Duration: 1 hour 31 minutes 18 Seconds
Simon: My name is Simon Perry and I’m here for the Submariner’s Stories project and the date is the 17th of March 2022, and we are in Fareham and we are with …
Steve: Steve Thorpe
Simon: Steve Thorpe, thank you. So, Steve, the way we normally start these is talking about your childhood. Where you grew up, but first of all your date of birth and where you were born.
Steve: Ok, so my date of birth is 1968. I was born in Sheffield, in Yorkshire, and grew up there until I joined the Navy in 1985.
Simon: And your mum and dad, when were they born and what were their names?
Steve: So my dad was Richard Thorpe, and my mother is Barbara Thorpe. My father was from Nottingham originally but then moved to Sheffield when he met my mother. He died when I was 21, so quite a while ago now after being in the Merchant Navy for a number of years, and my mother is now 88 and still lives in Sheffield.
Simon: And how was growing up? What was the growing up years … what’s your memories of that?
Steve: Bit mixed really ‘cos my mum and dad divorced when I was eight, so it was one of those broken home type scenarios. Whether that affected me with my schooling ‘cos I didn’t really leave school with anything and in 1985 when I left school, it was in a recession, so the Navy was quite a good option to do for four years but it turned out to be considerably longer than that (laughs).
Simon: So, that was what put your mind into being in the Navy. It was not straight to submarines, is that right?
Steve: No, so I got accepted into the Navy to be a Warfare Rating on ships. While I was at HMS Raleigh, in Basic Training, there was a group of 10 of us that were selected to go down and join a Task Group that was down in the Falklands, come back up via the West Indies and it was going to be a four-month trip. And then unfortunately that got stopped, so we ended up going to the Tank Range at Bovington and cross poling with the Army, and at that time I just thought … I’d always been interested in submarines and at that point I put in to transfer to submarines, which I got at the end of ’85 and moved from Raleigh Basic Training Establishment to Dolphin in Gosport in the beginning of 1986.
Simon: I’ve got to ask the bit about being in the Navy and then mixing with the Army. What was the thing there? Because it was the same guns or …?
Steve: I haven’t got a clue. I’ll be totally honest, it was just that the guys that had been selected to go down to the Falkland Islands and train this Task Group, I think they felt a bit guilty that it had all been cancelled, so they just got some activity for us to do and took us to Bovington to look round the tank and go on the Range with a tank, which was interesting, but it wasn’t something that I was interested in doing, if that makes sense.
Simon: And you just thought, ‘enough, now the submarines.’
Steve: Yes, so I just thought … I’d always been interested in it and because my thought process when I was going on that Task Group was to see how I liked it on ships and then decide at the end of that. When that opportunity was taken away, I just decided I’m going to just bite the bullet and go submarines from day one.
Simon: So, you had thought about submarines beforehand?
Steve: Yeah, I’d thought about them. Bizarrely I did a bit of a school project on submarines and never thought that I would be in a position to be on a submarine, and because I’d been accepted as a Warfare Rating on ships, I thought well I’ll give that a go and do that Task Group deployment, but then I just thought … there was a couple of guys in our new entry class that were going submarines and I just thought I’m going to go down that route.
Simon: What’s the initial appeal?
Steve: The uniqueness of it, the camaraderie that everyone used to talk about, the professionalism. I’m not saying that ships aren’t professional but it’s a different level of professionalism, and it just appealed to me, doing something unique really.
Simon: So, you say, “I want to switch over” and then Dolphin is the place that you get transferred to.
Steve: Yeah, so you … I came up I think it was December ’85, or January ’86, to start your … that’s where the Submarine School was then. It’s now down in Plymouth, and then you would join and do a Basic Submarine Course and then you would do another streaming course to what Class you were going to, and then you would do your Warfare Training all at the Submarine School down here in Gosport.
Simon: So, how long were you in Gosport at Dolphin with the training?
Steve: Probably about six months, but I got streamed … they used to do a preference of the submarines that you wanted to go to, the different Classes. I wanted to go diesel submarines just because it looked pretty rotten, and it just appealed to me. I actually got drafted to Polaris submarines, but when my draft came through, my Instructor said, “Well, you’ve got Repulse in re-fit, the first trip they do after doing workup is they go to America for a missile firing, so actually what I did I joined Repulse, did my Part 3, to qualify as a Submariner, did the workup and then went to Florida for Spring Break for 24 days in my first ever trip in the Navy.
Simon: 24 days.
Steve: Yeah, and then volunteered to go diesel submarines just before we left Scotland, and then when we got to America, I had an Assignment Order to go to diesel submarines on completion.
5 minutes 44 seconds
Simon: Right. Polaris and then diesel.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: That’s quite unusual isn’t it? To do it that way?
Steve: Yeah, back then I was probably one of the last ones to get permission to transfer out of the Polaris Program, so it was quite good timing from my perspective to get out of the Polaris Program. I did a firing, I did 24 days in Spring Break in Florida, and then came back and left the boat and joined diesel submarines.
Simon: And what was the first time you got onboard an actual submarine? I guess in training, they put you inside a submarine.
Steve: Yeah, they put you inside Finwhale, which is an old diesel submarine down here just to sleep you onboard for a night, I suppose as a bit of a sanity check to see if you are able to do it, but apart from that, that was it. Then the next time you were on a platform. But I joined it in re-fit so it’s slightly different. So, you got down the boat without it being in water or underwater, so that was a bit easier I suppose. Still a lot to learn though as an 18-year-old kid really, trying to learn everything onboard. You know, it’s quite challenging isn’t it?
Simon: And that’s in preparation for completing your Part 3?
Steve: Yeah, so you have to learn every system onboard and all the routines and stations, so I did that and once you’re qualified, you get your dolphins. But then, when I went to a diesel submarine, it’s almost like being a Part 3 again. One, because the Class was so different, and two, diesel submarines, the professionalism was a lot higher because there was less people onboard, so there was less room for passengers, so you ended up having to learn everything again and you were almost treated like a Part 3 again. So, you learned everything.
Simon: Was the diesel more complex than the nuclear?
Steve: I wouldn’t say more complex, I would just say that you had to know it more intensely because everybody needed to know everything onboard a diesel boat, whereas on a Polaris boat, there was enough people to sort of cover anyone else’s failings, if that makes sense. Even on the new Vanguard Class submarines, people know the general layout and the general systems onboard, but then they will know their compartment where they work intensely really.
Simon: So, does that bring a stronger camaraderie onboard the diesels because, one, it’s less people but two, because you’re so interdependent?
Steve: Yeah, definitely. Diesel boats were, work hard, play hard. It was really hard work at sea but when you came back alongside, everybody was together, and it was a great community spirit if you like.
Simon: Where the diesels can go under for less time can’t they, just because of the restriction of … this is something I learnt yesterday actually, the only air that you’ve got is the air that’s in the sub when you’re underwater? With a nuclear, it’s constantly refreshing. So, that means you’re doing shorter periods under the water.
Steve: Well, you can still go under the water, but you have to snort to recharge the batteries which will refresh the air onboard, so I think we did seven weeks on a dive on a diesel boat.
Simon: Seven weeks underneath the water?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: Oh right, but using the snort.
Steve: Yeah, you’d be coming up to snort every few hours really.
Simon: Ok. And that’s recharging the fresh air onboard as well as the batteries.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: And so, when you shifted to the diesels from Polaris, I can see the advantage of camaraderie and did it feel, apart from having to relearn everything effectively, or learning a whole new platform, did it feel different apart from that?
Steve: A lot smaller, for sure, definitely.
Simon: And the physical closeness.
Steve: Yeah, the first bed I had onboard a diesel boat, I had a choice to sleep on my front or my back. You couldn’t sleep on your side. You actually had to get out …
Simon: Because of the roof height? So, you had to get out to turn over?
10 minutes 4 seconds
Steve: Yeah, literally. You couldn’t sleep on your side ‘cos the bunk wasn’t physically big enough, so you sleep on your back or your front and climb out if you want to turn over.
Simon: You get used to that quite quickly do you.
Steve: Yeah. And the atmosphere, because it is so … the oxygen level is quite low onboard when you’ve been dived for a while on diesel boats. You tend to sleep no matter what anyway, so it’s never been an issue, sleeping for that reason.
Simon: One thing that I was amazed at looking at the Alliance at the Museum, was how tiny the kitchen was.
Steve: The Galley.
Simon: Galley, sorry. It just seems amazing that something that small can produce that much food for so many people.
Steve: Yeah, two Chefs normally I think we had on Oracle. Two Chefs and they do you a cooked breakfast, normally two choices at lunchtime and two or three choices at night. It’s quite good going really.
Simon: And with the diesel, something I learnt as well was that the freshwater is … because it’s not being generated like it is on the nuclears, is treated as sort of almost gold. You don’t really get to use it.
Steve: No, so you clean your teeth once a day, maybe twice a day if you’re lucky. You’d have a shave the night before you got back alongside, if you could be bothered, but apart from that, the only people that really used to shower or were allowed to shower were the Chefs, but then bizarrely they used to smell and everybody else didn’t, so your body sort of starts self-cleaning almost after a while. You never had problems getting to the Bar when you got back from sea ‘cos it used to be like a green haze around you. You’d just go to the Bar, and you’d get served straight away.
