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Names of Royal Navy personnel have been changed to protect privacy.

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First published by Mudlark 2019

FIRST EDITION

Text © Richard Humphreys 2019

Illustrations © Tom Hughes 2019

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers

Cover illustration © Neil Gower

Photographs courtesy of the author except where indicated

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Source ISBN: 9780008313050

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008313081

Version: 2019-09-03

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Dedication

For my father, who loved life

V.J.C.H.

1928–2016

Epigraph

‘Submariners themselves were regarded as not quite the thing – smelt a bit, behaved not too well, drank too much. They were regarded as a sort of dirty habit in tins.’

Admiral Sir John Forster ‘Sandy’ Woodward, One Hundred Days, 1992

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Note to Readers

5  Dedication

6  Epigraph

7  Contents

8  Author’s Note

9 Diagram of Polaris Submarine

10  Polaris Submarine Hierarchy

11  Glossary

12  Introduction

13  1 Beasting

14  2 HMS Neptune, Faslane

15  3 The Bomber

16  4 Alongside

17  5 Work-up

18  6 Coulport

19  7 Before the Off

20  8 Set Sail

21  9 The Dive

22  10 A Brief Tour

23  11 No Time

24  12 All the Time in the World

25  13 Downtime

26  14 Booze

27  15 Snadgens

28  16 Porn

29  17 Familygrams

30  18 Showtime

31  19 Under the Lights

32  20 Cut Off

33  21 Racked Out

34  22 Food, Glorious Food

35  23 The Day Job, the Night Job, Repeat

36  24 Letters from the Grave

37  25 Captain Is God

38  26 To Launch or Not to Launch

39  27 Homeward Bound

40  28 Off Crew

41  Acknowledgements

42  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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Author’s Note

I switched off the radio, made my way slowly up the stairs, shut the bathroom door and shed a tear. It was 16 November 2017, the day after the Argentinian submarine the ARA San Juan went missing in the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina. At first, in those early days, it was unclear what had provoked the accident or what fate had befallen the crew, whether they might somehow still be alive beneath the waves. But then, with time, the cause of the tragedy became clear. An electrical malfunction had short-circuited the battery, which led to a complete loss of power for the old diesel-powered submarine. The San Juan had then sunk to the ocean depths, before finally imploding under the intense water pressure. The entire crew of 44, which included the first female submarine officer in the Argentine Navy, Eliana Krawczyk, had perished.

On hearing of the crew’s horrible fate, my thoughts switched back to my own period of service aboard a submarine and how blessed I’d been not to have suffered a similar fate. There are innumerable fine lines between life and death when operating in one of the most testing environments the world has to offer, where one wrong move can almost instantly bring chaos and disaster. After the San Juan tragedy, friends who had previously never seemed the slightest bit interested in my naval career started pumping me vigorously with questions about submarines, the dangers involved in underwater living, and exactly how I retained my sanity during the long weeks and months away at sea, cut off from the rest of the world. This book is a direct result of those conversations.

At the age of 18, in the mid-1980s, I became a member of an elite group who served aboard Britain’s nuclear deterrent, continuing my service for the following five years, while the Cold War was still hot and nuclear confrontation seemed scarily imaginable. In the 30 years since I left the Navy, submarine living and operating have remained fundamentally the same, although the creature comforts – including email, laptops, PlayStations and other products of the digital age – mean that some aspects are possibly easier now than they were during our stand-off with the Soviet Union.

I hope that what you are about to read will go a little way towards explaining the raw, real-life experience of what it’s like to spend prolonged periods of time on a submarine. I’ve tried not to focus on the military aspects, although by necessity some of these will come into the story, but have rather concentrated on how it feels to live day-to-day in this claustrophobic, man-made environment, describing the pressures it exerts on both one’s mind and body.

This is a book about life lived at the extremes, and there are few more extreme situations than living underwater in what is effectively a giant, elongated – if beautifully streamlined – steel tin can. I hope that it informs, shocks, excites and entertains, and that it moves you, the reader, to spare a thought for the brave men and women who at any given moment are patrolling the world’s waters, keeping their silent vigils.

The ID card issued to me on joining HMS Resolution. I’m going for a Mick Jones from the Clash vibe.

