Haggard?
Simon No.
David Yeah if you look him up, he was a prolific novelist in the earlier part of the 20th century and this Hugh Haggard was his cousin, er, and he was a very aggressive Captain and he sank this big German Troop Transport called the Karlsruhe. So, I know, and I think my dad’s ill health afterwards, it didn’t last long, a few years but I’m sure we’d now call it PTSD. He was an amazing musician; he played the piano accordion in a Dance Band and he practiced that a couple of nights a week. He was a Skipper of his local darts team, um, and even when he lost his eye he continued to be the high scorer.
Simon Right, I mean that’s tough isn’t it?
David ‘Cos he just threw out of memory.
Simon Really?
David Yeah.
Simon Because he’d lose depth to it?
David Yeah, he couldn’t park any more, he used to park about eight feet from the wall or a car in front or he’d touch it. He’d lost that binocular vision but he could still…
Simon And had the memory, muscle memory?
David Outplay them at darts, yeah.
Simon Right.
David Yep, um but yeah, you can probably tell I’m very proud of him, I was mad about my old man and our relationship changed the day I joined up and never altered. And my wife and kids loved him, we used to have him down here. Him and my mum separated after many years, but we often had him down for Christmas or holidays. He loved coming down here and we all loved having him here, so it was a great relationship you know.
Simon Well that’s great, thank you very much for your generosity with your time.
David Not at all, that’s alright.
Simon And your stories.
David I hope it’s any good.
Simon I think it’s fantastic.
David Anything you want to use help yourself.
Simon Yeah really good, yeah we’ll use the whole lot.
David Really?
Simon So yeah.
David Ok. So, this would just be for people to access if they want to, to hear about?
Simon Yes it sits on the website.
David Yeah, Ok.
Simon And it will be divided up into themes as well.
David Right, ok.
Simon You’re specialist on the food so we’ll have a section on food as well.
David Yep, yep, and escape maybe?
Simon And escape, oh definitely.
David Yeah, yeah.
Simon And you know the SETT is going to be one theme as well.
David Yeah ‘cos I mean that is still such an iconic place in Gosport.
Simon Yeah.
David That Tank.
Simon Yeah.
David I mean every …
Simon I’ve met the … I interviewed the guy two, this week who was responsible for the Grade II listing of it, the listing of it.
David Oh right, Ok, yeah.
Simon Actually I don’t know if it’s Grade II or, I’m not sure which Grade it is.
David I think it’s Grade II at the moment. Yeah.
Simon Ok, yeah, responsible for the listing.
David Yeah, yeah.
Simon But he thought was an important thing.
David It’s the skyline, I think everybody would notice if it was gone.
Simon Yeah, yeah.
David But what, it is such a white elephant now isn’t it?
Simon And what I learned as well on the visit, that I did, we went to the top of the Tank and, I’ll show you, we took a 360 photo of it, I’ll show it to you.
David Oh right Ok.
Simon Um, that it has to have the water within it to stay up.
David It gives it stability. It’s part of its strength.
Simon Exactly, without the water, it then becomes something that’s in danger.
David It, yeah, um, but every five, six years we used to empty it to do a refit and I’ve been in there when it’s empty and it is phenomenal.
Simon Right.
David Um, especially from the top, looking down. I mean it’s bad enough when it’s full of water, but when it’s empty it’s cavernous down there.
Simon Right, I guess yeah ‘cos the light gets bent when there’s water there so.
David Yeah, yeah it does, yeah it doesn’t look as deep when there’s water in it, but I’ve stood at the bottom when it’s empty and one of my jobs in the Tank, I was what they call a Bottom Dropper, so for demonstration purposes, I showed that it’s possible to take a deep breath at the surface, drop down to the bottom, do one lap and come back up on the same breath, um.
Simon So did you have this thing of having to tell your brain it’s Ok, you don’t need to breathe?
David Um, yeah I suppose you do, but like everything it’s just training. You’re training when you first go to the Tank as an Instructor is, it’s baby steps so the first thing they get you to do is go down and find your buoyancy point which is about five, six metres and that buoyancy point is you take a deep breath on the surface and then you work your way down the ladder until you stop, let go and you neither float nor sink, that is your buoyancy point and if you just push down past that you will slowly start to sink faster and faster and faster, so you do that. Then they get you to go down to the 5-metre blister and back up again. Then down to the 9- metre lock and back up again, all holding your breath and of course the first few days you’re convinced you’re going to drown, but at the end of, you know, six, seven weeks you’re regularly dropping down to the 18 metre lock and that’s the furthest you ever have to do on breath held diving, is to the bottom lock, except in an emergency and that’s the reason they have Bottom Droppers, to show worried mums who’s sons might be going through, who’ve come to an Open Day, that no matter where someone gets into trouble, an Instructor can go and get them.
