Duration: 1 hour 44 minutes 6 Seconds
Simon: My name is Simon Perry, I’m the interviewer today, and today is the 15th of March 2022, and I am in Gosport and I am with Don Cleavin. Don, can you tell us where you were born and the date of your birth?
Don: Born in Bradford in Yorkshire, 1939. I lived in Bradford, through my education with a family in a Mill House. It was very old Mill House until I joined the Navy in 1955. Sadly, my mother died in 1953, and that made my mind up about joining the Navy.
Simon: Can I ask you about your parents first of all? What were their names and where were they born?
Don: My mother was Edna nee Morton and became Cleavin of course. My father was Arthur Marvell Cleavin, quite a well-known person in Bradford, Council circles.
Simon: And what year were they born? What was their dates of birth do you remember?
Don: Before me (laughs). I can’t remember exactly. In my memoirs, it’s all in there.
Simon: Ok. That’s no problem. And so, what was growing up like?
Don: It was just after the War. I was born in ’39 when the War started. Father was away all that time you see, and so mother struggled all the way through bringing up two kids with the post-War restrictions. Did a very good job, but unfortunately not long after the War she developed cancer, so in 1952, she died. Just after the Coronation.
Simon: And what age was she?
Don: 47.
Simon: Ok. And you were?
Don: 14 ½ stuck in limbo there, turbulence. One day I was reading a magazine, it was a Rover comic, and there was an advert, ‘Join the Royal Navy’ (laughs). Stinging the enemy, I wanted to be a Gunner. I really fancied shooting at people (laughs).
Simon: Can we come on to that? I just want to ask you about school first. How school was.
Don: School? Strange education. I failed my 11 plus ‘cos too many other things in my mind, yeah. Drummer boy sitting above the school I went to for the last few years.
Simon: And did he enjoy school? Was it something he got on with?
Don: Something, he got on with. I was never very good. I learnt more since I left the Navy than I did … as good at school.
Simon: And what was that? It just didn’t gel with you at school.
Don: No. We had one Teacher. She was a student Teacher called Miss Burns, and I learnt more from her in a relatively short period than you can believe. Then we had a Maths Master, a Mr Walsh, ex-Army. He’d had a injury in his head. He was supposed to have a steel plate in his head, but he was very, very broad Yorkshire, and he was quite a comedian really. He took no bullshit (laughs).
Simon: Right. And did he get on with him?
Don: There was 32 of us in the class, so how can you get on well with so …
Simon: Right. He was sort of on the disciplinarian side was he?
Don: Yes, yeah. In them days of course you could get the cane. You get two canes, two rulers together and you get that on your hand. I didn’t get it very often (laughs), but it caught you something like that.
Simon: And growing up was fun times was it? Did you enjoy growing up? Of course, the loss of your mother must have had a big impact.
Don: I was 14 ½ when my mother died, so getting on before that was … it was a different life. It was living in a street with stone cobbles outside. The Milkman, Mr McDonald, was the first guy to have a car, a vehicle in the street. He used to have an uncle who was a Commercial Traveller, and he had a Company car which was is a very rare thing. He had a flying Standard 9 and he lived in Halifax and very occasionally they used to come and visit their poor relatives over in Bradford.
5 minutes 36 seconds
Simon: And so overall, how would you put your time at home growing up was?
Don: It was alright. I played Cowboys and Indians most of the time.
Simon: Yeah, always out and having fun. It’s good. And then you were saying that you were reading a comic and you saw the ad for the Navy.
Don: Well yeah, I wrote off for the application form. About a fortnight later, I got a Warrant to travel to Leeds Recruiting Office, 10 miles away. I went there. They made sure that I got two eyes, two legs. I could write a bit and had a quick brief medical, and then sent home. Then, a couple of weeks later, I got another Warrant to go to Manchester Recruiting Office, and there they said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to be a Gunner. I want to shoot shit out of people (laughs) and they did aptitude tests and they said, “We don’t think you’re suited to be a Gunner. You’d be much better off being a Marine Engi… a Stoker, a Marine Engineer, a Mechanic. You’d make all these wonderful metallic bits and pieces” which I never did make. They were all made by Engine Artificers, but they talked me in to becoming a Marine Engineer and a Mechanic, or as a Stoker. And that’s what I was. About four or five months later, I got a Warrant to go to Tor Point, Plymouth, Devon, to join HMS Raleigh. It was the furthest place I’d been. When I’d been to Manchester it was the furthest I’d been by myself, and this was me going all the way down to the south coast. We was met on the Portsmouth North Road Station by this Chief Petty Officer, checked we were all there. There was about 10 or 15 of us all arriving at the same time …
Simon: From different parts of the country?
Don: Oh yeah, some Geordies and all sorts of people, Manchester, Leeds and Scotland. About 15 of us all together, loaded into a wagon and driven off round to Tor Point Ferry, crossed the Ferry and up the hill to HMS Raleigh. We didn’t have a clue where we were. We knew we were in the south, that was all. We didn’t really have much of an idea where we were. This was foreign country to me. Got into Raleigh, and … Parade Ground drill. Then afterwards we learnt technical training for being a Marine Engineer and Mechanic. Our Instructor for the Parade Ground work was Chief Petty Officer Bruford, and he was a Chief GI, Gunnery Instructor, but traditionally in the Navy, Gunnery Instructors are real bastards, you know shouting at you and screaming at you and shaking you around all ways. Chief Petty Officer Bruford was different. He was very mild mannered, he treated us like people, not animals, and he was very good. It was only years and years later I found out why. He’d been a Japanese Prisoner of War. How he got captured we never did find out but he’d been a Japanese Prisoner of War and at the end of the War he’d been released and came back home again but he was in a terrible state. They brought him back to health again and they put him back in the Navy again to give him a job you see? So, he knew all about … he was very good. Roland Bruford his name was, and I’d love to find out what ship he’d been on, how he came to be captured ‘cos there were two ships in the Far East got sunk. The Japanese aircraft, that was the Repulse and the Prince of Wales. Prince of Wales and Repulse, Battleship Cruisers, torpedoed and sunk. He might have been captured there but he could have been somewhere else, but I would like to know. I did actually get in contact, only about five years ago, with his sister I think it was. His wife was in a Care Home. He died 17 years before. Really nice guy. He was the spitting image of Richard Widmark. Do you remember him?
10 minutes 53 seconds
Simon: I don’t know him, no.
Don: I’ll show you a picture of [inaudible] he was very much like him.
Simon: So, he had a good positive impact on … I mean he was a good guy to have for training, because he was more sort of human towards you.
Don: Oh yeah, he got through to us.
Simon: So, that was for the Surface Fleet was it?
Don: Oh yeah, I spent the first year and a half in the Navy on a Tank Landing ship out in Malta. HMS Reggio, a Tank Landing ship, wartime vintage, and I
was learning about the steam engines and steam boilers. The first three of four months was steam and boilers, down below in the Boiler Room.
Simon: What took you from the Surface Fleet to the Submarines then?
Don: I didn’t join the submarines until 1956, but for the first three years I was on surface ships. The Reggio first of all for a year and a half, then after that I came back home again from Malta. I was on the Grenville which was a Type 14 Frigate. It was a Destroyer. It was in a collision, repaired, and put to sea again as a Frigate and operated from Portland in Dorset.
Simon What made you shift over to the submarines then?
Don: Well I was standing on the upper deck of Grenville one morning, July, lovely morning, and I was talking to the Engineer Officer, Lieutenant Commander Buckley, and there was this submarine going out across Portland Harbour. I said, “I’d like to have a day at sea in one of them.” He said, “I’ll fix that for you.” Lieutenant Commander Buckley had been the Engineer Officer of that submarine in 1946, and it was a submarine Auriga going to sea, and he’d been the Engineer on there in 1946. He said, “I’ll fix that for you” but about a week later I got a draft to join HMS Sword but by the time I got the message, she’s gone (laughs). I spent a trip to sea on the Scythian, an ‘S’ Class submarine. I got on board this thing. There was a couple of embarrassing situations, but I got on board this thing, we went to sea. “By the way, we’re staying at sea overnight.” “Oh ummm”
Simon: Oh right.