Diagram of Polaris Submarine

Polaris Submarine Hierarchy

Glossary

Terminology

alongside: status of submarine when berthed at jetty, in Resolution’s case at Faslane, awaiting to go to sea for patrol or work-up. Also where ship maintenance, storing ship, and loading both missiles and torpedoes – at Coulport – take place.

AMS (auxiliary machinery space): three areas on the submarine – AMS 1, 2 and 3 – where various bits of machinery are located.

angles and dangles: deep-water procedure where submarine dives and heads back to surface at steep inclines to test if boat is safely stowed for sea. Any noise generated by falling pots, pans or bits of machinery could give boat’s position away on patrol. Great fun.

ARL (Admiralty Research Laboratory) table: located aft and on starboard side of control room. Mostly used when surfaced. Map lies on top of it and periscope navigational fixes taken from landmarks are applied to chart to calculate submarine’s position in conjunction with SINS.

attack team: warfare team under guidance of XO reporting to captain, who has overall command. Consists of sonar team, tactical systems team, warfare seaman officers, XO and captain.

auxiliary vent-and-blow system: back-up vent-and-blow system in case of failure of main systems. May be used for diving and surfacing of submarine.

bathythermograph: instrument to measure changes in water temperature at different depths. Also used to measure velocity of sound in water. Sensors located in top of fin and keel.

BRN mast: supplies submarine with instantaneous navigation information to lock down its latitude and longitude at PD.

bubble: ‘up bubble’ means bow of submarine is angled up; ‘down bubble’, bow angled down; ‘zero bubble’, boat kept steady on depth. Controlled by afterplanesman.

casing: outer non-watertight upper hull of submarine, designed for hydrodynamic performance. Pressure hull is the inner hull.

CEP (contact evaluation plot): time-bearing plot constantly in operation on patrol where every sonar contact is plotted so its course, range and speed can be calculated for firing solution or to avoid collision.

control room: centre of operations, where captain commands submarine and planesmen manoeuvre, surface, dive, and go to and from PD using ship control console. Houses attack and search periscopes, attack team fire-control and plotting systems. Systems console located here, which controls ballast and trim pumps, hover pump and periscopes. Slop, drain and sewage tank is blown here and hydraulic system monitored.

Coulport (Royal Navy Armament Depot Coulport): on Loch Long, Scotland. Military facility that stores and loads Britain’s nuclear weapons carried by submarines, first Polaris, then Trident.

1 Deck: nav centre, control room, wireless office, sound room, sonar console space, electronic warfare (EW) shack containing radar room, electrical equipment space with closed room containing navigator’s maps.

2 Deck: entertainment and living spaces: wardroom and officers’ bunks, senior rates’ mess and annex, upper bunk space, coxswain’s office, sick bay, galley, scullery, junior rates’ dining area and mess in upper level of torpedo compartment.

3 Deck: senior and junior rates’ bunks, junior rates’ toilets, laundry, AMS 1, missile control centre.

dolphins: gold submariners’ qualification badge to denote fully qualified submariner, gained after passing on-board oral examination. Panel consists of XO, chief engineer and coxswain. Worn on upper-left chest.

EBS (emergency breathing system) mask: used in emergencies when fire causes poisonous smoke to billow through submarine. Plugged into various couplets around submarine, known as built-in breathing system, which supplies fresh supply of air.

emergency surface procedure: to avoid catastrophic fire, flooding and sinking of boat, all watertight bulkhead doors are shut, full ahead is selected on engine telegraphs, emergency air supply is used to fill ballast tanks with air, causing submarine to surface as quickly as possible with planesmen controlling pitch.

Faslane (HMS Neptune): on Gare Loch, Scotland. One of Royal Navy’s three operating bases. Centre of naval operations in Scotland and home of the nuclear missile-carrying submarines, in my day Polaris, now Trident.

fire-control system: computerised system on submarines, designed by Ferranti and Royal Navy, using series of pre-set algorithms and other tactical information from on-board time-bearing plots and sonar room to calculate firing solutions for torpedoes to target and hit enemy vessels.

flying the boat: phrase suggesting submarine has similar moving characteristics to aircraft while dived, with pitch and depth controlled by foreplanes and afterplanes tilted either up or down to make submarine push upwards to surface or dive towards deep. Amount of angle on planes coupled with speed of boat determines angle of descent or rise, just as an aircraft’s lift by its wings is determined by speed and angle of attack.

gash: collective name for all the rubbish on a submarine, collected, crushed and fired out by gash gun into ocean.

goffa: non-alcoholic soft drink.

