David White – Process of loading food into a submarine’s freezer

All the young, all the Sailors, get involved in storing the ship so I have it swung over onto the casing, it comes in shakeons so I book a crane for that day. 

Simon:  Why are they called shakeons? 

A shakeon, it’s like a miniature … it’s like half of a container that they put on a ship but we used to call them shakeons. 

I think that might be who makes them because I think that was the name stamped on the side so you’ve got double doors open up like that and it’s a mini container that you’d see on a ship. So, I’d book the crane that’s normally doing torpedoes and he’d bring that over and drop it on the casing.

Then I’d have one of the Leading Sailors up top, start, this is all the frozen stuff, then he’d start passing it down and we would chain it all the way from the casing, down the accommodation space hatch, through the Control Room and then down into the fridge and the freezer and next to the freezer… 

Simon:  How many people’s that though, 20, 30 people doing that? 

Yeah 30 people I suppose. 

Simon:  Right Ok. 

And of course next to this freezer you have a smaller one which is a Cool Room, maybe half the size, so that’s for all your fresh, you know, your dairy, your butter, your cheese and stuff like that. 

So you come it down, now, what makes a difference between a Chef who’s interested and one who isn’t, is the one who isn’t just chucks it all in.

Now, if he throws everything in the last thing he packs is mince, then that’s all you’re gonna get … because when we sail, you open the door and it’s there. There is no walk-in and, “What shall we have today?”, that doesn’t happen until about halfway through the Patrol.

That fridge is filled to the door so whatever’s there, that’s what you’re going to eat so if you think about it, you pack it alternately. 

Simon:  In an order, so the reverse order of how you’re going to eat it? 

Yeah, try and keep a selection of everything to the end so that you can eat, and what happens is the young Chef, that’s his job, eventually he starts to tunnel his way through.

At the top, obviously he can’t go underneath, but you start eating your way at the top so the first day, week, you’re doing a freezer run, you put some big arctic jacket on, because you’ve got an Engine Room Artificer moaning like hell because you’re keeping the freezer door open, so his fridge plant is running more than he wants, so he only wants you to go in there once a day so if you forget something and you have to nip in there again you try and do it when he’s not around.

So, you have to shut your Chef in because the time it’s going to take him to get everything, so he puts an arctic jacket on, you post a Sentry outside and if he’s not banging on the door to come out in five or ten minutes then he opens up and checks on him but that’s what you have to do. 

Simon: Is there a light inside? Or use torches? 

Yes, but again the food’s up to the lamps so it, a little bit of light, but yeah eventually … and then right at the end of Patrol you wander in there and you have a look, we’ll have some of that and some of that and that.