Don: “Make sure it’s alright for you to stay with us” and that was the worst night I ever spent at sea on any sort of ship at all including submarines. It was very uncomfortable, very disturbed and what have you.
Simon: What you mean it was the sea was unsettled was it?
Don: A strange environment, very strange environment.
Simon: To be in the submarine?
Don: Yeah. The bunk I was allotted was the bunk that nobody wants (laughs). Very uncomfortable.
Simon: Which one’s the one that no one wants? Which one is it? What’s the position of it?
Don: Outside the Stoker’s Mess. It was top. You live on the bunk as high as you can get. The submarine hull came round like that and there was two lamps, lights, right where you don’t want ‘em so you couldn’t turn over or nothing. It was very, very uncomfortable, yeah.
Simon: ‘Cos you were the new boy, you got that one.
Don: It was the only one that was available. So, we came back in from that trip and I went back to my Destroyer, to the Grenville, and I said, “Remind me I will never ever join the Submarine Service. It’s so bloody uncomfortable” but that was the early part of ’57 (sighs). Four months later, I was walking through the main gate of HMS Dolphin, joining the Submarine Service (laughs).
Simon: Right. What changed you around?
15 minutes 9 seconds
Don: The memory of that night at sea was faded and being a submariner thing came to the fore again. There was a lot to being a Submariner.
Simon: You mean reputation?
Don: Yeah. A different environment. Probably a bit more glamourous as well. That’s what it probably was and of course a bit more … (laughs).
Simon: Right. You got more money.
Don: Submarine pay yeah.
Simon: So, you volunteered for it.
Don: I volunteered for it yeah. You had to be a volunteer in them days.
Simon: Ok.
Don: If it was specifically short of certain people and some people would be recruited to go in to submarines, but there was only for a period of about three years, and they was released again. They called them ‘Non-Volunteers’ but I was a volunteer in there. Part of the training of course was the technical engineering training …
Simon: This was at HMS Dolphin?
Don: In Dolphin yeah, in the brown area (laughs). Part of that of course you see you had to do the Escape Training Tank as well. Apprehension, but over the years I did that seven times so … it was not really that bad (laughs).
Simon: You were saying that sort of the apprehension of it was stronger or worse than the actual practice was it?
Don: The apprehension was worse than actually doing it, yeah.
Simon: Because everyone had little stories about ‘oh my goodness, have you heard ..’ Were they sort of chatting about it before hand?
Don: There was no little stories about it. Only people that were able to talk about it were experienced about it and they weren’t doing it any more. Somebody else was doing it, yeah. I did seven times. The first four times was what you call a ‘free ascent’ when you come up from the bottom 100-foot section, all the way to the top, no apparatus, only a life jacket, breathing out all the way to the top. When you get to the top, you climb out and you do a couple of runs in the blisters in the side of the tank, just stepping back into the water and going from about 60 feet. Then you do the 100 foot all the way up from the bottom. Once you’d done that, that’s it finished for that time. You’d come back in three years’ time to do it again.
Simon: Just to re-remind you of what it’s like.
Don: Keep practicing it, yeah. Then they brought out the hooded system. You had the hood. You were supposed to breathe normally inside this hood. As you’re going up, the pressure’s coming off you, the air inside you is expanding.
Simon: So, you just breathe normally on the way up then?
Don: Yeah, you go into the 100-foot lock, plug into the air socket inside there which inflates your life jacket, inflates your hood. Then of course your hatch opens, and you go out from there. Of course, as you rise up through the water the pressure’s coming off you and the air that’s inside expands. You’re breathing from that. You’ve got to try and breathe normally. It’s impossible. You breathe in, you breathe out a lot more than you breathe in.
Simon: Because the air is …
Don: Expansion. Any excess air that’s in the hood is just leaking off to the open tank. You get to the top, get pulled out of it and away you go again, for another three years.
Simon: How was it that the feeling of having … when you’re down at the 100-foot level, having the water come in, ‘cos it comes in at high pressure doesn’t it? When the tank you’re inside fills.
Don: You’re on the flood valve.
Simon: Does it feel sort of shocking to the body? How does it feel?
Don: Not really. You’re not thinking about it. You think, ‘Oh shit’ (laughs). You’re in the 100-foot section and there is about eight or ten of you in there, so you’re all putting on a brave face. You’ve got your life jackets on there you see, They open the flood valve and you can feel the water level coming up and up and up and up and up and up … You’re pressure’s coming on, so you’ve got your nose clip on so you’ve got to back that up and keep blowing against it so your ears equalise and as soon as they’ve equalised, the hatch opens, you’re still up to your chest in water, outside the tool trunk, and the Instructor goes underneath the tool trunk, makes sure the hatch is open fully, that’s giving you a column of water out through the top of the tank right down to the bottom of the compartment. But you’re on the outside of it with an air lock but under full pressure. So, as soon as you’re ready to go, you take a deep breath, pull yourself under the tool trunk and relax yourself and you just rise up through ‘cos your life jacket’s taking you up there. As you come out the top of the tool trunk, the hatch, there’s a swim boy there and he grabs hold of you to make sure you ain’t going to go shooting off up the top ‘cos you’ve got toggles on your life jacket. He hangs onto them, and he just sees you blowing out alright and then they’ll let you go, but he don’t let you go until he sees you blowing out (laughs) burst your lungs.
21 minutes 4 seconds
Simon: Some of the Instructors would sort of encourage people by giving them a little jab to the stomach.
Don: They don’t touch you unless you’re not breathing out, then they thump you (laughs). As long as you’re breathing out you’re going to keep on going. If you stop breathing … dangerous if you stop breathing.
Simon: So that was interesting the SETT [Submarine Escape Training Tank] time, and then what about the rest of the training you did at Dolphin then in Gosport?
Don: Engineering training. Teaching you about how submarines are built, how they operate, how they dive, engines, compressed air systems, fuel systems. Fuel systems were my particular department really more than anything else.
Simon: And what’s that like going … ‘cos if you’re school didn’t feel right for you, you know you say you didn’t really get on with school that much, what was it like ‘cos it was basically a different form of school wasn’t it?
Don: You had schooling in Raleigh before you started, then there might have been a little bit more schooling in Dolphin whatever is applicable.
Simon: Because it was … it sort of had a reason to be taught to taught and understood, it felt different to learning did it?
Don: No. You had good Instructors you see. The Instructors were all good people. They’re all people like I was before I came outside. They had the experience and they thought well put you through the IT Course, Instructional Technique, not Information Tech … and then once you’d done that you were away.
Simon: Yeah, ok. And so how long were you training at Dolphin then?
Don: Oh I forget now. It was a long time since … I think about three months. Then you get into what you call ‘spare crew’ or ‘for onshore’ and then you get a draft somewhere. Basically, you’re still quite young people then, and we didn’t have a very good idea of the world, where places are, and I got drafted to Malta. So, in the early ’58, I left UK from Southampton on the Troop Ship … correction, that’s when I went to Malta first of all, for the Reggio I was on the Empire again. When I went out there this time to submarines, I flew out there Blackbushe to Malta. Early ’58. That bit there about going on the Reggio in Malta, I went out there on a Troop Ship. Six or seven days at sea on a Troop Ship. When I first saw Gibraltar at half past one in the morning passing through Gib Straits. I got that bit out of phase.
Simon: That’s fine. So, first time you were onboard a submarine for real …
Don: Went out to Malta to join the Depot Ship HMS Forth, a big submarine Tender.
Simon: What’s a submarine Tender do? That’s a supply ship for the …
Don: Parent ship. Carries torpedoes. It’s got accommodation on board for submarine crews if you’re not on a boat.