Simon: Right. And the smell of diesel is within your clothing is it?
Steve: Oh yeah. I remember I used to go home when I used to live at my mother’s, and she’d refuse to put the washing in the washing machine ‘cos it used to smell that bad. She used to say, “I’m going to throw it away.” “Well, I’ll just have to buy another T shirt and it will be the same next time out, so just wash that one.” (laughs).
Simon: Wow. So, how long were you on the diesels then?
Steve: So, I went Oracle, that was also in re-fit, but I went to Otter straight away to qualify, which was back down in Gosport. Oracle again was in Rosyth, and then I did four months away on Otter and then went back to Oracle, then that sailed. I left Oracle in ’91 maybe. I did my Leading Hands Course back down in here and then went to Ursula in build and then stayed on Ursula until 1994.
Simon: When did the diesel part end?
Steve: So, I went to a Polar Class that was supposed to be the long-term replacement for the Oberon Class, but they restricted the program down to four boats and then they actually sold them to Canada for £1 to keep the Tank Ranges open, a bizarre decision. So, we de-commissioned Ursula and I went to Northwood then, so that was the end of my diesel time, and then I came back to the Fast Attack submarines, the SSN’s in ’96 when I joined Trenchant down in Plymouth.
Simon: Going to Northwood means … there’s a massive Control Centre there isn’t there?
Steve: Yeah, just a Maritime Control Centre really.
Simon: So, that’s not just NATO, that’s other …?
Steve: Yes, there’s NATO there but there’s also like the submarine element there as well, so I did about 18 months up there I think.
Simon: And is that something that you volunteered to do, or they say, “ok, you’ve come to the end of the line of the diesels and …”
Steve: Well, I was always going to be leaving Ursula when I did. It was just a matter of fact that that happened that it de-commissioned the day that I left it, but I went up to Northwood and it wasn’t my thing. It’s not what I joined the Navy to do back then. You know, I was a young, single guy and I wanted to be at sea. That’s what I wanted to do, so I phoned up my Drafting and said, “Can I volunteer for a boat that’s deploying?” so I went to Trenchant.
Simon: So, that was more of a desk job at Northwood was it?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: I mean I’ve been to Northwood and it’s not exactly crazy town is it?
Steve: No, it just wasn’t my thing. I mean I was a young Leading Hand. I just really wanted to enjoy the Navy for what I joined up for, and that was to go to sea and see a bit of the world like, you know. So, that’s why I volunteered for Trenchant in particular ‘cos I knew it was doing a global deployment in ’97, so that’s why I joined it then.
15 minutes 4 seconds
Simon: And a global deployment means travelling around different parts of the world.
Steve: Yeah, so we did quite a lot of sea time on Trenchant. I joined it in Easter ’96. The first trip was America, then we came back in for Summer Leave into Plymouth. Then we sailed again and did ‘Perisher’ to train the submarine Captains. Did that until the Christmas, came back into Plymouth for Christmas Leave, sailed in the January until September and the boat went from Plymouth to Gibraltar to La Maddalena thought the Suez. It went to Hong Kong. We were the last submarine to go into Hong Kong. We went to the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, Diego Garcia and probably a couple more places I can’t remember.
Simon: Goodness.
Steve: Yeah, but it was pretty good trip. I’ve still got some really good friends from that trip.
Simon: How long did you say that was?
Steve: Nine months. It was one of the first big deployments that a nuclear submarine did.
Simon: And that was a way of them testing for how long you could be out?
Steve: Yeah, and it was also a bit of show of force because we were there with a massive Task Group, so there was Illustrious, Gloucester, Beaver, a few other ships, us and Trafalgar. Trafalgar went Hawaii way and we went Far East way and we all met up in Australia in Perth.
Simon: Right. And when you were … at the places you said that you went through, did you come off and go onshore?
Steve: Yeah, so on a submarine you get put in a Hotel, so you get subsistence to live on and you get put in a Hotel, because the Health and Safety dictates that you can’t really be drunk and sleep onboard a submarine in case there’s a fire, so you always get put in a decent Hotel so it’s ok.
Simon: And, is that the same thing you were saying that on diesels it was work hard, play hard. Was that the same when you were onshore with the nuclear as well?
Steve: Yeah. The SSN’s are a different mentality to the Polaris stroke Trident, but I mean there are some good people, don’t get me wrong, but the mentality is slightly different. But SSN’s and diesel boats had a similar mentality in that respect.
Simon: And can you remind me what the SSN stands for?
Steve: Sub Surface Nuclear I think.
Simon: Ok. And they’re the ones that are doing … is it described as ‘sneaky missions’?
Steve: Yeah, fast attacks the American’s call them, but yeah, basically go away and hunter killer. Hunt stuff, kill ‘em or sneak around in somebody else’s back door to see what’s happening.
Simon: And that would be … I mean I don’t want to delve into anything that’s restricted, but it would be listening to other boats, to get audio signatures.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: I’ve watched the thing about ‘Perisher’? So, I’ve got some … that’s the only idea about it at the moment but going to look at things, doing photographic reconnaissance.
Steve: Yeah, or ESM, Electronic Phone Signals, anything like that. You can stick a mast up and just listen and see what’s happening in the world.
Simon: Right, ok. So, you’re sort of eyes and ears, but hidden eyes and ears.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: And is there a role that supports what are commonly called the ‘bombers’?
Steve: So, in the Cold War, it was a lot more prolific and Russian submarines were around … well they are around a lot now but, when a bomber would go out, they would send an SSN out with it, called ‘delousing’, so to attract the attention away from any potential submarines that are there listening, and the bomber would just dive and disappear into the abyss.
Simon: Right, ok. So, you’re not really aware of what you’re doing onboard, or I guess it depends on what role you have within the submarine?
Steve: What on a SSN you mean?
Simon: Yeah.
Steve: No, everybody knows on an SSN.
Simon: Oh ok. It’s just the bombers that they don’t?
Steve: Yeah, just the bombers.
Simon: Ok. And I guess then the fact … that must be quite exciting to know you are all on a combined sneaky mission or whatever?
Steve: Yeah, and that’s all part of it. To gel the crew so everybody’s involved in it, so when you tell people to be quiet onboard, they understand why, so you would always go back aft and explain it to the Marine Engineers, so they understand where we are, what we’re doing and why they need to reduce the crew noise as much as possible for that reason.
Simon: And what was your role onboard the … it was the Trenchant you said?
Steve: Yeah, I was a Tactical Systems, so basically sonar gets a contact, we analyse it, we would then work out course, speed and range to keep the submarine safe primarily, but then if we needed to fire a weapon, we’d be able to fire a weapon and we’d guide that weapon to sink the target, whichever that may be.
20 minutes 4 seconds
Simon: Ok. And that would be a torpedo type weapon?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: Ok. Is it out of the front as well as the back?
Steve: Just the front on an SSN.
Simon: I was just thinking about when I saw Alliance.
Steve: Yeah, diesel boats used to have two tubes back aft but the SSN’s, ‘cos it’s got a reactor and the way the mechanics work back aft you couldn’t do that on an SSN.
Simon: And if you can guide it, then I guess, you know you can …
Steve: Yeah and that’s the thing that I really … when I used to tour guide at Alliance, that’s one thing that I always used to emphasise about how weaponry is developed. So, when I first joined submarines, it was the Mark 8 torpedo which sunk the Belgrano, so pretty much World War 2 technology. You would fire four weapons and hopefully two or one of them would hit, so like 25 to 50 % rate. And then Tigerfish came along, and you would fire two weapons, Able and Baker, they used to call them, so they would go out either side of the bearing lines of wherever the target was, hopefully one of them would hit, so 50 % hit rate. Now you’ve got Spearfish, that’s pretty much impossible to get away from, so you’ve got something like an 85% hit rate, so the way the percentages stroke success has incremented has been quite substantial with the weapons.
Simon: Yeah, and a number of those are held onboard. So, with the original one then it was sort of send one to the right, send one to the left and one in the middle was that the idea?
Steve: Yeah, so they’d do like a two-degree angle of spacing like you see in the old war films.
Simon: That’s to allow for different water conditions or the speed?
Steve: Well it’s to allow for the ship moving, so you would estimate the ship’s speed, then you would work out the target angle that you need to fire them at, and then you would fire at two-degree angle of spacing to try and spread your weapons out to make sure you got that ship.
Simon: Actually on that Perisher program, there seemed to be a lot of difficulty in identifying and that’s understandable ‘cos you’re looking through a little tiny periscope figuring out how fast this thing on the surface is going and where.
Steve: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, there’s ways that you can do it. You can work it out.
Simon: They seem to have to do mental maths to try and … I’m surprised it was computers (laughs).
Steve: Yeah, there’s a lot of that. There was a very antiquated computer system called the TGCA and the TGCU I think it was, but now things have evolved and it’s all computerised and it’s all Windows based for the younger generation. It’s a lot more … and the mental TMA, the mental Target Motion Analysis now is not done really, ‘cos it’s all done by computer, so that sort of skill has sort of faded out with the newer generation of Warfare Ratings if you like. But technology moves on doesn’t it? That’s how it goes.