HMS Dolphin (Gosport): former shore-side centre for submarine training. Royal Navy Submarine School was relocated to HMS Raleigh (Torpoint) in 1998.

LOP (local operations plot): time-bearing plot using information from sound room or periscope to calculate target motion analysis on ship or submarine contacts.

PD (periscope depth): depth equal to length of periscope when dived.

Perisher: Submarine Command Course, so-called because candidates pass or perish. Run twice a year for c. 24 weeks, taking in simulation exercises shore-side and sea-going exercises on nuclear submarine. Success leads to second-in-command, then captaining nuclear submarine. Failure, a bottle of whisky and never again setting foot on submarine.

pipe: boatswain’s call used by quartermaster to pipe aboard captain on change of crews and pipe exiting captain off boat. Also used for flag officers – rear admiral and above – if visiting boat.

Polaris: Britain’s first submarine-based nuclear ballistic missile system, in service from 1968 to 1996, when the last Resolution-class submarine in service, HMS Repulse, was decommissioned.

reactor: nuclear reactor in reactor compartment powers submarine, generating heat that creates steam to provide power for turbines, which turns propeller, and for all electrical equipment and machinery to maintain life-support systems.

‘Resolution’ class: four nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) built for Royal Navy as part of Polaris programme, each armed with up to 16 UGM-27 Polaris A-3 nuclear missiles. The capital ships of the day, named after surface ships with a glorious past: Resolution, Revenge, Repulse and Renown.

scram: reactor shutdown to ensure core remains safe and doesn’t overheat, melting the boat.

scran: collective term for food, originally naval acronym for sultanas, currants, raisins and nuts once given to fight scurvy.

scrubbers: used to remove CO2 from submarine so crew don’t die of asphyxiation.

SETT (submarine escape training tank): vast concrete tower at HMS Dolphin, Gosport, where simulated escapes take place.

SINS (ship’s inertial navigation system): internal navigation system, fitted with gyroscopes, accelerometers and velocity meters, that constantly updates submarine’s position.

SSN (nuclear-powered attack submarine): nuclear submarine not carrying nuclear weapons, known as hunter-killers for ferocious pursuit of Soviet submarines. HMS Conqueror, which sank the Argentinian General Belgrano, was an SSN. They were armed with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles.

SSBN (nuclear-powered ballistic missile-carrying submarine): see ‘Resolution’ class.

tactical systems team: part of warfare team, providing complete tactical picture for captain and XO using information from sonar via sound room and periscopes if at PD, through use of target motion analysis to calculate course, speed and range of any given contact.

thermocline: temperature differentials within body of water due to seasonal variation, local conditions or latitude and longitude that give submarines acoustic blanket to hide in from sonar.

Trident: current British nuclear missile system that began replacing Polaris in 1994.

warfare team: team responsible for fighting the submarine under leadership of XO, who in turn reports to captain.

work-up: sea trials in front of onboard teaching staff ensuring crew are capable of taking submarine on deterrent patrol.

wrecking team: engineering team looking after forward part of submarine and watch-keeping at systems console in control room.

Ranks and roles

AB (able seaman): Royal Navy rating in seaman branch, above ordinary seaman and below leading seaman.

afterplanesman: controls afterplanes at bow of submarine, tilting them back to surface, forward to dive. Also steers submarine to left (port) and right (starboard).

captain: commanding officer of submarine, also referred to as ‘skipper’, ‘the man’ or ‘God’.

chief ops: chief petty officer in charge of sound room as well as sonar ratings and any other senior rates who are sonar specialists. A highly experienced sonar operator, usually excels at quizzes.

chief wrecker: chief engineer who operates and watch-keeps at systems console, leading a team of junior rate wreckers maintaining engineering systems at front end of boat.

coxswain: ship’s senior rating, normally with rank of chief petty officer or warrant officer.

CPO (chief petty officer): senior non-commissioned officer in most navies, rank between petty officer and warrant officer.

foreplanesman: controls operation of foreplanes from the control room. Works in conjunction with afterplanesman to maintain correct pitch and depth of submarine, crucial when at PD.

junior rates: heartbeat of submarine, keeping her alive and buzzing every day. Responsible for storing ship, cleaning and scrubbing out for inspections, watchkeeping duties, and also for most of drinking and entertainment while at sea.

