Andy Dinsdale – Captain on the periscope in his boxers

The bit for me, again it goes back to my comment about ‘submarines operational, not decorational’, is there are times onboard where you may be fairly relaxed in your uniform and you won’t wear … in fact when I was on Triumph, you would wear polo shirts, that’s the Ward Room rig, you’d wear polo shirts in the Control Room.

Simon: Is that dictated by the Captain?

Yes it is, so it’s up to the Captain to decide, but … I can’t remember whether it was on Torbay or Triumph now, I think it was Triumph, we had an incident, something happened while we were at sea, and the Captain came out … on a T-Class Submarine, the Captain’s cabin is just outside the Control Room, so you can come literally within 3 seconds, he’s out of his cabin and he’s in the middle of the Control Room, and there was something happened onboard, and he literally jumped out of bed, cane into the Control Room, no airs or graces, in his boxer shorts, on the periscope, going round the periscope in his boxer shorts. Brilliant!

But when he did that, he had absolute respect of everyone in the Control Room.

Simon: Because that was the priority.

Absolutely. It was he needed to be … he hadn’t got time to put a pair of trousers on and get a shirt on and put your shoes on and … you haven’t got time for that, so he was in the Control Room within seconds having heard the pipe.