Simon: Yea, one of the other interviews said to me that our technology is advancing but so is the enemy as well, so …
Steve: Yeah, that’s right.
Simon: … you’ve got to keep up with it.
Steve: Yeah, definitely.
Simon: Ok, so that was the role you carried out throughout Trenchant, and then what did you do after that one?
Steve: So I came to Submarine Escape Training.
Simon: Ok, and that’s something you volunteered for?
Steve: So, the Coxswain that was onboard Trenchant, he came as a Senior Instructor here at Gosport, and he asked me and another guy whether we’d be interested in coming to be a Swimboy at Gosport, which is a completely unique job and ultimately that paved the way to what job I’m doing now in civvy street, so we jumped at the chance. So, I came down here in ’98, qualified in parachuting, qualified as a Swimboy, did lots of gucchi stuff, boat driving and stuff …
Simon: What’s gucchi stuff? Fancy stuff?
Steve: Well just completely different way of doing things. You know, you were out on speedboats, you were parachuting, you were swimming in a 30-metre pool of water, just a great, great job to do you know? And teaching loads of different people from all different Navies in the world, as you alluded to earlier.
Simon: So, you have the same camaraderie but you’re on the surface.
Steve: Well, you’re in a training environment, but because it wasn’t classroom based really, it was all activity based, you had 30 Instructors and you were all looking out for one another, you were always trying to train, so you always had somebody mentoring you to get you qualified. So, it was a really good job for about two years I did that. It was great.
Simon: And what was the bit about speedboats then? What was that for?
Steve: Well because when you parachute out the back of a plane …
Simon: Oh this is when you were a Response Force.
Steve: Yes, so Submarine Parachute Assistance Group. So, you have to know how to drive a boat, you have to know about the Life Rafts, you know about submarine escape. All that stuff is just unique really. There’s not many Submariners that are parachute trained, so loads of people used to comment all throughout my career, “How come you’re a Submariner and you’ve got parachute wings?” but that’s what you used to do.
25 minutes 17 seconds
Simon: And that was if you were at the Tank, the SETT, then you were also SPAG or was it some people didn’t do both?
Steve: The majority were parachute trained, the majority. But some of them used to be co-pilots for the Rescue Vehicle back then, which was LR5, so there was a couple that were nominated to be co-pilots for the Rescue Vehicle, but the majority were Submariner Parachutists.
Simon: And the Rescue Vehicle, is that because … can you explain what the Rescue Vehicle is?
Steve: So, there’s a number of areas that happen. In current day, the preferred methos of escape is for the submarine to get to the surface and jump over the side. Surface Abandonment that’s called. The second preferred method is to sit on the bottom and wait. The current day Rescue Vehicle is called NSRS, which is a tri-nation consortium between us, Norway and France, it’s kept in Faslane, operated by James Fisher Defence. That can basically be mobilised within a 24-hour period and can rescue people down to 610 metres.
Simon: So, that’s a submarine that they send down and attach.
Steve: Yeah, that’s a Rescue Vehicle and then the third method is that you have to use a submarine escape suit, to escape and get to the surface. Now if that method is going to be employed, there’s a possibility that SPAG might be deployed to be on the surface with Life Rafts and boats and medical care and oxygen etc etc to look after the escapees when they get to the surface.
Simon: Ok, so SPAG doesn’t go down to ‘cos it’s very deep normally I guess. The SPAG people just wait on the surface to rescue people effectively.
Steve: Administer medical, look after them effectively, yeah. So, they can escape from 200 metres, so you’d just be waiting for people to pop up on the surface, depending on where it is in the world as well obviously. That response time changes a little bit.
Simon: So, how was your going from being under the water to being in a plane and jumping out of it? What was the training like?
Steve: Well you did about a half hour training down in Poole back then, and then you were on the tailgate of a Hercules.
Simon: It just seems extraordinary that …
Steve: Yeah, the first one to be honest, the first one wasn’t too bad, because you don’t know what’s coming. I found the second jump worst ‘cos you knew what was coming and then after about eight jumps, we were having some food in the Mess that night and one of the Jump Instructors said, “Well, not long before you get a malfunction on your parachute.” “Thanks for that” (laughs). But it’s just one of those unique military experiences that you do, you know, and you know you’ve been on a submarine and now you’ve jumped out of an aeroplane. It’s one of those two extremes really isn’t it?
Simon: And when he said the second one was harder, what were you thinking, “Oh my goodness, what’s coming.” It’s when you hit the water is it?
Steve: Well you just know when you’re stepping out, what you’re stepping out in to, so your senses are on overload, so you hear the wind, ‘cos obviously jumping out of a plane that doing 100 miles per hour or whatever it’s doing, so you’re jumping out and your senses are on overload and you’re told all this routine to do and count to 4000 and check your canopy’s there and then once your canopy’s opened, you can talk like this. It’s really bizarre, even though you’re spread out quite a lot, you can just … ‘cos there’s no other noise about. It’s really, really bizarre. Then you land in the water and a boat picks you out the water like, so yeah.
Simon: Ok. Did you do any SPAG deployments on rescuing subs?
Steve: I didn’t do a SPAG deployment, but when I left SETT, the Kursk went down the week after, and I was meant to be going to Turkey with the Rescue Vehicle to conduct an exercise out there. In fact, it was the day I joined Vanguard back in Scotland, and I got put on notice that night to deploy with the Kursk ‘cos the next day we flew to London and then flew to Oslo and then flew up to the Port and went up to the Kursk rescue with LR5 as it was then, the Rescue Vehicle.
Simon: And what was the Kursk?
Steve: So that was a Russian submarine that had a torpedo explode in the fore ends that blew the front end of the submarine off on an exercise. Something to do with the fuel that thy used to use on the torpedoes that we used to use in the ‘60s and got rid of it for that very reason.
Simon: Is this the liquid one?
Steve: Yeah, I can’t remember the name of the liquid.
Simon: LRP maybe. I can’t remember exactly.
Steve: So, they basically had an accident and they had two explosions. One was the first torpedo going off and the second was a sympathetic explosion with the other torpedoes …
30 minutes 11 seconds
Simon: Sympathetic means it blew the other one up.
Steve: Yeah, so basically they blew the front end of the submarine off, so they were all in the rear end of submarine. But there was a lot of politics involved. The Russians didn’t want the Americans involved who also had a rescue submarine. We sort of forced the hand by landing in Oslo before the Russians had asked for our help. We then went up there, a lot of politics about where we should be and what we should be doing. Then they basically popped the hatch overnight so confirmed that there was nobody alive, but the note that they found off one of the … when they opened up the compartment, when they re-floated the submarine, the date time group on it we were above them so we could have rescued them if they had allowed us to do it.
Simon: Goodness.
Steve: Yeah, which was a bit heart wrenching to be honest.
Simon: And that, because of sort of a united … no matter what nation it is, submariners have a common bond.
Steve: Yeah, and I always remember, and I’ve used it at Mess Dinners since I left the Navy, or since I left that after that job, we had a Memorial Service on the back of Normand Pioneer, which was the ship we were on, and they threw a wreath into the sea and they said, “The Russian’s have a saying, may all your dives equal the number of your surfaces” and it’s very prudent for a submariner isn’t it? I use that at Mess Dinners quite a lot when I’ve been to one after that.
Simon: So, to take you back to when you thought there might be a chance of rescuing people, the craft is there, able to connect to the sub to take people off. As you said, a lot of politics involved in umming and aahing as to whether it’s going to happen or nor. It must be a frustrating experience that you know you are able to rescue them but you’re being held back fatally.
Steve: Yeah, so they didn’t want us to LR5 in the water.
Simon: That’s flown there isn’t it?
Steve: Yeah, we flew it out there, then put it on a ship in Norway and obviously went up there on the sea. They kept saying, “No you’re not putting it in the water.” Then they told us a position like 10 miles away, so we transferred it there, just about to put it in the water, then they said, “No, stop, we want you to come back” so we went all the way back. By that time, it was getting dark, so they went, “Oh, we’ll just wait until tomorrow” and then they popped the hatch overnight to make sure everybody was dead, so …
Simon: And who popped the hatch?
Steve: The Russians.
Simon: So, they had people there as well.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: I mean did they not have communications with the people inside then?
Steve: We don’t know that.
Simon: That’s on their side. Goodness.
Steve: Yeah. There were two ships there. There was the Seaway Eagle and there was the Normand Pioneer. The Normand Pioneer we had military personnel onboard. The Seaway Eagle was all civilians and they put an armed guard on Seaway Eagle to make sure that they didn’t go down and look at the submarine, but we didn’t do it because we were military. All very political.
Simon: What was the feeling after that of knowing that the people weren’t rescuable?
Steve: Oh, sad. Definitely sad. That mutual respect that you spoke about earlier, the mutual respect between the submariners no matter where they are in the world, you know, that’s always paramount.