Simon: Would that be if they haven’t got a submarine base there?
24 minutes 47 seconds
Don: Oh there was a submarine … she was a parent ship, and there was four submarines attached to the Forth. That kind of forms a dry dock in Malta, and I joined that and standing on the well deck of the Forth, she went back in the water again, then the four submarines in the Squadron came back alongside the Forth and we could hear her creak. And I was standing on the well deck on the Forth looking down as these submarines came in and there was Tally-Ho, Taper, Tabard and Sea Devil and when they all came in I looked at the Tally-Ho and said, “I want to be on that boat ‘cos it really looks like a bloody submarine. The others look a little bit different.” Tally-Ho had torpedo tubes sticking out all over the place, had punch cups sticking up there, It had a four-inch gun sticking up. I thought, that is for me. The other boats streamlined, not necessarily more modern but just streamlined, but Tally-Ho was just as she’d been built in 1942. I got drafted to Tally-Ho. I was so pleased about that, and the Captain was Lieutenant Arnold Melhuish and I still write to him even now. It’s a long time ago.
Simon: That’s one that really strikes that how relationships that have formed then are maintained throughout.
Don: It was only a few that did, about 10. It didn’t normally. We went to sea, and of course the first three months at sea you were doing what they called your Part 3 training. It’s when you visit various parts of the boat, find out how all the different bits worked. Not necessarily your own branch, your own Department, but everything else so you knew about it. Basically, information about them, how they worked. But also, at the same time you’ve got to learn your own job as well, which is a very intense three months. At the end of three months, you do a tour through the boat with a First Lieutenant, and he just shoots questions at you. ‘What’s that?’, ‘How does that work?’ it’s not easy. You get confused you see. Anyway, I passed my Part 3 examination. Then we went to sea.
Simon: You get your badge then don’t you at that point?
Don: You didn’t have badges in them days.
Simon: Did you not?
Don: You got Submarine Pay (laughs). What you did have was a badge on your cuff. It was a very primitive emblem of a submarine. Very old, we called it a sausage on a stick. That’s what it looked like, and there was very, very few people that actually wore that … two or three years later before you actually got your submarine badge. At that time, on our first trip to sea in the Tally-Ho, maybe it was the second or third, we were scheduled to do a deep dive, and for Tally-Ho was a very old boat, a deep dive was 250 feet. They’re 2500 feet now, not quite the same, but we went down to 250 feet which was deep enough for her. She was a very old boat. Came back into harbour again, into Dry Dock for what you called a DED, a Docking and Essential Defects, like an MOT sort of thing. The Naval constructor came on board, and he was checking the hull out and he got a Seaman to hit the pressure hull with a chipping hammer. Ooh dear, nearly went through. I don’t believe but it’s quite true, he said. “The hull at that part was a thick as a good thick biscuit tin.” And of course, the Engineer was David Marsh, and he said, “What about the diving depth?” The constructor said, “We might let you trim down a little bit, certainly diving no more.” She never dived again after that.
Simon: Had it worn thin? Or it was always that thin? Why was it so thin?
Don: The bit they chipped … the problem is it’s the whole boat. Probably the rest of the boat was alright, just that one spot was very, very thin and you can’t do that. Then shortly after that, the Captain … being the Captain of an operational submarine is very nerve-wracking and we’d done some exercises in the Gib Straits, called a Barex, when … if a submarine was penetrated through Gib Strait, opposed by American surface ships, British Frigates, a couple of Spanish ships as well I think were there as well.
30 minutes 42 seconds
Simon: And opposed means they are trying to spot you.
Don: Track us. We was the enemy. We was the Russian trying to penetrate the Gib Straits. We went through there shallow, periscope depth, or we went through there deep, went through there on the surface one time, just dashed through there you see. We got through there about five or six times, backwards and forwards. The Americans reckoned they hit us. They had a homing torpedo which they reckoned they’d fired at us, and when they recovered it it had all dented nose end on it. It had hit something, but I don’t think it was us.
Simon: You didn’t hear the ‘dong’
Don: We didn’t hear anything. Because at the time we were in the North African shallow water so you couldn’t have hit us anyway. Then we got back to Malta and then it all fell apart because the submarine’s diving depth was cancelled and the Captain suffered very heavily, so he got dismissed, relieved of his command. It was just tough. It’s a tough business being a submarine Captain.
Simon: What do you mean that he suffered? What do you mean?
Don: Too much to think about.
Simon: Oh right, the toll was too strong.
Don: Too much responsibility. On top of that, at that time, the Porpoise Class of submarine were beginning to come out, being built, and they were looking for Commanding Officers, so there was a lot of competition amongst First Lieutenants to become qualified submarine Skipper, and the First Lieutenant on the boat there was a big rugby player, and the Skipper was a slim little guy. I think he was being belligerent, belittled. He didn’t do very well. They gave him a hard time I think. Put the spoke in for him as well so he lost his command. He’d been sat in this chair only about a year or so ago, visiting me when I was poorly. A really nice guy. He went back to general service and made a life for himself, but we still talk about submarines, talk about the Tally-Ho. She was a wartime boat, and she’d actually sank a Japanese Cruiser during the War, the Kuma. She hit her with a couple of torpedoes.
Simon: So, with life onboard, when you first went on there, what did it feel like the first time you were onboard the submarine? Did it … I mean it’s small, particularly the diesels are quite small aren’t they?
Don: You don’t really feel claustrophobic. If you’re claustrophobic, you don’t go in there, you stay away. The Stoker’s Mess on Tally-Ho was right back at the tail end, and of course it was a bit like a railway carriage. On the port side, they had three tables with bunks on either side of the tables. The bunks were quite nice looking actually, in nice, polished wood frames you see. Much better than the later Classes of boat. When I went into the Stoker’s Mess I thought ‘this is the bloody Ward Room isn’t it?’ Everything looked so nice. Clean, polished woodwork it looked really nice. But I learnt about it afterwards and they’re not quite that good (laughs).
Simon: So, you slotted straight into it, being onboard. It just felt normal.
Don: You’re training.
Simon: So you’re busy. You’ve got a lot going on in your mind, you’re trying to remember all the stuff for your Part 3, you just sort of just have to get on with it.
Don: That’s right, yeah. You had to learn how to run the engines as well. All the procedures for operating the engines. They had lovely engines on there. Two Vickers 6-cylinder engines. 1,208 odd horsepower each engine, direct drive, so you had to learn how to operate these things. Caring for them, lubricating them and cleaning then as well.
35 minutes 29 seconds
Simon: I think one of the things that people who don’t know about submarines would struggle to understand is to hear that there is a diesel engine onboard, would be confusing because diesels need to have exhaust don’t they …
Don: And air (laughs)
Simon: … so how did that work? The engines were run to power the submarine and to charge the batteries. How did that work?
Don: Direct drive. When you were on the surface the engines sucked the air in from the outside down the Conning Tower. The engines were clutched to the propellor and the electric motor, so you’ve got your engine, engine clutch, electric motor, motor clutch and then your propellor. So, when you’re on the surface, the engine is driving everything. When you dive, of course you stop your engine, you disengage the engine clutch, and the motor then drives you while you’re underwater.
Simon: From battery.
Don: On battery, yeah. You’ve got the snort system. You are security cleared aren’t you? (laughs). You’ve got the snort system. That’s when you propellor at periscope depth, you raise your snort mast, the snort induction mast, that sucks in air from the outside, through your hull valve into your Engine Room to feed your engines. The exhaust goes out through the hull, through the exhaust valves into a ducting at the back of the snort mast or depending on which Class it is, it comes out jus below the surface. So, when your engines is running, you’ve got a lot of bubbles coming out from your snort mast.
Simon: I guess the ability for the enemy to spot that is … I’m thinking it’s quite noisy.
Don: If you’ve got enemy around, you don’t do it (laughs).