Simon Ok. Right.
156 minutes 22 seconds
David So that’s what we used to do, take, and I did it for BBC …
Simon So it wasn’t just for sort of showing what could be done? It had a practical thing, if someone was in trouble? Ok.
David Yeah yeah, absolutely, that’s a good point, it’s a party trick but it’s also got a valid reason that, you know, that we can go and get out, and I did it for BBC’s Open University and I’ve got it on tape, um, they did a programme called Diving Mammals as part of the Biology and this was to show how pitiful we were underwater compared to the Blue Whale or other animals that go down to 6000 metres or whatever. Phenomenal depths and it shows how flimsy we are so they followed me down in the Diving Bell with a camera, and filmed me going down, going round and coming back up again and I’ve still got it.
Simon Right, that’s good.
David So that’s a little thing I’ve put on for the grandkids when they were little you know. But at least I’ve still got it and it’s interesting. But yeah, the Gosport Heritage Open Days that we used to do, I don’t do it now, I’ve got all sorts of weird injuries that stop me doing stuff, but yeah, we used to do guided tours of the Gun Boat Yard, HMS Hornet it used to be, on the end of Pneumonia Bridge, er, HMS Hornet, which was the MTB Base during the war, and of course HMS Dolphin and the SETT, and I thoroughly enjoyed that, teaching people, you know, about Gosport’s Naval history and heritage and it’s great. Have you had any involvement with the Testing Tank at Qinetiq?
Simon No.
David That’s something you should get, have a look at.
Simon That was to, what, to simulate waves?
David It’s a huge great Tank, been there since just after the war I think and they, all hull designs are put through tests there. You know, recreate all sorts of seas from light swells to mega rough weather. To see how hulls behave, how they sink and its fantastic and as part of the heritage, Gosport Heritage Open Day thing, our organiser, a guy called Charlie Hayward got us all a visit in there. It’s very difficult apparently to get in but maybe with what you’re doing, I think you’d find it fascinating.
Simon I’ll look that out, yeah, yep. You know one thing I’ve just realised is I haven’t spoken to you about the time when you made the decision to leave.
David Oh right, Ok.
Simon What came to that?
David Right, now that’s interesting because I didn’t have to leave. We all had, engagement ends at 40 ‘cos if you sign on for 22, that starts when you reach the age of majority, ie. 18, so it finishes at 40, so I’m coming up to my 40th birthday. So I went to the Tank, then to HMS Renown, did two years on Renown, came back to the Tank for 18 months, then I went to HMS Sovereign and I did just over a year on there and then I came back to the Tank ‘cos I was due outside, so I came back in the summer of ’87 and my time was up in November ’87. So I said to my boss, “I’m more than happy to sign on but I’d like to stay in the Tank” ‘cos that’s what a lot of my mates had done, they’d come to the end of their time and ‘Drafty’ said, “Yeah, yeah you can stay in the Tank if you like.” But there was a real shortage of Chefs, especially Senior Chefs and the message I got back from ‘Drafty’ was, “Yes of course you can sign on but you’ll be back at sea within three months. You can’t stay in the Tank. We can’t spare you.” Now, as I said to you, on the Polaris Submarines we ran this two-crew system and that was great but it was also fair. I left the Navy because the system on the Nuclear Submarines was unfair, in so much as they had what they called a Fifth Watch system, Ok, so that meant that every fourth Patrol, a fairly large percentage of the crew could stay inboard for that Patrol, so not like a bomber, where you go on Patrol, then you’re off and you’re on, they would do maybe two or three Patrols but then they’d miss a Patrol with the exception of some of the essential staff, the Coxswain, the PO Chef, all the Chefs, the Stewards, people, and that struck me as being inherently unfair so I’m sat in the Mess chatting to a guy, we’re sailing tomorrow and he says, “Oh no I’m not going to sea tomorrow, I’ve got three, three, you know, two months off” or however long we’re at sea, and I thought ‘Well this sucks’.
Simon Mmm.