Simon: Can I take you back to SETT and your time there?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: So, it sounds like quite good fun when you were there. How much of that was having fun in Gosport as well.
Steve: Well it was all in Gosport.
Simon: But sort of afterhours I guess. ‘Cos you’re on the Base when you’re doing the training, but then you lived here or where did you live?
Steve: I lived in a Married Quarter in Gosport, but because we had … there were 30 Instructors who had a really good close camaraderie and we had some really good social events, it was good.
Simon: And that was in Gosport or within the Base or …?
Steve: Bit of both really.
Simon: I mean part of the project of this is because it’s funded by the Gosport High Street Action Zone, is getting an understanding of what people’s lives were in the Gosport area as well. The sort of interaction between the submariner side and the Gosport.
Steve: Well, Gosport, when I first joined there in ’85, was heaving. It was like the Royal Arms which is on Stoke Road used to be a big submariner Pub. Emma’s upstairs Night Club always used to be rammed with people and submariners. You could guarantee if you went out by yourself, you would always meet somebody that you knew off another crew, it was that sort of environment. In comparison to today where it’s a bit like a ghost town, in comparison to what it was back then. And even in SETT, in ’98, the Submarine School was still in Dolphin, so there was a lot of people from there still, so it was really quite a thriving little community and really quite reliant on Dolphin as it was then for that trade if you like that used to go into Gosport quite a lot. And the culture was a lot different to today as well. ‘Cos everybody used to go out drinking and socialise back then whereas now, it’s the ‘Play Station generation’ so even in Faslane, nobody really goes into Helensburgh like we would have gone to Gosport back in the day.
35 minutes 46 seconds
Simon: As you say, socialising was different.
Steve: Yeah, definitely. The mindset is completely different now.
Simon: So, that’s two places that … I hadn’t heard about Emma’s, that’s good to learn about. That was pretty good fun was it?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: Whereabouts was that then?
Steve: It was above … it’s just down the road … I can’t remember the name of the Pub.
Simon: You could probably walk me there, but …
Steve: I can yeah. It’s halfway down the High Street. If you walk past Weatherspoon’s and then there’s another Pub further down, and it’s above that. Bit of a dive but lots of Navy stroke Night Clubs are a bit run down aren’t they so …
Simon: And that was the people at Dolphin but also a lot of turnovers I guess. People being trained, people doing the SETT training as well as the Dolphin training.
Steve: A lot, yeah. Yeah, it was always quite busy in Dolphin.
Simon: What are your thoughts about the decommissioning of Dolphin then?
Steve: It’s sad. You know it’s been a stalwart of the Submarine Service since 1901 really, since submarines came into conception, so to see it falling apart and being decommissioned and not used is really quite sad really. Even though they’ve moved everything to Faslane, in Scotland, it’s not the same as what it was in Dolphin. Faslane’s a massive base whereas Dolphin was quite small, so you sort of knew everybody and it was a good laugh. It was a good laugh down there, and everybody knew everybody.
Simon: You described your role at SETT as a Swimboy. Can you detail what that means?
Steve: So, everybody that used to go through the training had to do an ascent from 9 metres with a lifejacket on blowing out to make sure that they don’t burst their lungs as the pressure decreases with Boyle’s Law, so they would have to do two 9-meter ascents and an 18 metre ascent and then a suit run on day two. Well, as an Instructor, you had to qualify on all the positions to make sure you could facilitate all the students going through. From the Diving Bell, to being at the bottom of the ladder. Just to do every position to facilitate training. But the training was quite long, and it used to take you quite a long time to qualify, because you had to demonstrate that you had utmost confidence and competency in the water, so that’s why it used to take so long to qualify. Probably about 12 months to qualify in every position. Obviously you could incrementally support training in different positions.
Simon: And what was your training like then? ‘Cos you’re used to being in a submarine but not necessarily … I mean you’d have been through SETT originally when you did your training for submarines I guess, so you had an idea of it but how was it feel different when you’re learning as an Instructor?
Steve: Well, the first thing I remember when I went to the top of the Tank, the first thing you have to do is drop down to 18 metres in the Tank, so you only ever used to coming up, so to go back down, the psychological switch that you had to do to drop down to 18 metres was quite bizarre. A lot of it’s psychological though. When you’re underwater, you think you need to breathe when actually you don’t and the more you stress about it, the more oxygen you use. So, the more that you relax, and just go with it, and the less oxygen you can use, which means that you can achieve the aim a lot quicker by doing that, but to get that mind set takes a few days, a few weeks to get that mind set underwater.
Simon: That is interesting. So, your brain tells you, you need to breathe before your body actually needs to breathe.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: And how do they train you to get over that then?
Steve: Well the first time you do it you’ll probably get down to 9 metres and come back up, and then you’ll get told your technique, you’ll have to change your technique to push down and then push off the ladder and streamline your body and eventually you just get deeper and deeper until you manage to steer yourself onto the 18-metre ledge, and then pull yourself back up the rope.
Simon: I guess that’s the thing is, when you’re on the way down you’re thinking it’s not just about getting down to 18 metres, I’ve got to get back up to the top. @Cos this is all on a breath of air I guess.
40 minutes 11 seconds
Steve: Yeah, all 100%. So, you get through your buoyancy point, so everybody’s got a buoyancy point. If you get in a swimming pool, there’s a point where you are neutrally buoyant, so when you’re above that point, you will float to the surface. When you’re neutrally buoyant, you will just float there, and you won’t go up and you won’t go down. When you go past that point though, and you become negatively buoyant, that’s when you start sinking a lot faster, so people that jump off bridges for example, they will go through their buoyancy point and that’s why people die. It’s not the shock of the fall, they go past the buoyancy point and they can’t physically swim back up to the surface.
Simon: And the buoyancy point is literally the height that you are within that column of water.
Steve: Yeah, so mine was about I think three metres underwater, so you could sit there and just not go up, not go down. Then when you get through that point, when you push yourself through that point, you can physically feel yourself accelerating through the water as you go down.
Simon: Right. That must be quite weird the first time that happens.
Steve: It is, yeah (laughs). It’s almost like … you can feel the water rushing past your ears as you’re going down. It’s quite a bizarre feeling.
Simon: So, how do you then stop at 18 metres?
Steve: You just land on a ledge. You’d steer yourself to land on a ledge and stop yourself and then pull yourself back up a rope. That’s what you had to do. That was your first task that you had to do to qualify.
Simon: And when you did your original training at SETT, I was taken inside the bell at the bottom and what struck me, one is that it’s very small, but was described to me was the speed of water that comes in. What did that feel like the first time that you went in there?
Steve: I think you’re just a bit overawed by it if I’m honest. You go with it because a little bit of peer pressure because everybody else is going to do it, so you just think … you don’t really notice it. You just follow the instruction, and you had an Instructor in the Tower with you, so if you had any problems, you could always wave your arm and stuff, but you don’t consciously notice it because you’re too busy concentrating on clearing your ears because the pressure doubles every sort of four seconds, so you just need to keep on top of that all the time.
Simon: So, a summary of the time at SETT was really enjoyable?
Steve: Oh really enjoyable. Yeah, still keep in touch with people that I was there all them years ago now, so it just shows that you get that camaraderie and that common bond and yeah, it’s really good, a really good job.
Simon: And I guess that’s … is it more a consistent team when you are there, because you’re there for so long?
Steve: Yeah, there was quite a lot of people that had been there a long time, just by luck really on their part. They stayed for quite a while in that area. Some of the people like myself did a couple of years and then move on. Then I was lucky enough to get drafted back there in 2016, but they’d stopped pressurised training by then, so it was a different sort of mind set really, but still a good job to go back to.
Simon: And I didn’t ask about … you said you got married. When did you get married?
Steve: ’98.
Simon: And was that somebody that you’d met on training or how did that …?
Steve: Drunk in a Night Club.
Simon: In Gosport?
Steve: No, in Sheffield. So, I met her and then we just kept in touch and then got back and got on really well, so we got married I think it was July ’98 and then moved down here.
Simon: Right. And did she know what she was marrying in to with a Submariner?
Steve: Well yeah, because I’d been away for quite a few months in ’97, so she knew about that, and I’ve done a lot of time away again since, so she totally understands it. And bizarrely, since I’ve got this civilian job I’ve probably been away more in this civilian job that I have in the last three years in the Navy, so luckily she understands.
Simon: And how the time for her in Married Quarters?
Steve: Yeah it was good, but we were only there for about a year and a half.
Simon: During your time at SETT.
Steve: Yeah, because we’d moved down from Sheffield. We’d sold our houses ‘cos we both had a house. Moved down here and then I got a draft to Scotland, so it was ‘what are we going to do? Are we going to move back to Sheffield where we’ve still got a good family and friend base or are we going to buy down here and the chance of me getting drafted back down here again wasn’t probable.’ So, we decided to move back to Sheffield and that’s what we did. And then we stayed in Sheffield up to five years ago, and then moved back down here.
Simon: Right. And what made you come back down here then?
45 minutes 8 seconds
Steve: ‘Cos I got a job back at SETT in 2016, so I’d left HMS Portland which was a Warship, I was Executive Warrant Officer on there …
Simon: Oh so you left SETT from the previous time, and then what happened? Yeah, sorry, I sort of jumped us into the married bit.