Simon: Right. So, you’ve got to be conscious how much power is left in the batteries, and …
Don: Oh yeah, it’s very critical.
Simon: … so you know that when you’re hiding and sneaking away, that you’re just running on battery and that you don’t need to run the engines.
Don: This is part of an exercise. You’re exercising with surface ships and occasionally the exercise demands that you don’t even start until your battery is down about two thirds of charge, so you’ve got to try and operate against opposition with a depleted battery and also depleted compressed air as well, so you’re trying to charge your battery, you’re trying to charge your compressed air groups while someone is looking for you (laughs). Very traumatic, it can be. You just get your engines running and a Shackleton comes over the horizon. You stop snorting and you’ve got to go deep so you’ve lost battery charging time, you’ve lost some compressed air as well. Then when it comes clear you’ve got to start up again which is quite a business to start snorting.
Simon: Why is that?
Don: It’s knackering. There are so many tasks and things you’ve got to prepare to get the engines to run. Dashing round to get your engines started again and hopefully you can snort long enough to recoup your compressed air and your battery power.
Simon: And the compressed air is for …
Don: Ballast tanks. Everything you’ve got in the boat, you’ve got air to start your engines, you ‘ve got air to operate your tanks, freshwater tanks. You’ve got to use compressed air to get the water out of your freshwater tanks.
Simon: On the nuclears they’ve got stuff to create the air. What do they do on the diesels?
Don: These don’t look a bit like a nuclear. Only shape and colour (laughs).
Simon: So how do you do the breathing when you’re under? How do you get the air to breathe onboard?
Don: In a submarine?
Simon: On a diesel.
Don: It comes down the Conning Tower.
Simon: Right. So, you constantly have to be within reach of the surface?
Don: When you dive, you’ve got fresh air inside the boat and that’s what you’ve got to breathe …
Simon: It’s just what’s in that cylinder.
Don: Yeah. We do have equipment to purify the atmosphere in a … you get rid of the CO2. You don’t use it all the time, only when you need to.
40 minutes 10 seconds
Simon: And so that is a limitation of how long the diesels could stay under as well.
Don: Yeah but it’s never a big problem. In my time in submarines, I think I’ve only ever seen it once when the oxygen levels got really down. I think that was out in the Far East. We were doing trials and of course you’ve got indicators how much oxygen you’ve got in there so … Budengerg Gauges or some other … I forget now. You’re trying to go along as long as you can possibly manage without refreshing your atmosphere and I’ve seen it in the Engine Room, or anywhere in the boat, there is so little oxygen. You don’t notice it yourself but you’re breathing deeper. You’re unaware of it but you’re breathing deeper and then you do notice when you strike a match. It will flare up and go straight out. Not enough oxygen to keep the match burning.
Simon: Wow! So how long did the diesels stay under … dive then?
Don: When you’re snorting a very long … sometimes crossing the Atlantic, it was part of an exercise, you’d be snorting all the way, running with engines underwater with the snort mast sticking up and sucking air in from the outside.
Simon: And then without the snort, how long could you stay under then?
Don: It depends. If you’ve got a full battery, you’ve got fresh air in the boat, it’s not long since you’ve snorted, or been on the surface, 24 hours, maybe even longer. So long as you don’t use much oxygen (laughs). Oh, you can stay down for quite a long time. We tried to charge the batteries at least once every 24 hours, but with three or four hours charging.
Simon: So, you were doing training runs and you’re doing … what about actually sort of missions? I don’t know what the right word for it is. Did you do many of those as well?
Don: Not allowed to say (laughs). Submarines are very covert.
Simon: Sure, I didn’t want to know the details, just whether you had … it’s not just training, it’s actually the practice as well.
Don: Well you’re always doing exercises. Exercises made as realistic as possible.
Simon: Yeah. So, what other parts of the world did you visit with the submarines then?
Don: Oh dear. Mediterranean was the first experience. Northern Aegean, Far East as Alexandria, Benghazi, Southern Mediterranean and then of course Gibraltar and a few ports in the Western Mediterranean. And then in the Indian Ocean, we crossed the Indian Ocean twice, and we operated from Singapore. From Singapore we went to Thailand, Philippines. You really have to go there (laughs).
Simon: What’s the shore leave like? Is everyone really up for a good time?
Don: We did very well you see, because out there are a lot of American people, ships, submarines whatever, but they had to all be back in their Base by about midnight or 11 o’clock at night. We had all night leave. The Yanks would feed the ladies drinks all night and then we would take over (laughs). It was quite good that really. One of the most fantastic places was Subic Bay in the Philippines. It is absolutely brilliant there.
Simon: Was it set up with Bars and Restaurants and …
Don: Bars with a family room at the back. You could do as you like in there. I went to the Enlisted Men’s Club in the Philippines in Subic Bay a bit hungry. There’s a huge Dining Hall seating about 400 people. There was only two of us in there. Sat down at this table and this American Chef comes along, a big guy, stomach out here, blood down his apron. “Yeah, what do you want?” “Steak please.” “Do you want a pound and a half or two pound?” “I’m only peckish, I’ll just have the pound and a half.” The steak, it was that big, nothing else. Sometimes you got a bit of coleslaw, that was all you got with it. You have never had a steak like it, ever in my life apart from that. You knife just fell straight through it, gorgeous. Went on board an American ship in Scotland years later, invited for lunch. He said, “You’ll have the same steak as we get now.” They’re about that big (laughs).
46 minutes
Simon: Oh really, the old days are gone.
Don: We had a three-month deployment to Australia, to Darwin, but we’d been at sea for quite a long time around the South Atlantic and you’ve got to bear in mind that I was in the Engine Room and the Captain never used to come along to me every day and say, “We’re in that area now, and this is what we’re going to do here.” He didn’t know about that. In the Engine Room you’re isolated. You don’t know what the hell’s going on, or where you are, but we was in the Pacific on our way to Australia. We’d been doing a lot of running around and for an ‘A’ Class boat like the Anchorite, it has enough fuel to go anywhere but we was getting low on fuel you see being that many miles. We were very short of fuel, so we had to get to the nearest Port to get some diesel, which was Townsville. Townsville was on the north coast of Australia, and we was on the other side of the Great Barrier Reef. To get in there, we had to go through this channel, through the Great Barrier Reef that no ship has been through there since Wartime. We were a small ship in desperation to get some juice and to get there, we had to get everybody up from down below apart from the Watchkeepers, and we was on the surface edging through the coral heads through the Barrier Reef. We was all stood there. You could look down and see the coral heads just a matter of feet from the side of your ballast tanks. You get into one of those it could cut your ballast tanks open like a razor blade. It took us about three quarters of an hour to get through the reef.
Simon: So you’re there spotting to say, “getting a bit close here”?
Don: It was not an exercise. It was having to get to the petrol station (laughs), but we had to be on so we could see. Never get through there in the dark, but yeah, we had to get through the Barrier Reef. We got to the other side there and we ran into Darwin, into Townsville. We’d got no Australian currency, so they give leave that most of the crew could go ashore in Townsville for a few [whistles] like that. They got a good exchange rate from the Port Manager. I didn’t go ashore; I was too busy refuelling. We were refuelling from a road tanker. We had 400 tonnes of diesel. A road tanker doesn’t hold anything like that. I think you had to fill up about 10 – 15 road tankers to give us enough to get going again. I was very busy refuelling. All the other lads going ashore. There’s another story I’m not going to tell you in case the guy is still alive. The guy, coming back onboard, pissed out of his mind. He got a taxi back and he climbed out the taxi and he stood up and his trousers fell down (laughs). So, the lads said they were up there pulling his trousers up for him and he was trying to salute coming back onboard again. He was saluting while he was trying to pull his trousers up (laughs).
50 minutes 5 seconds
Simon: I guess that’s one of the things isn’t it, the stories, the dits, that seems to be a big part of the submarine service.
Don: There’s a lot of that, yes.
