Colin Clarke – Joining the Navy

I left at 16 and already set on a path of joining the Navy at that time. So there was a photograph. I’ll never forget it, that my mother had, of my uncle on the Flight Deck of one of the big Warships back in the day and he was in his full tropical uniform, greeting Princess Anne, so I thought I’d like some of that, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in the latter days of schooling anyway, and I just kind of fixated on that.

Clearly he wasn’t a Submariner and I didn’t intend to be a Submariner when I joined up. I was thinking about being a Clearance Diver.

Chatting with one of the other guys, it was as simple as this. He said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’ve read up about this Submarine Sonar. I’m going to give that a go” and that’s kind of I thought, in lieu of anything else, let’s give it a whirl, and here we are.