Steve: Yeah, so I left there and joined HMS Vanguard.
Simon: That’s another submarine.
Steve: Another Trident submarine. So, I went back to the sort of bomber program, did … I’m trying to remember now … did two years on there I think, maybe two and a half, and I got promoted to Petty Officer off the back of that. Then I went to Raleigh to do my Petty Officers Course and teaching the Submarine School, did a bit of Phase 1 training for the new recruits coming through. I did two classes of that, and then put in to go Submarine Coxswain. Did my Selection Board in 2003, with an aspiration to get on course in 2005, but went back to sea for a year on Vigilant in 2004 and left it.
Simon: Was that a bomber as well?
Steve: Yeah, that was another bomber. And then went on Coxswain Course in January 2005 and went back to Vanguard as a Coxswain in 2005 as well.
Simon: So, when you go back to that, are there a lot of the same people onboard?
Steve: Some, but I was last on there in 2002 as a Leading Hand, and then I joined there in 2005 as a Chief, because I’d done Ship Control qualification which is quite difficult to do as a Leading Hand, so I think I was the first one to qualify in a Vanguard Class as a Leading Hand Ship Controller, which was normally a Senior Rated Officer. So, I passed my Ship Control Board as a Leading Hand, took Vanguard into re-fit in 2002 I think it was, then went and did my PO’s Course, then went back to Vigilant requalified as Ship Control, and then went on Coxswains Course in 2005. When I did my Coxswain’s Selection Board though, because I’d done Ship Control, that’s normally one of the things that are waived, ‘cos I’d not got the seniority at the time , they waived my seniority because I’d got the Ship Control Qualification.
Simon: What does that mean? Waiving the seniority?
Steve: Because I think there was five criteria that you had to have for a Coxswain, but you could waive on of them to make sure they would get the right people. So, I’d got four, but the one that I didn’t have was Seniority, so you were meant to have three years as a Petty Officer to go through for the Board, but because I’d done Ship Control, they said, “Well we’ll not worry about the Seniority, because when you’ve done the course and you’ve qualified as a Coxswain, you’ll have done the minimum time anyway to get promoted to Chief” so that’s what happened.
Simon: So, Ship Control, that means literally the up and down … there’s probably more professional words than that.
Steve: Yeah, so you get seven seconds to react to any emergency onboard a submarine, so that’s controlling the speed, the bubble for the attitude of the submarine, and then get the emergency pipe out and do the emergency actions to make sure you keep the submarine safe.
Simon: What’s the emergency pipe?
Steve: So, depending on what action … what the incident is onboard, whether that be a fire, hydraulic burst, casualty, electrical failure, whatever, that you would need to know all these emergency operating pipes, called the DOPs, to bring the ship’s company to a heightened readiness.
Simon: So pipe is a sort of series of actions.
Steve: Main broadcasts.
Simon: Sorry, say that again.
Steve: So, you will have a General Alarm which is like an ‘ahooga’ sound, and …
Simon: What’s an ahooga?
Steve: [makes a sound like a klaxon horn] Emergency Stations and then you would have a main broadcast that you will have a Main Broadcast that you will pipe. So, everybody wakes up, ‘cos there’s no passengers on a submarine, everybody has a job to do if there is an emergency onboard. So, it’s a really difficult position to do but a really rewarding one when you get it right. When you get it wrong it’s awful. And you can literally sink or swim a submarine by it ‘cos if you get it wrong, yes, you’ve got the Captain and the Officer of the Watch bail you out but if you get it wrong potentially you can kill the crew, so you need to have it nailed, and it’s quite a strict Board understandably to get that through.
Simon: So, you have to go through a lot of preparation in advance of that.
Steve: Yeah, you have to know everything onboard, literally everything. Right from the reactor, the workings of the reactor to how the main oxygen propulsion, all the propulsion chain and the different makeups of the propulsion chain, everything, everything onboard. Quite difficult.
50 minutes 5 seconds
Simon: And so it’s a sort of sweaty time when you’re going through the Board on that is it?
Steve: Yeah, it’s quite intense.
Simon: And the people who are running the Board are there to … obviously you’re going to have huge responsibility so they’re trying to stress you as well I imagine.
Steve: Yeah, it’s just to see how you cope under pressure, ‘cos that’s ultimately what that position is. It’s really difficult and when you go on a workup with the Sea Training Staff onboard, you can have up to 12 incidents in a couple of minutes, so you need to have everything at the forefront of your mind to just do it almost without thinking, so it’s really sort of automated almost that you do everything without thinking.
Simon: Goodness. I mean getting through that must have felt pretty good?
Steve: Yeah, it’s difficult though.
Simon: When it flows nicely.
Steve: Yeah and doing it as a Leading Hand was really quite rewarding as well to prove that you could do it, which ultimately stood me in good stead for my career really.
Simon: So, once you’ve been through that, what’s … you mentioned PO I think it was wasn’t it?
Steve: Petty Officer yeah.
Simon: What is the role of the Petty Officer onboard?
Steve: He’s sort of the lower end of the senior management. So, a Leading Hand, you sort of look after the Junior Rates and you look after a few Able Seamen. The Petty Officers will look after the Junior Rates but also start to liaise with Command a lot more. The next level up is Chief, where you are that sort of Department Co-ordinator that liaises with Command more and that’s how the structure works really for most branches.
Simon: So you know pretty much everyone onboard then?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: But do you anyway or … on the bombers?
Steve: You do know everybody onboard, but your area of responsibility is different. So, everybody goes in to Departments. So, I was a Tactical Systems Petty Officer so I would have a Department of maybe 15, whereas a Coxswain, you are the cog onboard that liaises with Command, you run all the Department Co-ordinators, you do all the manpower allocation. There’s lots of things that you do. You do all the discipline, leave, travel, lots and lots of different things. Standards, all that.
Simon: So I guess you might be the most favourite person onboard, or the most disliked (laughs).
Steve: Yeah, definitely, but you’re like the Captain’s right-hand man so sometimes you’ve got to be the bearer of bad news to the ship’s company, you know and just work with the Command Team to achieve the aim ultimately ‘cos you’re never going to please all the people all the time. That just never happens in any walk of life does it?
Simon: How is that shift to possibly being the bearer if bad news for the crew then? Was it doing an extended run, or something would be …?
Steve: Well, the Captain would be … if you were out at sea and you got extended, the Captain would ultimately make that pipe, but you just become hardened to it. People understand that it’s not you that’s telling them, you’re just a conduit if you like, to try and explain what’s happening, so … but I have now regrets about going Coxswain. It’s definitely the best move I made. More of a fulfilling role because the problem with being a Tactical System Rating was that from Able Seaman to Chief, when you’re at sea, you’re effectively doing the same job with more responsibility, whereas as a Coxswain, you’re stepping away from that. You’re sort of your own boss, and you have a lot more power. I don’t mean it empowering in that sense. You’re a lot more empowered and you have a lot more power to sway decisions onboard the platform, which is a lot better way routing in my opinion.
Simon: How was that … with the Officers and the Ratings. What’s that relationship like between the two?
Steve: On a submarine it’s really good. People switch from first name terms to Sir, Ma’am, really quickly. General Service it’s a different world really. They’re a lot more segregated. The Officers on a ship are almost like old-fashioned Navy if that makes sense. A bit more pompous and a bit more thinking they’re something special, whereas on a submarine … because everybody’s living in each other’s pockets, everybody is really down to earth, normally. I mean there is the odd exception obviously but the difference between the Officers onboard a ship and a submarine are worlds apart, in the majority.
Simon: Which seems more human I guess.
Steve: Yeah, definitely. You get more respect in my opinion. If you’re more down to earth with people, people respect you a lot more. If you ostracise yourself and look down on them, then people are never going to respect you for that are they? When I was on HMS Portland as an EWO, I used to try and stress that to the younger Officers. You know, make ‘em come and do rounds with me because they never used to be seen by the Junior Rates. “You’re supposed to be the Leaders of the ship and you never see anybody.” Yeah, it was good though. It’s been good jobs like as a Coxswain.
55 minutes 30 seconds
Simon: So, what happened after that then?
Steve: So, where are we up to, Vanguard. So, I left Vanguard and went to Flag Officers Sea Training then in 2007 …
Simon: Flag Officer …
Steve: Flag Officer Sea Training. So, the Training Staff that go to sea and train in the in-board simulators to prepare people to go to sea, so I got a draft to go to Vanguard simulator to teach Ship Control .
Simon: This is a sort of model of …
Steve: Model of the Control Room. So, you would get ship’s companies coming up or courses for Ship Control or teams from submarines coming up to train, to practice their Emergency Operating Procedures or Standing Operating Procedures within a simulated environment. So, I was drafted in to do that, alongside there was two other people in the Office that used to do it as well, so the three of us, but what the Astute Class was coming online then, so I got seconded to go across to the Astute Class to help develop all their training and EOPs and SOPs ready for Astute leaving Barrow which was still in Barrow at the time.