Lt Cdr (lieutenant commander): commissioned officer in Royal Navy, above a lieutenant and below a commander. Heads of departments on submarine were all lieutenant commanders, as was XO.

leading radio operator: leading hand working in wireless office monitoring signals from Command Centre at Northwood. Equivalent rank to corporal in Army.

leading seaman: either a sonar operator or tactical systems operative, a key member of attack team.

leading steward: personal steward to captain, also likely to do a turn on ship control steering submarine.

master-at-arms (MAA): see coxswain.

MEM (marine engineering mechanic): driving force on boat, ensuring all mechanical and life services from nuclear reactor to air purification and laundry tick over. Most importantly, keeps toilets flushing.

MEO (marine engineering officer): senior engineering officer tasked with safe working and operation of nuclear reactor and all other engineering systems. Reports to captain. Usually at rank of Lt Cdr. Mine was cerebral and friendly, and played a mean Spanish guitar.

NO (navigating officer): seaman officer in charge of navigation, holds charts and maps of patrol area in a locked room on 1 Deck. Member of warfare team. Reports to XO. At rank of lieutenant. Known as Vasco or pilot.

OOW (officer of the watch): seaman officer, captain’s representative while watch-keeping at sea, preserving safety of submarine in all aspects, especially avoiding grounding and collision. Accountable to captain for safety of entire submarine while on watch.

QM (quartermaster): in charge of external security of submarine, managing ship’s crew inventory so no one gets on board without his knowledge. Also helps with logistics of storing ship.

RPO (reactor panel operator): monitors reactor and associated electrical and propulsion systems from manoeuvring room.

senior rates: non-commissioned officers, either petty officers or chief petty officers.

surgeon lieutenant: doctor on board, hides in sick bay armed with paracetamol. Unlikely to display standard bedside manner. At rank of lieutenant. Also does turn at ship control on patrol.

TASO (tactics and sensors officer): seaman officer, part of warfare team. Reports to XO. At rank of lieutenant.

WEM (weapons engineering mechanic): junior rating looking after maintenance of torpedoes and electrical systems of sonar and other computer systems.

WEO (weapons engineering officer): in charge of loading, maintenance and firing of nuclear weapons and torpedoes. Reports to captain. Usually at rank of Lt Cdr.

XO (executive officer): the Jimmy, Number 1 or second-in-command of submarine. Like captain, will have passed Perisher course. Overall in charge of warfare team. Reports to captain. Usually at rank of Lt Cdr.

Introduction

The Cold War, deep under the North Atlantic. Probably, but who knows? I certainly don’t. Right now we could be anywhere. All I can hear are whales communicating with each other, a haunting sound that’s somewhat tragic in delivery, like a loved one bereft for eternity.

Theoretically, we are 15 minutes from the start of Armageddon. That’s the time it would take between us receiving the firing signal from the prime minister and the nuclear warheads being launched. I’m on patrol – submarine patrol – aboard a sizeable chunk of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. We are the hidden. We see and hear everything, but only ever listen – we never communicate. A highly trained, motivated, elite team of submariners, we’re the best in the business. It’s the middle of the night in the control room, all the dials bathed in soft red lighting. I haven’t slept well for days; I’ve got bad skin and my body clock has gone haywire. And then it happens.

A distant noise. Panic sets in. Undetected by our sonar, it’s as if the intruder has come from nowhere. The crew freeze, the next 30 seconds drip by … What is it, friend or foe? Have we been detected and compromised? Suddenly, the tell-tale sound of a submarine’s propeller screams over the top of us no more than 50 feet away. All hell breaks loose. I literally dive full-length into a seat on the fire-control system, as we scramble around looking for answers. We assign the rogue sub a target number and track it as it passes to the stern of us, then, phantom-like, gradually fades away to the east, never to be heard from again.

That was close, way too close. The captain made the call – correctly, of course – that it was making far too much noise to have detected us. But even so, most of the crew on watch when it happened are now nervously fidgeting, thinking to themselves: How did we miss it? There’s a lot resting on our – mostly very young – shoulders. We can never be detected or compromised. Nor can we seek and destroy. We can only evade. Our job is to hide the bomber, this monster of the deep.

***

HMS Raleigh, Torpoint, Cornwall, nine months earlier.