Simon: Is that to do with the fact that you spend so much time together with people, that the ability to tell an interesting story, a dit …
Don: There’s a lot of true stories to tell about it.
Simon: It’s sort of keeping each other amused while you’re …
Don: It’s between us, each other. When you’re telling somebody else outside the boat.
Simon: Ok. So that idea of comradeship or brotherhood of submariners, is that something that you expected before you joined or how did you find the comradeship?
Don: It’s a difficult subject, very difficult. Because you see, in a submarine you’ve got so many different branches. Stokers, or Marine Engineering Mechanics tend to sort of stick together. They might have friends in other branches, but incidental. The Chef’s got plenty of friends (laughs), but you don’t get a very good camaraderie between everybody. You know everybody. Everybody has got their own buddy or mate. Might not be the same branch as them but you know everybody. You see the crew changes quite infrequently. A person can be on a boat between a year and two years. Then he comes off, somebody else comes on to take over but its trickle changing. You might have a really good mate but then he goes on draft, and you’ve got somebody else, so you’ve got no coagulation.
Simon: So, do you feel sort of an affinity or a closeness with all submariners generally or it was just the ones that you had a strong relationship with, strong friendships with?
Don: If you meet another submariner, that you don’t know, you want to find out what boats he’s been on, any area of commonality really.
Simon: And I know you’re married; you were saying earlier about your wife. When did you meet your wife? Were you in the submarine service when you met her or …?
Don: I was on submarine training when I met her.
Simon: In Gosport.
Don: In Bradford. In Bradford while I was away in Malta the first time, for a year and a half, I only met her going on foreign service leave, so in the year and a half I was away, we were exchanging letters. We were doing our courtship by letter. After I’d been out there for 9 months, I flew back on what you call Station Leave. We got engaged then you see. Then I went back out to Malta. Then I applied to come home at the end of the year and a half to get married and then to go back to Malta again to do two and a half years with Pauline out there as well.
Simon: Oh she went with you?
Don: No. That was what we wanted but there was … my promotion came through, and so if we had done what I wanted, Pauline would have been another year, but we would have been overborn with people in my particular Department you see, and so I was sent back home again, at the end of my year and a half. So, I was back in Gosport again you see and then I picked up the … it’s a long time ago … the last year and a quarter I was out in Malta the first time, I was on the Tapir. When Tally-Ho stopped diving, I came off and had to go somewhere else to continue my training and I went with the Tapir for a year or so. Same Class of boat, not quite as old, but almost, you know what I mean, streamlined. It was the Engineer Officer on Tapir said I had to come back home again at the end of the year and a half finished, so Pauline missed out her year in Malta. It would have been quite good. So, after that I then went to Trespasser, a lovely old boat she was. Almost identical to Tally-Ho, but 1942, pretty old but a really good and enjoyable boat to be on.
55 minutes 57 seconds
Simon: Because the equipment ran well? What made her enjoyable to be on then?
Don: The time at sea, the time in harbour, places you went to.
Simon: Ok. So, when you were married and Pauline was in Gosport, you sort of got accommodation provided was there?
Don: When we got married first of all, we came down to Gosport. We lived in Peel Road in Gosport in an Admiralty Hiring.
Simon: What does that mean?
Don: It was a private house.
Simon: And they rent it for you?
Don: A rented flat; we had the upstairs. It was alright, a nice old couple ran it, no problem at all. But then the Trespasser went to scrap after a while. We did a KPEGS, that’s a 7,000-mile run down to Simon’s Town, Cape Town. We did a three-month deployment down there. Went to Port Elizabeth, East London, did little visits around that area there, and then at the end of three months we came back home again. Been working for South African Navy of the Cape of Good Hope. Steady run back to the UK, bit of an engine problem on the way back. Leaving Simon’s Town, number 5 cylinder on the port engine was knocking and the Chief Engineer said, “It’s not gone yet, leave it until it goes.” We had to stop in Table bay, because one of the crew had been caught associating with a black lady which was highly [whistles] not to be done, so he was in gaol for a couple of weeks. He couldn’t come ashore until we had to leave Simon’s Town. They brought him out in a boat, put him back on our boat and we sailed back up to home. A very naughty thing to do (laughs). It was his second time.
Simon: Different times.
Don: Second time he’d been caught. We left Table Bay on our way back home, up to Freetown and this big end went and it had done a lot of damage to the crank shaft. Do you know crank shafts and things?
Simon: I don’t know the detail.
Don: It did a lot of damage to the crank shaft. We couldn’t put a new bearing in, we had to run without it. A 6-cylinder engine running on 5 cylinders, a lot of vibration. We had to put up with it all the way up, Freetown, Luanda. The next stop then was Gibraltar. From Gibraltar then back home again. Then we took that boat to scrap afterwards. That was Trespasser. A lovely old boat she was.
Simon: And when the engines are running, and you’re in the Engine Compartment, how would you describe the noise, the sound inside?
Don: Deafening.
Simon: I mean what would a person in the street have it as an equivalent of? There’s no noise that’s anything like it that you’d have in a daily life.
Don: Electric drill I suppose.
Simon: Ok. So, it’s like standing by a pneumatic drill in the road is it?
Don: Yeah.
Simon: And that’s all day.
Don: Yeah. We didn’t have ear protection, but when you go onto the ‘A’ boats, which have got a high speed … no, we didn’t have ear defenders on them either. It was the Porpoise Class you had ear defenders. Radio, you could what was going on inside the loop, you could hear what was going on.
60 minutes 28 seconds
Simon: Oh that’s interesting. So, you were sort of less cut-off from the rest of the submarine then, because you’re listening to what …
Don: Yeah. That was on the Porpoise Class. On the ‘T’ Class and the ‘A’ Class we didn’t have ear defenders at all, but they had very noisy … if you went aft to between the two superchargers, you didn’t hang around there because the noise between the two scrambled you bloody brain. I want to create some water.
Simon: No problem. [Pause in interview] Maybe we’ll talk about the FOS, the time you were in FOS in Gosport. The Flag Officer Submarine. FOSM is it?
Don: Flag Officer Submarines.
Simon: What does that mean then? That’s based in Gosport.
Don: It was, you don’t have it anymore. You have Senior Officers Submarines now. He’s not an Admiral, Commadore I think. Flag Officer Submarines was in charge of all British submarines. He was living in Gosport, but he was responsible for Plymouth and Faslane but also he was in charge of NATO submarines, Eastern Atlantic. I can’t think of his title.
Simon: So, that was submarines from other countries?
Don: Yeah.
Simon: And that was based in Gosport?
Don: Com Sub East Lant, Commander of Submarines, Eastern Atlantic, so that was American boats over here, French …
Simon: So, that was his Office that he ran it from, that’s where you were working was it? And what did they say to you, “Hey, do you want to come onboard … do you want to be on shore and work on there after the submarines?” ‘Cos you’ve got a lot of experience on the submarines that they think …
Don: It was an ex-submarine Skipper.
Simon: Yeah. I’m thinking about your time there. You were there weren’t you?
Don: I was not actually working for Fosham. He had … I was in Fosham’s Task Analysis Group.
Simon: Ok.