Simon: What’s EOP and SOP?
Steve: Emergency Operating Procedures and Standing Operating Procedures.
Simon: Ok. Right. So, that was while they were developing the sub was it?
Steve: Yeah, so the submarine was still getting built but it had been behind ‘cos it had been there 10 years trying to get built, but it was coming to the sort of end of its build process, so they need ed to start developing the training and all the documentation that goes with going to sea, so I got seconded across to work alongside what was then Flag Ship to try and develop that and get Astute ready to go to sea.
Simon: Right. And how was that fulfilling wise?
Steve: Brilliant. Really good. Yeah, just something completely different ‘cos you’re learning …
Simon: ‘Cos you know you’re sort of carving a way for a whole new Class I guess.
Steve: Yeah, and you’re developing your own knowledge as well and I went out to Canada to develop their simulator. So, I had two trips to Montreal to look at the simulators they were building out there for the Astute Class. It was great. It was a really, really good job and I did that for probably two and a half years, and then another Chief Coxswain at the time, Andy Knox, he lived in Scotland, and I lived in Sheffield, so we effectively swopped. So, he went to FOST and I went to Ambush, which was the second submarine down in Barrow. Domestically it made more sense for me and because I’d got all the Astute Class experience anyway, it was a good addition for me to go to Barrow to assist with Astute coming out and develop Ambush ready for them sailing a few years down the line.
Simon: How long is the process then of doing the development before the submarine goes …?
Steve: Oh, it takes a while.
Simon: Years.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: Yeah, I guess people come up with an idea of what the submarine should do. Then there’s the practicality of it.
Steve: Where they fell over was, they’d not built a submarine for long years so they’d still got people there that had not got currant experience, so when all the documentation came out, it was written for another Class of submarine, not the Astute Class, so that was half the problem. We had to rewrite all the documentation, so it was fit for purpose to use on Astute Class submarines.
Simon: And how thick is the documentation?
Steve: Oh, there’s reams of it.
Simon: It’s like bookshelves of the stuff.
Steve: Yeah, reams of it.
Simon: Everything’s got to be described in the most minute detail I guess is it?
Steve: It’s all procedure based so an Emergency Operating Procedure is the … the first thing is the pipe, but then the rest of it is all the considerations, so you have that for every OP and there’s like I don’t know, 50 odd EOPs maybe. But then you have Standard Operating Procedures, so everything from pumping grey water waste over the side to coming to pericope depth to running diesels underwater. Everything’s got to be covered, you know, so there’s such a vast range of areas of operation that need to be covered. That’s why there are reams of books. There’s probably 12 big thick books full of paperwork, so there’s quite a lot to get them updated.
Simon: And a vital role ‘cos otherwise how is anyone going to know what to do?
60 minutes 7 seconds
Steve: Exactly. So, you’ve not only got to rewrite the documentation, but you’ve also got to train the people to understand the documentation, you know, to make sure that it’s fit for purpose for taking it to sea, so it’s quite an elongated process really.
Simon: And when you’re going through the training, are you then revising the documentation because you realise that it could be tuned a bit better or …?
Steve: Yeah, so it’s a constant evolving documentation process really.
Simon: And that was how many years?
Steve: So, I was down in … I did Flag Officer Sea Training for two and a half years. Then I was down in Barrow from 2008 to 2011. So, two and a half years again. So, three and a half years in FOST and then two and a half years in Barrow.
Simon: One thing that strikes me is, this is going to seem slightly odd, but all the submariners I’ve spoken to are completely clear on years that they were doing stuff and months … I’ve got no clue as to what I was doing at different times, but I guess that’s because your lives are in segments.
Steve: Yeah they are, yeah. You can relate to where you were in certain years all the way through.
Simon: It’s a good skill to have (laughs).
Steve: Yeah, I never thought of it like that to be honest (laughs). ‘Cos you can just relate to what you were doing in them years for that time.
Simon: Sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about being in Barrow.
Steve: Yes, so I went to Barrow and Ambush. I can’t remember when I went down there to be honest. Must have been 2009 I think. Yeah, so I joined FOST in 2007, and then I went Barrow in 2009 I think, and then we got delayed for a while. We did Field Gun. Have you heard of the Royal Navy Field Gun Competition in Collingwood?
Simon: Is that the one they used to do at the thing in London?
Steve: Well, it’s a little bit different. It’s a carpark of six tracks, a Parade Ground at Collingwood of six tracks. 24 teams enter. It’s a tonne and a half of gun and limber and we were the first submarine crew to enter, and I did the training for that, but that was purely because Ambush had been delayed so much, that we needed to find something to do. So, we did that and we got three medals, three trophies out of it, so that was a really good accolade for the crew.
Simon: And that was the first-time submarines had done it?
Steve: First ever submarine entry into it.
Simon: Right, so it’s come in with a big bang …
Steve: Yeah, it was great. In the Plate 3 finals, we came 13th overall out of 24, but we only had 50 ship’s company or something and we had 24 of us down in Portsmouth doing it, so it was like 50% of the ship’s company involved in it. We won the Scotland Command best time, and we won the ‘crew that had overcome the most endeavours to compete’ because we had to drive a 1944 tonner down to Portsmouth to collect the gun and we had a trike that wasn’t long enough to train on and we used 50% of the ship’s company and we won that award as well like so that was quite good.
Simon: They continued to stay, be part of it, the submarines?
Steve: Yeah there’s been a couple since, yeah. I think Anson and Audacious have both put crews in the past, so it’s been quite good, but we paved the way so that was good, yeah. So that was a good accolade to have you know?
Simon: It get you know in other parts of the Submarine Service as well.
Steve: Yeah definitely. It was a really good experience that, really good, and then I got promoted at the end of Ambush. So, I did the initial dive, but got promoted to Warrant Officer while I was still in Barrow, so unfortunately I never got to sail Ambush out of Barrow which would have been a good thing to do, but I had to move back to Flag Officer Sea Training as a Warrant Officer then to do the sea riding element rather than the simulators, so I did that from 2012 to 2014.
Simon: And what is the role of a Warrant Officer as the difference?
Steve: So, you’re the top of the Non-Commissioned Officers as a Warrant Officer. You have quite a lot of authority over Officers, all the Chiefs, all the POs. A lot of Officers will look to you as the subject matter expert and having all the knowledge, so you can be a Chief one day, and a Warrant Officer the next day, but people treat you completely differently the next day because you’re a Warrant Officer, which is good you know?
Simon: Treat you … how does it differ?
Steve: A lot more respect, so you are like the top of your tree if you like. In the Coxswain world, I think there were only 12 Warrant Officers in the Navy, so you are quite well-known and respected because of what you’ve done. And doing sea riding you get to know all the submarine Captains and all XOs. You look at how the routines are running onboard the platform. Give feed-back into the Coxswain and to the XO and to the Captain, so you are really well known throughout the Submarine Flotilla because of that because there’s only one Coxswain that rides a boat with 12 other sea riders to put events on, so that was a really good job. The only problem was that whenever a submarine broke down, you always had to wait for it to be fixed, and because I lived in Sheffield, the amount of time I sat in Faslane at weekends waiting to … ‘it’s going to be fixed tomorrow, it’s going to be fixed tomorrow’ it never was so it was quite difficult in that respect. But because I was leaving the Navy in 2018 by then, I decided to take the plunge and go back-to-back sea drabs so FOST sea riding was a sea job, but then I got offered to be Executive Warrant Officer on HMS Portland, which is a ship, and I thought well that would be good because I’ll leave that in 2016, and then it will guarantee my two years shore side before I leave the Navy in 2018. So, I joined HMS Portland, which was a Type 23 Warship, an anti-submarine Warship which was bizarre, so like poacher turned gamekeeper and was on there for two years. Joined it in Cape Town, went down the Falklands, through the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, back to Lisbon. Then we did all Norway and Copenhagen. It was a great two years to be honest, a great two years. They wanted me to stay on to do another deployment, but it was the first time I’d ever met Kerry who’d said, “If you do that deployment I won’t be here when you come back” because I had done a lot of time away. Over four years I’d done a lot of time away, so I decided not to do that and came back to SETT (laughs) in 2016.
66 minutes 52 seconds
Simon: And so they wanted you onboard apart from all the other skills you had I guess, but part of it was because you’re knowledge of submarines was so strong that you might have a view on how a submarine might behave when they are being anti-submarine?
Steve: That wasn’t the reason, but as it turned out it turned out to be a good asset to be onboard with my knowledge. I relieved another Warrant Officer Coxswain called Carl Donald in Cape Town and we went round and then we changed over Captains to Simon Asquith, who was just finishing up as Comm Ops now, and we took on the role as Captain anti-submarine warfare for the whole of the Navy. So, we were doing lots of anti-submarine warfare exercises, so I go down the Ops Room and because I understood all the warfare element, even though I’d not done it for a few years, it’s like riding a bike, you never forget it, and I’d be like quite involved in it. So, it turned out to be quite good for the ship and for me to see how and trying to improve their processes and how they do stuff ‘cos General Service, to be honest, are not that good at anti-submarine warfare ‘cos they don’t do it much. So, to have me and Simon Asquith onboard was quite a good asset to have.
