Don Cleavin – The brotherhood

Simon: That idea of comradeship or brotherhood of submariners, is that something that you expected before you joined or how did you find the comradeship?

It’s a difficult subject, very difficult. Because you see, in a submarine you’ve got so many different branches.

Stokers, or Marine Engineering Mechanics tend to sort of stick together.

They might have friends in other branches, but incidental.

The Chef’s got plenty of friends (laughs), but you don’t get a very good camaraderie between everybody.

You know everybody. Everybody has got their own buddy or mate. Might not be the same branch as them but you know everybody.

You see the crew changes quite infrequently.

A person can be on a boat between a year and two years. Then he comes off, somebody else comes on to take over but its trickle changing.

You might have a really good mate but then he goes on draft, and you’ve got somebody else, so you’ve got no coagulation.