Don: Now, in 1969, I was on a submarine called the Auriga, by which time I’d been on three other ‘A’ Class submarines. This is 1969. I was on the Auriga, running from Plymouth, and we went out from Plymouth to work off Gibraltar for a while and we were working in the Western Mediterranean with various Navies and what have you and we’d been operating during the day and then at night the ships you’d been working with went into Gibraltar. We sat on the surface, recharging our batteries you see. Because we were diving early next morning, we’d been opened up for diving. She was ready to dive at any time, but we just relaxed and charging the batteries. I was a Diving Panel Watch Keeper. I was the guy who dived the submarine, surfaced the submarine and trimmed it above the water to keep it in balance, you see. I came off watch at about 1 o’clock in the morning, get to my bunk in accommodation space and was asleep. Charging the batteries, when you’re charging the batteries, after a while they start to give off gas, hydrogen gas. Now you’ve got ventilation sucking the hydrogen gas out of the accommodation space into the Engine intakes. Not a problem. But if things aren’t working properly, then you get a build-up of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen of course is very explosive gas, and I was asleep, and I don’t remember much about that actually. All I remember is a feeling of tumbling. In my mind I thought I was in the Hotel ashore, and the Hotel was collapsing, and I remember thinking, ‘well this is not too bad but why are all the bloody roof liners on top of you?’ We was living in the Mediterranean Hotel in Gibraltar, but we was back at sea in the early hours of the morning. The battery had exploded. The build-up of hydrogen gas. It’s probable that somebody woke up. You’ve got lights, signs saying ‘No Smoking’, ‘No Smoking’, ‘No Smoking’, and submariners know that when your batteries gassing you don’t smoke, but somebody maybe lit a fag up, bang!
66 minutes 21 seconds
Simon: Onboard.
Don: Oh yeah. Under the accommodation space. Everybody was asleep on top of it. The deck, which is steel plate came up, split open. There was a tear in the deck about 8 feet long. All the furniture was wrecked, a shambles. The first thing I recall is … I woke up, reached out to grab something and a piece of wood in my face just splintered in my hand. It didn’t leave a mark, it just splintered ‘cos on the panelling inside, Formica, pieces of wood on the corners, making it posh, but with the deck coming up, it just squashed this, and it splintered in my hand. I sat on the edge of my bunk, which is in the passageway, usually this was outside the Stoker’s Mess. Usually, the Stoker’s Mess was the … the wall was there, the bulkhead was there but this time it was here.
Simon: Half the distance away.
Don: My bunk was at an angle like that, because when the deck came up, it pushed my bunk out and I couldn’t see anything, just like a London mist, foggy. I wasn’t aware of very much at all, just a foggy atmosphere. I got my torch. I always have a torch. You might notice I’ve got about eight torches around here because now I do not go anywhere without a torch. I put my torch on with a red filter on it because I was Panel Watch Keeper. You can’t have any lights in the Control Room, shone the torch into the Stoker’s Mess. I couldn’t see anything, just a haze. “Anybody in there?” and this bloke says, “Yeah, me.” “Who’s that?” “M E Legg.” I said, “Walk towards the torch, towards the light.” He said, “I can’t.” He said, “There’s all the furniture in the way.” Everything was a shambles, broken furniture. He climbed up, climbed out of the Mess. He joined me in the passageway, just as this character arrived. He’d been coming up from aft, from the Control Room with a DCBA, breathing apparatus, breathing from that. He arrived just as Stoker Legg came out the Mess. You couldn’t see him, just a haze. Of course, the Engineer Officer arrived, and he said, “Right, follow me out” so he turned round and set off back to the Control Room and M E Legg followed him out and I followed him. He said, “Well you’ve got to be careful because the Battery Board, about the size of that settee there, square, had been blown up and it was tilting back against the bulkhead, and we just had the bare battery we had to try and get across this thing. Not easy you see. Then on the side there was a switch covering the battery. Big brass switches, you see with power on there as well and we had to get between the bulkhead and the switches through that way.
Simon: Right. Live and sparking, wow!
Don: But you daren’t touch anything (laughs). You had to get across this gap into the other side there, then we were out into the Control Room, you see. And the Captain was stood there, and I said to him, “Can we turn over in the water?” He said, “Go and get some fresh air.” We had to go to the lower fin to get some fresh air. I was up there for quite a long time actually and that was probably where I went wrong. I should have come back down again but I was shaken up quite badly. I believe that I’d been unconscious for about 25 minutes before I came round to find where I was.
71 minutes 3 seconds
Simon: From the gas or from the explosion? Do you think you were sort of the respiratory side … you were knocked out by the bang or …?
Don: Compression. There was so much fumes, I pulled my handkerchief out and started breathing through my handkerchief and I saw my handkerchief later and it was just black on the outside. That didn’t go into my lungs. I must have breathed some of it in but yeah.
Simon: Goodness! Was that the scariest time you had onboard do you think?
Don: I don’t think I was scared, just confused. I don’t think I was scared ‘cos I knew we had a lot of good people on there to get us out of the shit (laughs). Confused is what I’d say but went up in the lower fin and I should have been down there. I was accused of failing to provide the firefighting equipment. I knew there was no fire because I’d just come out of there. If there had been fire, you’d have seen it and known about it. I was accused of failing to provide the fire fighting gear. That was my job, firefighting, but my understudy was on the Diving Panel. He relieved me on the Diving Panel and if firefighting gear had been needed, he would have got it. You’re surrounded by the stuff anyway. Another thing of course is with the shock of the explosion, the fresh water tanks on either side of the battery were lined with a stuff called Rothmenite to protect the water from the metal, but with the shock of the explosion, this came off the sides of the tanks and of course the Engineer left me instructions to blow all the water out of the fresh water tanks so he could get inside there to check the damage inside the tanks. Trying to siphon it out, you put a pressure on there, the water goes up the syphon pipe, but it didn’t because the Rothmenite was over the end of the pipe you see. We tried for two or three hours trying to do this, didn’t get anywhere, so I said, “What we’ll do, is we’ll forget about it right now. We’ll open the tank up so that on Monday morning …” this is on Saturday or Sunday, “on Monday morning we’ll get an air driven pump and suck the water out.” But I was accused of countermanding the Engineering Officer’s order. I was never asked to explain why or what, nothing. We left Gibraltar, we were there for about four or five days afterwards, and we left … incidentally, we had people coming and going off the boat, so I was nominated to stand on the end of the gangway and to keep a record of who comes off the boat and who comes back on again you see, so we didn’t know exactly if anybody was still in the Compartment or not you see. You just kept checking movement. I was stood there for about an hour, two hours, and then somebody said, “Right, you go and get yourself a morning coffee or tea…” This is still about five o’clock in the morning. “Go and get yourself a coffee or tea off of Malcolm” which was the Frigate which was tied up in front of us you see. I’d not been able to find my shoes. I found a pair of shoes ticking round from somewhere. I put them on. They were both left-hand shoes (laughs) but they were better than no shoes. So, I walked across to the Malcolm. ‘Cos when you’re at sea, you’re not wearing your uniform as much., I had a blue drill shirt and a pair of civvy trousers. No cap. I goes onboard the Malcolm, and the Master at Arms of the Malcolm was there. He said, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m the Chief Stoker on that there.” He said, “did you [inaudible] “ “Yeah, a pair of bloody boots.” Anyway, he got a pair of boots very quickly. He said, “Go down to the Chief’s Mess and get …” this was about half past five in the morning, he said, “Go down Chief’s Mess and get yourself a cup of tea.” Brilliant. I needed that. I went down there. He came down a few minutes later, and he said, “Would you like a tot?” I said, “I need a tot now more than I’ve ever done in my life before.” He came back with a neat Pusser’s rum… [visually shows the size of the tot]
Simon: Right.
76 minutes 18 seconds
Don: Maybe not quite as much as you’ve got in that glass. Neat rum.
Simon: Yeah, that’s a third of a pint or …
Don: It went straight down the hatch, never touched the sides. Ooh, I needed that. But when you drink like that, your stomach comes out a bit doesn’t it. I felt something pricking in the back of my shirt. Have a look, and you know … say that’s a pint beer glass, well the top rim of that, the quadrant there was inside my shirt and the nearest beer glasses had been in the Chief’s Mess that had come through the Mess curtain, down a passageway about eight feet, through my bunk curtain and into my shirt.
Simon: Goodness.
Don: How it happened I’ve got no idea. It did, I pulled it out my shirt, but I felt this pricking and I thought what the hell it is. It was this bloody beer glass.
Simon: I mean that’s a shocking experience isn’t it? So, the explosion of that size, that had never happened before?