I’d had a plan – a clear plan – since joining the Royal Navy that I wanted to serve with the elite. I wanted to be challenged, and if I was going to do it I needed to throw my heart and soul into it. I also needed the adrenaline fix. As a restless but determined soul who wanted to do something a tad different with my life I decided on the Submarine Service, the ‘Silent Service’. I wanted some of that, and although I had no idea what it would entail or what was required both mentally and physically, it appealed as a test. I’d been intrigued by submarines since childhood and had regularly seen them at the Plymouth naval base on our family’s annual summer break to the beautiful South Hams region of Devon. We’d spend at least one day visiting Plymouth Hoe for a game of crazy golf followed by fish and chips, gazing out to sea where, among others, Drake had sailed in 1588 to engage the Spanish Armada. Plymouth had been a vital centre during the Age of Empire, and all the sailor-scientists had set sail from here – Cook, Bligh and Darwin. Its naval history carried on and on through the two world wars, right up to the fleet of vessels I’d see on my boyhood holidays.

After lunch the family would take a guided trip round the warships on one of the boats that departed from the Mayflower Steps on the seafront, and we’d work our way past the might of the modern Navy. The moored-up, rusting warships seemed large, robust, even a tad soulless.

Meanwhile, the submarines tied up alongside looked anything but; sleek and powerful, with a large helping of intimidation to boot, they radiated a sense of mystery and glamour. I’d sit there looking at them, marvelling at what lethal pieces of machinery and wondrous feats of modern engineering they were. Enigmas to me in many ways: one minute powering forward on the surface like a ship, then in a flash simply vanishing under the water, wholly hidden from the world, completely self-sufficient, relying on no one, asking for nothing.

Unbeknown to me at the time, on these holiday boat trips I was witness to the changing nature of the Navy. It was no longer the surface boats that dominated the dockyards but the submarine. For where once it had been the battleship, aircraft carrier and frigate, now it was the age of underwater supremacy.

But even at that age I did sense that perhaps the ultimate mental examination was – as it still is – coping with life under the sea. A world without natural light, cooped up alongside more than 140 other men, eating the same food, breathing the same air, surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable. Before I was to attempt this, however, at the age of 17 I tried to join the French Foreign Legion in Aubagne, near Marseilles. I’d ventured out there alone by ferry and train – having told my mum and dad I was off inter-railing with a couple of mates – and passed all the initial tests, both fitness and written, only to be told by a corporal of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment that I needed parental permission as I was not yet 18. This was never going to happen. Immaculately dressed in fatigues and green beret, the chiselled Englishman cheerfully advised me to reapply in a few months, seemingly implying it would be a mere formality and that a career in the Legion lay ahead. To this day my mother knows nothing about this episode in my life, nor does my father.

I’d been fortunate enough to win a scholarship to public school in the Midlands for some of my secondary education. I didn’t come from a wealthy family – my family had grafted all their lives – so boarding school had certainly been an eye-opener as to how the other half lived, but it was useful in developing coping measures and survival instincts, and enabled me to get along with pretty much everyone. It was here that I first read Simon Murray’s Legionnaire, his classic account of serving in the Foreign Legion and the very book that had inspired my ill-judged trip to Marseilles. But the book also taught me something else – that the traditional trip through further education and then college or university wasn’t for me. I’d had enough of textbooks, teachers and essays; it was time to do something against the grain for a few years and see where I ended up.

There didn’t seem much point hanging around in the real world, as Mrs Thatcher and her Conservative government were wantonly destroying the West Midlands and most of northern Britain. The very recent miners’ strike was evidence of that, with the hitherto unseen spectacle of the British police having pitched battles with miners in desolate fields across South Yorkshire. It seemed that tradition and heritage no longer stood for anything. The miners, who could trace their family lineage back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, when the mining industry supplied power to steam engines, generated electricity and heated buildings, now found themselves on the sharp end of the politics of hate and the systematic destruction of the industrial heartlands. Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham were the major cities on the brink of economic collapse, and this had a knock-on effect on their satellite communities, my hometown of Wolverhampton being one.

Wolverhampton had gained its fortune on the back of the wool industry in the Middle Ages, when it flourished as a small market town. Its prosperity continued through Tudor Britain, and its first canal opened in the early 1770s, stimulating economic and industrial growth through the transportation of raw materials and goods. During the 19th century, at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Wolverhampton boomed as a centre for steelmaking, coal mining and lock-making, and most of the country’s cables and anchors were made there at the height of the British Empire. It was also in the 19th century that the town and the surrounding area picked up its nickname of the ‘Black Country’, when the soil was turned black with soot deposited by all this burgeoning industry.