160 minutes 58 seconds
David And so when I came right to the end of my time, when you leave the Navy, if you’re a Senior Rate you get an interview with the Captain, um, and he thanks you for all you’ve done and gives you your leaving certificate and of course the inevitable, um, “Can I ask why you’re leaving, ‘cos I know we’re short of Chefs” and I explained all that to him, I said, “Well” I said, “I’d like to sign on and stay in the Tank.” He said, “Yeah but that’s not what you joined up to do is it, you joined up to be a Chef” and I said, “Yeah” I said, “But there is also” I said, “A real unfairness” I said, “At 40”, see I believed then, I believe now, going to sea is a young man’s game and I think when you get to 40, you know, keeping Watches at you know, getting up every night at 4 o’clock in the morning to go on Watch, it’s a young man’s game and I said, “This fifth Watch system is inherently discriminatory” you know, depending on which branch you joined you don’t always have to go to sea, and I’m the first to admit, there are some blokes who love being at sea but I didn’t, I’m a bit of a home bird. I was always happy to go to sea but even happier to come home, whereas I knew blokes wanted to stay at sea as often as they could, for reasons best known to themselves and he said “Well, unfortunately we can’t change that.” That’s all he said.
Simon Right (laughs).
David Thanks very much, goodbye. And so I left. So, I would have signed on to do the job I wanted but I didn’t sign on ‘cos I’d have ended up doing a job I was no longer in love with.
Simon Right. So, then what did you go on to do after that?
David Ok, are you ready for another really interesting story? I went to work … I didn’t know what I wanted to do, all I knew was what I didn’t want to do and that was cooking, because I knew to make any decent living outside, it’s a very anti-social job and when do people want to eat? At night. When they fall out of a Pub or whatever. I thought ‘I’m not doing that’ so I knew what I didn’t want to do but I didn’t know what I did want to do, so I, in those days we’d get the Portsmouth Evening News and just looked at jobs every night and I saw a job, er, for Austin and Wyatt which was a fairly big Estate Agents here, as a Lettings Manager, and the advert said um, Lettings Manager, all you need is a bit of organisation, common sense, a nose for sharp practice and would ideally suit retiring servicemen. So, I thought ‘Well ok’, so I sent off an application, you didn’t even have to have a CV in those days, they just wanted an application, and I got an interview. Oh yeah sorry, so I got an interview, so I went for this interview and it was the guy who was retiring, er, and the Director and I had a successful interview and they offered me the job so about a couple of weeks later I started and that was fine, so I’m learning the ropes from this retiring Property Manager and all we were in charge of was lettings, you know, managing the house while it’s being let, finding new tenants, mustering people in and out, um, inventories, that kind of thing, and I’m chatting away to him, and a very pleasant, amenable old man. He took me up to his house and introduced me to his wife, and then I’m talking to the Director one day and he said, “Oh I suppose you and Ted are talking all the time about the Navy.” I said, “Oh, was Ted in the Navy?” He said, “Don’t you know who he is?” I said, “No.” He said, “He’s Ted Briggs” and I thought I obviously should know who that is. I said, “No I didn’t know.” He said, “And you know who Ted Briggs is?” I said “No.” He said, “He’s one of the three survivors from HMS Hood.”
Simon Oh wow.
David Yeah. Ted never said that to me in the, all the weeks I’d been working with him, he talked about he, I knew he was ex-Navy ‘cos he’d mentioned it, he never once said that he was one of the most famous Naval people in the country. I mean you see any programme about The Hood, he comes up as one of the people interviewed, there was only three of them. She was blown out of the water by the Bismarck. They reckoned the Bismarck got a lucky shell, went straight down into the ammunition hold and blew the ship to smithereens and she turned over and sank in minutes and only three blokes escaped out of 1,524 people I think. Some figure like that, um and so yeah, this modest, self-effacing man, had a story to tell better than anything I could imagine. So of course, I then started to chat about it and months, he knew I knew, he opened up about it and told me all about it. He got pulled down with the ship and the ship sort of rolled a bit and he went down on the portside when she sank but he came up on the other side, so somehow he went all the way under the ship and then got blown up in an air bubble, probably a Boiler burst and he just got thrown up to the surface.
165 minutes 56 seconds
Simon Wow.
David Said the ship had gone, debris everywhere and just two other blokes. I used to know their names, I can’t remember them now. And Ted died oh, a good few years ago now, but he lived in Fareham, just round the corner from where my daughter was living and my daughter regularly would see him to and from the Paper Shop each morning to get his paper. But I introduced him to my dad, um, and him and my dad had a great chat one night. I also introduced my dad to Captain Oliphant, so he said, “Oh I’d love to meet your dad” and course he was in submarines in the war as well. So, I, I actually introduced my dad to Captain Oliphant, he sat him down, I then had to wait on my dad, with drinks and small eats (laughs).
Simon Right (laughs).
David So that was interesting, but he said he had a great conversation with him as well, um, but yeah so I left the Navy.
Simon Yeah, was the transition easy for you?