Simon: And the shift to a surface ship. Is it right submariners call them ‘skimmers’?
Steve: Skimmers, yeah.
Simon: The shift to a skimmer. I mean it just feels totally different …
Steve: Oh, completely different mind-set. Completely different attitude, different level of professionalism definitely. But I kept my submarine pay on there so it was great ‘cos I never used to mention that much at all, but I’ve kept in touch with some really good friends from there as well from Portland, ‘cos at the end of the day they’re sailors, they’re Matelots, you know and they have got the same mentality. It’s just different if you like. The social aspect is the same and we had some really good times and we went to great places, like Columbia and everywhere, Porto Rico, it was great. It was really good, but just the professionalism side is completely different. Whereas a submariner will know everybody’s job, they’ll all lend a hand wherever, General Service are like ‘that’s my job, I’m not doing anything different, I’ve always done it this way’ and it used to infuriate me. The stove piping that they used to do and not willingness to help anybody else out, it used to infuriate me. They slowly got the hang of it and my mind-set by the end of it but I’m sure it regressed to what it was before when I left, but it was another good experience, you know? Another one of those … throughout my Naval career, I’ve always tried to embrace every experience and try and do things differently just for the life experience, you know, and Portland was definitely one of those life experiences, you know.
Simon: And do you get more stops on a skimmer than you do on a submarine?
70 minutes 3 seconds
Steve: Yeah, these days you do, yeah.
Simon: So, you get to see more of the world that you’re travelling around?
Steve: But they live onboard every day, so you weigh it up. So, whereas on a submarine you get a Hotel …
Simon: You have to go back to the ship?
Steve: Yeah, you have to go back to the ship every night, and they work when they’re on a visit as well, whereas on a submarine, you only go back down the boat if you’re duty, so it’s six and two threes. I mean if I was saying to any young kid these days, I’d say, “Join the Navy and go on a ship first for a couple of years, see a bit of the world and then go submarines if you’re on the money.” That’s what I would advise. I used to say that on Portland as well to the young warfare people and say, “Just go submarines in a few years when you’ve seen a bit of the world. Get a bit of money then.”
Simon: Yeah, that sort of wanderlust of when you’re a youngster.
Steve: I mean I was lucky as I said earlier that I did diesel boats so we did a lot of UK and Europe and stuff, whereas now the nuclear boats ‘cos they’re designed to be at sea, the nuclear submarines and they go out for weeks and weeks on end. That’s just the design process. They’re designed to do so; I was quite lucky in the fact that diesel boats you were in and out of ports. There were no nuclear restrictions whereas this day and age, people are always really cautious about nuclear power.
Simon: Before letting them into a port.
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: I heard that sometimes you have to be outside and then sort of come in on a boat. You’re not allowed into the port but they’ll put you outside to stop somewhere.
Steve: Yeah, maybe.
Simon: I may have got that wrong.
Steve: I‘m not sure where that would be, but maybe.
Simon: That’s made me think that sort of you’ve now got … your mental view of the world, you’ve got a really global view I guess, having been to all these places? You don’t need Google maps, it’s all in your head, and an intimate understanding of what the different ports are like as well.
Steve: Yeah, and a lot of the Bars (laughs).
Simon: So, what about the time onshore then? It is crazy time is it, everybody letting off steam?
Steve: Um, yeah. I’ve stayed in some really nice Hotels and you do let off steam and people do get drunk, because when you’ve been underwater … everyday you’re underwater there’s an inherent risk that it may be your last day. You know that’s just part and parcel of being a submariner, so when you come back, even though nobody talks about it, it’s almost like a bit of relief I think people view it as. You know everyone just gets on it to be honest you know, but people always get on really well when they’re at sea, but then I think when they have a bit of alcohol induced, there’s a little bit of finger pointing goes on in your Hotels and things ‘cos that’s what happens.
Simon: All those niggling thoughts that they’ve been putting to the back of their minds.
Steve: Yeah, but generally people get on really, really well in submarines, and they’re normally more chilled out and just let things go when they are at sea because you have to. It’s like the black humour and if you show a little bit of weakness, then people will just exploit that and really ridicule you, you know (laughs). But it’s good, it’s all good.
Simon: Do you have any time for hobbies onboard?
Steve: Not really. Football Manager a little bit.
Simon: On a submarine? Oh right, the game?
Steve: Yeah, you take your laptop, just to try and kill time really and then watch a lot of movies, but whereas before everybody go in the Mess and watch a video or a film, because of tablets and stuff now everybody disappears to their beds and watches on their bed, so the social aspect everywhere has sort of changed.
Simon: Right, the same society changes.
Steve: Yeah, where you get like 30 or 40 people in a Mess watching a film, you might get three or four. Everybody else goes to their bed and plays their tablet or whatever.
Simon: Right. Does that impact the solidarity, the team feel?
Steve: A little bit. You’ve still got that camaraderie don’t get me wrong but I wouldn’t say it’s as tight as what it was many years ago to be honest.
Simon: And what about nicknames? What was your nickname?
Steve: Oh, just ‘Stevie.’
Simon: Oh, ok.
Steve: Yea, that was it.
Simon: How come you escaped with just Stevie then?
Steve: Because I joined the Navy with another lad called Paul Marriot, who was called ‘Yorkie’ so you couldn’t have two Yorkies and then he joined Repulse with me the same day, so we went through all our training together. We joined Repulse the same day, so we couldn’t have two Yorkies onboard, so I was always called Stevie and he was Scotland and that’s what they call you, and he was called Yorkie, so that was it.
Simon: That whole thing of nicknames is … I didn’t realise that depending on what someone’s surname is sometimes, they automatically get a nickname connected. So, what happens when there are two people onboard with the same surname?
Steve: Well, when I was on Oracle, we had a ‘Brum’ onboard already and he wasn’t from Birmingham, he was from Scotland for some reason, I don’t know why, but he was called ‘Brum’ and then we had another ‘Brum’ join us so the new Brum was called ‘Murb’, Brum backwards, so he was known as Murb onboard (laughs). There’s another one ‘Biscuits’ Crawford, there’s loads of them.
75 minutes 19 seconds
Simon: Crawford’s automatically has ‘Biscuits’ does it?
Steve: Well no, just the one that was onboard our boat was called Biscuits like.
Simon: And how quickly does the nickname get attached to the person? Is it within their first day on?
Steve: Yeah, pretty much. I mean it might start in training. Depends doesn’t it? It can go all the way through. Some people don’t like their nickname and if they make it vocal that they don’t like their nickname, then it just exaggerates everybody’s desire to call ‘em that name because you know that it really annoys them, so you’re better off just not saying something. If something really annoys you, you try and not say anything because people will just go for the jugular with it, you know. But that black humour for you. That’s just the way that you get by on a submarine really, you know. Take the piss out of everybody really (laughs).
Simon: So, you went back to SETT. And what were you doing back at SETT?
Steve: I joined back SETT as a Warrant Officer. Basically, they’d stopped Pressurised Training in 2012. They were meant to be opening a new facility but it kept getting delayed for financial reasons. I went back to SETT and tried to reinvigorate the training. There was a lot of older people there, Reservists, that didn’t really care. The Course was two days Death by PowerPoint.’ It was too …
Simon: Say that again.
Steve: It was two days ‘Death by PowerPoint’, just two days of lectures, so we tried to reinvigorate it. We changed the whole training again, tried to make it a little bit more practical …
Simon: Was that what you were told was that’s what you want … that’s why they want to be there?
Steve: Somebody had said, in fact it was Simon Asquith who said, “The biggest challenge you’re going to have is changing the Navy’s perception of Submarine Escape Training ‘cos it’s got really stagnant” so I went in and I looked and did the Course and I was like, this is awful, so we basically got all the lads together and said, “Right, this is what we need to do. We need to get it projecting more, to go and deliver on the waterfront, we need to reinvigorate the training down here” etc etc. Everybody do Courses, they Train the Trainer Courses, and we did it and we got an award for it in 2017. We got an award for it from Flag Officer Sea Training for the most improved Course for the minimum cost. So, we got a load of paint and we painted all the classrooms, we developed all the media, we got smart boards fitted, and we got an award for it, so it was quite good that the lads were recognised for all the work that we’d put in like, you know. We tried to reinvigorate SPAG because that had sort of gone by the wayside as well. We did a lot of some other things and it wasn’t all me. This was a collective and there were a couple of really good guys that had joined that were really proactive as well. I took on the role as 2 IC of the Submarine Escape Training as well, and the day I joined, the Boss at the time, he’d said, “What’s your plans?” and I said, “Well I’m preparing to leave the Navy in 2018” and he said, “Well, we’re relocating to Scotland, we’ll need somebody for continuity. Would you take an extension?” I said, “Well yeah, but it’s got to be a decent length and it’s got to come to me quite quickly” so they gave me a four-year extension effectively, so that meant to me leaving in April 2022, whereas obviously I left in November 2021. So, I took that extension and then started working on the looking at the plans and the contracts and the training for the new facility that was relocating to Faslane.