Don: Yes, on the Alliance. It happened on the Alliance, but the Alliance was actually in harbour when it happened, and the Affray. We reckoned it had happened on the Affray, but the Affray was dived at the time. When ours went up, the pressure escaped up the Conning Tower.
Simon: Right. Because you were on the surface.
Don: But on the Affray, we’re not absolutely sure but we think that’s exactly what happened on the Affray.
Simon: And that was lost was it?
Don: Oh she’s still down there, yeah. Anyway, because of all this lot, I had my Chief’s rate removed, and reverted to Petty Officer again and sent ashore, returned to Dolphin. And the recommendation from the submarine I was on, was to be sent back to General Service. But I got back to Dolphin there, and I was sent for by the Captain SM, Captain of the Squadron you see. He asked me, “What went on there?” I explained. He said, “Do you think you did anything wrong at all at that time?” I said, “No, absolutely not, I was doing just what I thought was necessary.” I think he was needled because the ship’s Officers had acted without his consent, without discussion with him. He said, “You’re not going back to General Service, you’re staying in submarines. You got employed in the Submarine Service on Submarine Pay until you leave the Service.” I had four years ashore in Dolphin, coming home every night just about, and he did me a real favour. He’d seen what had happened on the boat, they’d acted without his consent, and he was making sure that I didn’t suffer for it you see. So, I stayed as a Chief, as a PO for another three years then I picked up on Chief’s rate again before I came outside. And I’ve got a Chief’s pension as well now. But it’s amazing how a nasty thing like that happening can affect your whole life.
Simon: From the point of view of it took you in a different direction ‘cos it brought you on to the …
80 minutes 3 seconds
Don: When I was in the Tech Analysis Group, I was employed as a Training Analyst. Looking at all the elements of a person’s job. Getting down on paper so they could use that as a course design for training people to do that with all the necessary bits of information. It was about a year and a half as a Training Analyst, and then I did a year and a half as a Course Designer and then I came outside, after four years ashore. When I came outside, after that I went to sea again on the Walrus, there for two years, but when I finally came out of the Navy, I was looking for a job you see, and there’s an organisation called the Occupational Guidance Unit over in Portsmouth. I went to see them; this was when I’d finished with the Navy. They said, “What did you do?” I said, “Well I was in charge of fuel systems, store systems what have you but because of that incident, I was doing Industrial Training. I do naval Training.” “So why don’t you become a Training Officer?” I said, “That sounds like a good idea” (laughs), so I was put through the Industrial Training Officer’s Course at the Portsmouth Management Centre. That was about three or four months and by the time I finished that, I got a job with Sweetheart International in Gosport. You may or may not have heard of it.
Simon: No. What do they do?
Don: They’ve changed the name since then. Plastics Industry. You know the plastic beakers you get. Like that one in the … plastic that is but different kind of plastic for yoghurt pots, pots of butter. Quite a good job actually. I was Training Officer there for quite a long time I think. Anyway, I got made redundant from there. I did such a good job (laughs).
Simon: Was it hard to transition out of the Navy, out of the submarines, onto civvy street?
Don: Hard to say really. I just got on with it. One day I was in the Navy, the next day I was not. You get a lot of old sailors hanging around outside Naval Barracks, just waiting for another draft, but nothing coming, but by the time I came out of the Navy, I’d been to the OGU and got on this course. And that was the transition I think for me, so doing the Industrial Training Officer then I got a job, so I just got on with that. I got made redundant from that one. I went self-employed as well for the last three or four months because I’d been employed by a Company that got me redundant, but they employed me again under contract only about four or five months, training the lads out on Course at that time. I then went to work for Poly Liner, a Training Manager for Polyline, up in Enfield, Middlesex.
Simon: Oh yeah, I know. So, that transition interests me, that idea of when you were working at Dolphin again towards the end of your time in the Service, you were able to come and quite a different home life. You know, you actually had a home life, where you were able to come back and forth every day. What did that feel like then, having that …?
Don: Well when you’ve spent years and years and years … when I came back from Malta, I was on the ‘A’ boats down in Plymouth, I was away at sea for six weeks, two weeks in for maintenance, six weeks the other side of the Atlantic or at least the middle of the Atlantic out there. Six weeks out, two weeks in for three years. It was part of the job, you know. You go away, say goodbye and you get on the boat with your gear, push off to sea. Wife’s expecting you in about six weeks, seven weeks. You come back, you have two weeks at home having a lot of fun or whatever and then ‘phuut’ you’re gone again. Two and half, three years it was like that actually. We went to Singapore; did I tell you about that? (laughs). It was 1966, having left the Artful, after the Auriga, the one that blew up, I was on the Anchorite, and I went to Singapore. I went to Singapore to join the Andrew, an ‘A’ Class boat, getting on in years a bit, lacking in maintenance. We had a big problem with the fuel system, which lost me my position again. The fuel system was not working properly, and I got the responsibility for it, understandably. I came off that boat, went on to the Anchorite. Now the Anchorite was a lovely boat. Everybody on there was good. We had a really good time, did lots of visits. This was when I went to Australia on the Anchorite. A good boat, it really was good. A good Skipper, the whole crew was very good.
86 minutes 22 seconds
Simon: Ok. So, one thing I was thinking … obviously you live in Gosport now, you were born up North, live in Gosport. What does Gosport mean to you. I mean the projects being funded by …
Don: I’ve been living in Gosport since 1958.
Simon: So it’s most of your life.
Don: Off and on. HMS Dolphin was Alma Mater. It’s our home. The traditional home really for the submarines, and we still feel it’s a Submarine Base. It’s not now anymore, but …
Simon: And what’s your … I dunno, it’s kind of a weird question but what’s your relationship with Gosport ‘cos that’s who is funding the project is Gosport High Street Action Zone, so what does Gosport mean to you? I guess it’s everything is it?
Don: It’s home now. You don’t want to go to Bradford now, no way do you. It’s a foreign country now in Bradford. When I left Bradford in 1955, there was no immigrants to be seen at all. The only foreign people you saw was a handful of Ukrainian DP’s came over here just after the War.
Simon: What’s DP?
Don: Displaced Persons, and a bunch of Scottish people, down at the bottom of the street. You never saw a black face in Bradford at all, unless you were a Coal Miner. But when I came back again in ’57, ‘cos my sister was still there ‘till ’57, then it was all black. Black as the ovens of hell.
Simon: So, do you think there is anything … you’ve been very generous with your time today and thank you for that. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t spoken about?
Don: (Laughs).
Simon: You think we’ve been thorough?
Don: Yeah.
Simon: Ok. Well look …
Don: The last one was the Walrus. I was on her for two years. She was operated from Faslane in Scotland. I lived in Gosport but the boat’s in Faslane. We were still doing this six weeks away, two weeks in, and when I came back in, I was in a car all the way down to here. In the two years I was on her, the boat came to Plymouth to Gosport three times. Once was for Sea Officers War Course, Army and Air Force Officers to find out what some of these do, one was for Fleet Review and the third one was for Southampton Boat Show. They had a submarine there to let the people look around. So, three times. In reality, I didn’t spend that much time in Scotland. Scotland’s deadly. When I was going up there, when I got drafted up there, I was really concerned because it’s a heavy blinking Squadron is that one there. Boozing up all the time.
Simon: What does heavy breaking mean?
Don: Boozing, drinking. Everybody drank and I was concerned about that. I like my drink, but I know when I’ve had enough. I thought I’m never going to handle that, but I did. Not a problem. I didn’t get to be an alcoholic or nothing. I drunk my share but managed to control it. Used to spend a lot of time in Faslane.
90 minutes 31 seconds
Simon: What’s your impression of Faslane? What did you think of Faslane?