David Yes, yep, people have said they struggled leaving the Forces, but I fell into it straight away. I didn’t like the job, it was a real no-win situation because you work for the Landlord but if the Landlord is a bit unscrupulous and some of them are, your sympathies can lay with the Tenant, you know, like the Landlord that won’t repair things, um, so I mean …the straw that broke the camel’s back was I found myself up a ladder one Christmas Eve, trying to fix a TV aerial on a roof in Southampton. I’d moved the people in that morning, er, Asian family, lovely people they were, and this guy phoned me up and he said, “Mr White.” I said “Yeah?” and this is lunchtime and I’m thinking of going home, Christmas Eve you know, we’ll have a few drinks in the Red Lion in Fareham and he said, “I’ve got no TV picture.” I said “Oh.” He said, “Could you get anyone round here?” I said, “I doubt it but I’ll try.” So, I phoned a few aerial companies and all you could hear was party, party, party so I phoned him back and I said, “I’m really sorry I can’t.” He said, and I started thinking you know, he’s got three kids, no TV over Christmas and I knew there was a ladder in the garden and of course I’m a young lion aren’t I, so I said, “Alright, hang on there” and jumped into my car. Luckily at that time I hadn’t had a drink. I jumped in my car, and I could see what it was, you know, just these brackets, it had slid down the pole and was right down on the roof, so I got this ladder up, got him to hold it and I went up there with an industrial spanner, raised it back up, tightened it up and said “Try that.” He says, “Yeah that’s brilliant” and I thought ‘I need to get out of this job, this ain’t my job. My job is to get someone out to fix it and I knew Christmas Eve, if I can’t but I couldn’t, I thought, the poor bloke you know, young kids, no TV over Christmas. So, whilst I was in that job I started interfacing with what they called Rent Officers. Now Rent Officers, er, were, I don’t think they still exist, Statutory Officers appointed by the Secretary of State to carry out independent impartial valuations of rental properties, so under the old 1977 Rent Act, if you, um, rented a house off your Landlord, either you or your Landlord could apply to have a fair rent determined by a Rent Officer. That then becomes the maximum rent that the Landlord could charge and it was all brought about following some horrendous, er, private rental sector, um, issues in this country with some real rogue Landlords.
Simon That’s the Rachman stuff.
David The Rachman exactly, his name always comes up so if he wanted his house for his buddy who’s just come out of prison, he’d march round that night and kick you, your kids and your furniture all out and there was really nothing in law to stop him, so that’s what the Rent Act, gave people security of tenure and a right to certain, to Landlords to fulfil their obligations. They in turn had to pay their rent on time and at the right amount. So I took … I’d been meeting with Rent Officers, negotiating to get fair rent set for some of my properties and I thought, ‘That’s the job for me’ so I wrote to the Chief Rent Officer for Hampshire, a bloke called Roy Limbrick, er, and asked him if there were any vacancies and he said, “No” he said, “But when there are” he said, “We advertise in the Portsmouth Evening News so keep an eye on it” and a couple of months later there was an advert, er, I went for the job and cut a long story short I got it and I stayed there in the Rent Service in different guises until I retired, so I had 24 years in the Navy and 22 years as a Civil Servant and 18 months as a Property Manager. So, yeah I ended up as National Health and Safety Manager for the Valuation Office which is what led on from being a Rent Officer but yeah, I did that job for 20 odd years and never looked back, I thoroughly enjoyed it. That was a good job and I retired in 2009 and I’ve had three or four jobs since.
170 minutes 59 seconds
Simon Right (laughs).
David I’ve been a Guide down the Museum, on the Alliance, um, I’ve been an Undertaker, I worked for my mate who was a Manager at Solent Funeral Services so I was a driver/bearer for him for a few years and I think that’s how I tore my rotator cuff so I had to give that up ‘cos you’re not much good as an Undertaker if you can’t lift a coffin onto your shoulders. And so I went into, do you know Southern Self Drive?
Simon No.
David I don’t think they’ve got a presence on the Isle of Wight, they used to have, but a car hire firm in Portsmouth and I worked for them until last October so I had five years there, just delivering wheelchair access vehicles. But last October I thought ‘I’m 74, enough’s enough. My wife was always saying, you know, sometimes we want to arrange something at the weekend and I’d say, “Oh I’m working Saturday.” And so she convinced me that it was the right time, and she was right, and I’m fully retired now, doing sod all.
Simon (Laughs).
David But yeah, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Simon Well-earned as well by the sounds of it.
David Leaving the Navy was no effort for me whatsoever, I just dropped into being a civvy, easy as falling off a log and I think a lot of people do.
Simon That’s fantastic. Thank you very much.
David Not at all.
Interview ends
172 minutes 4 seconds
Transcribed June 2022
