Colin Hamilton – Making beer and drawing in Dolphin

Part 1 training was basic training, Part 2 training was more detailed and the Class of submarine you were going in to. I got a broad Porpoise Class.

The Chief Artificer, who was the Instructor, the first lesson we had was making beer.

Now the reason he showed us how to make beer, the recipe was because that was months that the beer became legal to make at home. You couldn’t make beer at home, so he told you where to get the hops and the malt and what have you, but he said, “Don’t make the mistake of getting malt extract with cod liver oil in it because it doesn’t work (laughs), so, anyway we went through it and it was good. I enjoyed that.

The problem with training in those days, you had to do all your own drawings, you know a large book and you’d be … so you’d spend most of your time drawing pictures and systems of what have you.

Later on, they were printed. You probably learnt more by drawing them than you did later on. But I enjoyed my time training in Dolphin.