Don: Concrete jungle. Oh, it treacherous then. The first time I went to Faslane, that was in late ‘50’s, very early ‘60’s, and it was just a compound with a link wire fence all the way round it. The main road ran past it, you see, just a link wire fence all the way around it, and there was a ship there called the Narvik, a old tank loading ship. She worked as a Depot Ship really, stores, and this sort of stuff. A combination. That’s all there was there. There was a jetty, a H2O Jetty. We had two submarines called Excalibur and Explorer. These were propelled by high test peroxide. Lethal stuff that is. They were trials boats. Using the HTP, they could really shift quite fast but we decided it was too dangerous. Explorer and Excalibur. We had a submarine called Poseidon and she was working as a trial submarine, trials torpedoes, HTP torpedoes and one of them exploded, killed about three or four people. They don’t use it anymore, but the Russians did, and you remember the Kursk?
Simon: Yeah.
Don: A Russian submarine had an explosion. ‘Cos the high-test peroxide blew up didn’t it, but it was inside the boat at the time. Well, ours was inside a boat, but she was at sea at the time as well and that killed a lot of people. Sank the boat as well. They had to cut the end of her off to get the buts and pieces out of it.
Simon: Actually you know there’s something I realised I haven’t asked you about, which is you were on the Alliance as a Tour Guide for 10 years weren’t you? What was that experience like of showing people around, the general members of the public?
Don: A lot of fun.
Simon: Because I guess the submarines … the general person in the street doesn’t know about submarines. They know they exist …
Don: They only know what you tell them. I was very experienced person you see. I’d had a lot of experience of submarines, just like that one. I was on four boats like that one, so I knew all about them. You’ve got to be careful you don’t tell them too much ‘cos you can make a tour last for about tree or four hours if you want to, but I think it was about half an hour doing a tour, forty minutes. So, you can only tell them what they need to know really. That’s why I wrote that you see, so when you’ve done a tour, you buy one of them and you find out all about it you see?
Simon: That’s the guide that you wrote for the visitors.
Don: Yeah.
Simon: What’s the question that the public ask the most on the tour?
Don: I can’t think now. No, I can’t think now of a standard question. They are usually quite simple questions, you know. How deep do you go and this sort of stuff. I can’t think of a question now, a standard question, I can’t think of anything now.
Simon: And what’s the public’s … I mean they must learn so much more than they know before they get onboard. Just from that half hour.
Don: They’ll forget about it all (laughs). That’s what that’s for.
95 minutes 2 seconds
Simon: Right. But the impression that they have from having done the tour must be a real mind opener for them mustn’t it? That they really do feel like they’ve had a slice of submarine life.
Don: I don’t think they remember much about it at all. They’re in a strange environment, they’re listening to this bloke talking. I think a lot of it goes in one ear and out the other, but they’ve had the experience. They may remember fractions of it, but that’s about all really. That’s what that was for.
Simon: Brilliant! Well, thank you very much for your time today.
Don: Is that it?
Simon: Yeah, we’re done.
Don: What about all the other bits? (laughs).
Simon: Well, this is the difficulty of where does the line … where does the cut-off come, but thank you very much for your time.
Don: No problem. If you give me my voice back I will be alright (laughs).
Simon: Sorry to have worn you out. That’s great, thank you for that Don.
Don: Is that it?
Simon: Yeah, I mean that is … the real sort of the struggle on it really is where do you cut off, because I mean you’ve had a whole life of it as well, so that is the struggle for us, but much appreciated.
Don: That’s why, we used to come ashore stinking of diesel …
Simon: Oh, I meant to ask you about the diesel, yeah. It literally clung to your clothes was it.
Don: Oh yeah. Even when you washed them, you couldn’t wash the smell of diesel out. It gets into your skin. I used to wash my hands … if I’d been to the toilet, I’d wash my hands in a bucket of diesel. That’s the way to do it.
Simon: Why was that?
Don: We were short of fresh water.
Simon: Ok.
Don: I was in charge of fresh water as well (laughs). I forget now how many tanks we had, but a very, very limited amount of fresh water.
Simon: Ok.
Don: It was always scarce. You never washed in any fresh water. It was drinking water, never washed. When you were at sea for a week, or when you were at sea for six weeks, at the end of the first week or two weeks, you’d be allowed an all over wash, and you’d get a bowl of water and wash yourself down with that. That was it.
Simon: And that was rationed out from people. Like, this week it’s your turn and …
Don: Some people never bothered (laughs). If you felt dirty, then you’d wash yourself, but most people had a good wash over before you came onto harbour. You used the last of your fresh water. Fresh water was very, very tightly controlled. The Chef had free access to the water for cooking purposes, but … the Navy submarines used to get wrong, going back awhile, if you got the rum issue, it was one part of rum, one part of water for the Junior Rates. Senior Rates got a neat tot. A neat tot is quite a lot of rum, but the Junior Rates got one on one, one part water, one part of rum. Surface ships had one part of rum, two parts of water, because of the useage of water you see.
Simon: Ok.
Don: I liked that one on one.
Simon: You got the better deal by getting more concentrated rum.
Don: Oh yeah. I liked a neat tot anyway. You can’t beat a neat tot. What I do now, I’ve got a bottle of Pusser’s rum in there, Wood’s Rum and if I’m in a nautical mood, I’ll pour myself half a tot which is a bit more than what you’ve got in there. I drink that and then I have the other half (laughs).
Simon: So, that’s your favourite rum is it?
Don: I don’t drink very much of it now.
Simon: What did you get onboard? Was it a particular make of rum or …
Don: It was Pusser’s Rum. It was supplied by the Jamaican Government. I think the British Navy had to pay for it eventually, but it was … it used to be paid for by the Jamaican Government, but I think we had to pay for it eventually, but they stopped it because you see, it got more technical, and they didn’t want people having a big tot of rum in front of technical equipment. It was sad when they stopped it.
100 minutes 30 seconds
Simon: Really, it made a big difference did it?
Don: It was the highlight of the day! No matter what the sea was like, it could be really, really rough.
Simon: I would have thought that would have made it harder if your head was a bit swimming around.
Don: No, no, no.
Simon: What about the food when you’re onboard? Was that a big part of the day?
Don: When people talk about submarines, they always say about poor food. I never experienced poor food at all. You’d kill your Chef if the food was not very good, but the Navy Chefs are always good. I’ve never seen a really bad one, and you an allowance of feeding materials, more than surface ships do.
Simon: Well, like you say the Chef is the most popular person onboard.
Don: Yeah. The only times you had problems with food was when you were at the end of a patrol, end of a trip. All your fresh stuff had long since gone. You were eating stuff out of tins, but it was still good food. The favourite food was of course what we called ‘Cheese Ush’.
Simon: Cheese?
Don: Cheese Ush. U-S-H. It’s like a Quiche Lorraine basically, only it’s not like a Quiche Lorraine. It’s like in a dish, a pastry case and it’s got tons and tons of grated cheese in it and grated onion. I think maybe a bit of egg in there as well. You grate it into the case, until it’s about that deep. Then you do it again (laughs).
Simon: About two inches of the stuff.
Don: Well each cut you go down about an inch, but it’s really … Once a week we had Cheese Ush. Cheese Ush and chips. I’ve tried making it and my wife tried making it, almost there but not quite the same. But every Navy ship did it and it was always perfect.
Simon: What about other unusual names for dishes then?
Don: Oh you’ve got all them but it’s not just specifically to submarines, it’s the Navy.
Simon: Is it?
Don: Cheese Ush, Train Smash. Tinned tomatoes. Baby’s Heads, …
Simon: Heads?
Don: Baby’s Heads, kidneys. Steak and kidney pie. Of course, the kidneys look like baby’s heads (laughs).
Simon: Right.
Don: Train Smash, baby’s heads, oh I don’t know. Pastry Clacker.
Simon: What’s that?
Don: Clacker, pastry.
Simon: Oh that’s a clacker. Yeah, these are all new words for me.
Interview ends
104 minutes 6 seconds
Transcribed March 2022