Simon: This is before it was built at Faslane?
Steve: Yeah, so at this stage, the contract submission had just gone in, so we reviewed the contract submission, awarded it and then did a lot of work with Babcock that won the bid to look at the design and the building, the training, the methodology and then it got delayed again because of building on a nuclear site they got loads of delays, so it came to a point where it was almost built but ended up having to leave to go to my next job, before it was actually completed, which is a bit disappointing but as it turned out, everything happens for a reason. I went to Argentina in 2017 for the San Juan …
Simon: For the what?
Steve: The San Juan, the Argentinian submarine that sank. We were invited out …
Simon: That was as SPAG was it?
Steve: Yeah, SPAG and some non-parachute trained people called Smerats which is Submarine Escape and Rescue Advisory Team, that can fly onto a ship to advise Command how to do things. So, there was four parachutists went out. Four stayed in the Falkland Islands, three went onto HMS Protector and I went in to Argentina to Command Advise in Argentina and work with the Americans and Argentinians first British plane to land in Argentina since 1982, which was unique. Stayed in the Port of Belgrano Naval Base which obviously we sank the Belgrano during the Falklands War, and I got my uniform, one with a white ensign and a set of submarine dolphins on. We were met by the Captain of the Port of Belgrano Naval Base and he said, “I’m really glad you’re here ‘cos I know why you’re here. However, be warned, some people are not pleased you are here.” The Americans had got there on the Sunday. This was a Tuesday morning and we just basically tried to piece together what had happened and try and find the submarine. Unfortunately, we didn’t find it but we made some good connections with Argentina and we got debriefed by MI6 on the way out in Buenos Aries and they said, “Don’t underestimate your presence and country has for international relations” and Protector went into Buenos Aires a few months later.
81 minutes 28 seconds
Simon: That’s a ship was it?
Steve: Yeah, so clearly we’d done something right, and I got a Member of the British Empire out of it, an MBE, so that was quite nice. But I made a lot of connections …
Simon: It’s interesting, it’s almost being a Diplomat.
Steve: Yeah, it was massively. You felt like you were walking on rice paper every day in the Base, and on the 2nd of December 2017, we’d gone for lunch with the Americans and by this stage it was pretty accepted that we weren’t going to find anybody alive. We went for lunch with the Americans, me and Les Smith who was this General Service Officer that had just come to escort me really, all the Americans were sat to our left, and the Russians walked in and sat to our right. We were sat like opposite each other. We were like the Berlin Wall in-between us and the Americans and the Russians. It was bizarre. One of those bizarre experiences in life.
Simon: The Russians were there for the same reason of trying to help them escape?
Steve: Well, the Russians … Putin had flexed his muscle and said he wanted to be involved in it because the Americans and the UK were involved in it, so they sent deep-sea ROV over to look for it. The Argentinians didn’t really want them there.
Simon: Seems a little bit childish?
Steve: Well, that’s politics for you isn’t it?
Simon: To say, “Oh, I want to be there.”
Steve: Yeah, so they turned up and the whole dynamic in the Base changed, but I think then we flew home on the 9th of December or something, so we had a week there with the Russians, which was a bizarre experience.
Simon: And they were submariners were they?
Steve: Um, I don’t know. One was, one was KGB, one was an Interpreter but he wore a black uniform which is normally KGB. One was a submariner. I’m not sure who the other guy was.
Simon: Wow. And what happened … why was the submarine stricken then? What was the …
Steve: So, they had water down the snort induction system.
Simon: They were diesel were they?
Steve: Yeah, it was a 30-year-old German submarine and on the bottom of the snort induction, if you get a wave down or water down, there should be a flap valve that shuts to stop the water coming in. On the German boats, it’s left in automatic so it shuts automatically. For some reason they were running round with it in manual, and it took in a lot of water, wrote off one of the batteries, they had a bit of a fire so they’d reported this back, but then I think what they’d done when they’d sorted everything out, they radioed back saying they wanted a new area to operate to get back to base port, and I think they’d been told to just get deep, get back, so looking at the timings, I think they’d gone deep, reconnected the battery, started up and then the battery two hours later had exploded and killed them all. That’s what the general consensus was that had happened.
Simon: Somebody I was speaking to this week had been onboard with an exploding battery as well and was describing just … he was asleep at the time it exploded and just didn’t know what was going on and a sort of a fog everywhere, you couldn’t really see what was going on. But he was saying, it’s the gas that’s the problem. So, it’s not necessarily the explosion, although of course that isn’t helpful.
Steve: It’s chlorine isn’t it? Chlorine gas.
Simon: And that was the likely cause of the …
Steve: Yeah, I think they worked out that they all perished within like 0.4 second or something, which if you’re going to go is not a bad way to go is it? At least you knew you didn’t know anything about it.
Simon: Goodness. Ok, so then that was the MBE and then what happened after that?
Steve: So, I left SETT in January 2020, went to a Manpower job in Portsmouth. Oh sorry, February ’20, and the girl that I took over from there, she said, “Oh it’s a great job this for loads of time off ready for leaving the Navy” and then three weeks later, Covid hit, and it was just carnage to be honest. It was just horrendous. You know, trying to find manpower to support the NHS and all the rest of it. Like 9 o’clock at night finished, it was just relentless for 18 months really. So, when I got offered this civilian job, it was like brilliant, let me out of here, you know? But that all stemmed back from my time at SETT, getting this civilian job now and the people that I knew globally from Argentina and everything else ‘cos after Argentina I’d attended what they called ‘SMERG’ which is Submarine Escape and Rescue Working Groups which is NATO and global, so you get a lot of people come in from India to Holland, Canada, Australia, America so I know a lot of the big players in the International Escape stage, so that’s why this Company had come in for me as well really.
86 minutes 33 seconds
Simon: Who are you with now?
Steve: Survitec that make all the submarine escape suits for the UK, America, Canada, Australia. 93% of the global market.
Simon: When I did the visit to SETT, they had one in the entrance area, on the right-hand side. A sort of all-in-one suit with a big visor. Is that it?
Steve: Yeah. So, they’re pretty much all the same design, but there are just variations of the design. They all achieve the same thing. To use as little amount of air as possible and to supply you with enough buoyancy to get to the surface hopefully without a bend, which is ultimately what you’re trying to do.
Simon: And warmth as well I guess is it?
Steve: There’s a little bit of thermal protection on it and you get a single seat Life Raft as well, so you can get yourself out of the water with that as well.
Simon: Right. And the shifting from being in the Service to civvy street.
Steve: It’s been fine. The Company are really good. There’s four Category Managers because our Company is quite big, three of which are ex-Military, so we all get on really well, so we have a really good sort of bond within our team if you like, so it is really good and because I know a lot of people globally, I’ve been reaching out to them as well and I was in Washington last week to talk to the Head of the US Navy about submarine escapes, so it’s all good in that respect. I’m still a member of the Gosport Submarine Association, I’m the Chairman of it, so still have that tie with the Submarine Service. I was at Reunion last weekend in Liverpool. I’m at another Reunion in Leicester next weekend, so it’s all keeping those Reunions ties I think are important just to keep you grounded and you can have the same sense of humour without upsetting everybody (laughs) which is the main thing.
Simon: Yeah, I guess people who’ve not had that same experience, if you work in a commercial environment, they don’t necessarily have that same sense of humour.
Steve: No, definitely not.
Simon: Well, that brings us up to date doesn’t it?
Steve: Yeah.
Simon: Ok. So, is there anything else, thinking about Gosport. You live here still now … well not still but you live in the Fareham Gosport area. You must like it round here otherwise you wouldn’t live here.
Steve: Yeah, it’s close to everywhere, to London, close to the sea, nice weather, people are generally friendly. Yeah, I really like it around here. And being the Chairman of the Gosport Submariners Association, now Covid’s sort of over, we want to try and reignite ties with the Mayor of Gosport and get more involved. Our chosen charity was First Light Trust, which is a café in Gosport for Veterans, so we are trying to do more but obviously Covid restricted it up to this point really.
Simon: That’s great. What have I not asked you about you think would be important to talk about?
Steve: Nothing, I don’t think. I would just say to any young person, I joined the Navy with nothing, with no qualifications, let school with nothing and the Navy provided me with a great platform to get worldly wise and also educationally qualified and I left the Navy as a Chartered Manager with a Master’s Degree and an NVQ Level 7 in Management, so it provides a great platform for you to better yourself, both socially and educationally if you join up and embrace it.
Simon: That’s interesting that difference. Was it because it was sort of practical compared with school? Why did you embrace the education so much within the Navy?
90 minutes 39 seconds
Steve: I don’t know. I just think as you grow up as well and as you get older, you realise that actually you might need something in the future, and the Navy will fund quite a lot of education, so I just thought, I’ve sat around and drank my way around the world enough, I need to start doing something to prepare ultimately to leave, and I started probably eight years ago, just doing various bits and it’s paid dividends with this job that I’ve got now, so it’s good.
Simon: Great, well thank you very much for your time, much appreciated, excellent, cheers.
Steve: Thank you.
Interview ends
91 minutes 18 seconds
Transcribed April 2022
