Chris Groves – Joining the Navy

I was lucky enough to join the Navy immediately from Sixth Form, so I went down to Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in January of 1987.

Simon: Is that straight in as a sort of Officer Training? How does that work?

You go straight in as an Officer Under Training. Straight into Dartmouth, alongside the graduates that join, and alongside what are called ‘Special Duties Officers’ so the SD Officers who had come up through the ranks, so those that had been Leading Hands and Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers and had decided to transfer to the Officer branch.

So, all there, and including what at that time were the Wrens, the Women’s Royal Naval Service, still with blue stripes and a separate Service to the Royal Naval Officers but they did their training through Dartmouth as well.

So, I spent a year at Dartmouth, which included 3 months at sea in HMS Fife, which is a Guided Missile Destroyer basically. Very lucky to be the first ship since the 1950s to go through the St Lawrence Seaway and into the Great Lakes, so we had a fantastic three months.

Simon: Where is that? I’m showing my ignorance.

The Great Lakes in Canada. So, we basically visited Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St John’s Newfoundland, all in a sort of 3-month period and a great introduction into the Navy.