The railways reached Wolverhampton in 1837 and, coupled with the canal system, further increased the accessibility of the town; indeed, the Great Western Railway soon became a major employer in the area when it opened a locomotive repair factory in 1859, a large bicycle manufacturing industry further enhanced economic prosperity, and by the time a public park was opened, quickly followed by an art gallery, library and hospital, the town was thriving as it headed into the new age.

The early and middle part of the 20th century had been kind to the town, and its football team – along with Manchester United’s ‘Busby Babes’ – were the best in the land. Captained by legendary centre-half Billy Wright, Wolverhampton Wanderers won three league championships in the 1950s and an FA Cup at the end of the decade, making them the unofficial world club champions.

But the mid- to late-1960s saw a painful decline in both Wolverhampton’s – and the industrial western heartland’s – economic fortunes, and by the mid-1970s a third of the population lived in council housing, with unemployment rising and immigration causing deep divisions in the West Midlands.

Enoch Powell, author of the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, was the local MP for Wolverhampton South West. I’ll never forget as a very young boy answering the door to him while he was on the stump in the first general election campaign of 1974. I remember opening the door to the palest-looking man I’d ever seen, his skin like alabaster, head slightly tilted forward. He stared at me intensely with fixed, unblinking eyes.

‘Mum and Dad are up the road at the neighbours,’ I told him bashfully.

I may have been very young but I knew immediately who he was – I’d seen him on the TV – but of course I didn’t know about the general furore he’d caused in the country as a whole. At this point my elder brother Chris joined me for moral support, so Powell doffed his trilby hat, wished us good luck and walked off at a gallop to Number 6.

Wolverhampton in the 1970s staggered along with rising unemployment and seemed to me to possess an underlying threat of violence. The place was suffering – economic death by a thousand cuts – and by the time the Tories came to power in 1979, hell-bent on changing the social and economic outlook of the once-great industrial heartlands of the Black Country, most of northern Britain was finished; the collapse of the industrial working class and the north–south divide of Thatcherism had well and truly begun.

As a six- and seven-year-old, I’d watch the news of factories shutting, car plants closing, the oil crisis and the first miners’ strikes. Even at that age I was aware that this wasn’t business as usual, but it didn’t give me sleepless nights. I was too busy with my newfound love of sport. Whether it was football, rugby or cricket, it all came fairly easy to me, and I guess that sport was also an enjoyable release from overly zealous, annoying teachers. Football was my obsession; morning, noon and evening I’d be out in our road, in the park, or driving my parents mad, hammering the ball against the garage door. Slightly introverted and on the shy side, I was wary of people until I got to know them, and was not much of a conversationalist. Instead, I lost myself in sport and my other passion – music.

Later on I captained the school football team and played for the area and district teams. Football was my life. Aged 14, I was lucky enough to have trials with my hometown club, Wolverhampton Wanderers. I’d been training in their youth set-up and had been on a couple of tours with them, including a memorable trip down to London where we played the borough of Hackney, coincidentally my home for the past 16 years. We had stones and bricks thrown at us from the touchline, and the match was suddenly called off after 30 minutes.

I didn’t make the grade for Wolves. I remember the coach coming round to my house, sitting me down in front of my mum to break the upsetting news. It hit me hard, the first time I’d failed at something.

But my childhood was happy for the most part, except for losing both my maternal grandparents at the end of the decade, my grandfather dying six months to the day after his wife; married at 18, they’d been together for over half a century before both bowing out at three score years and ten. I was particularly close to my cousin Stephen. Four years older than me, he was cool, played the guitar and was into New Romantic bands, particularly David Sylvian and his group Japan. I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked, and by the time he reached 18 I’m sure he didn’t want to be seen hanging round with this spotty 14-year-old with braces.

It was the hot summer of 1982 and the World Cup on the telly when the phone rang. Dad answered. It was a friend of my Uncle Brian, telling him that Stephen had been found dead in his car. In shock, we assumed he’d been in a car crash, but in fact he’d had a massive heart attack and a friend had discovered him slumped over the steering wheel with the horn blaring. Dead, and not yet out of his teens. The post-mortem revealed he had an enlarged heart muscle. I was devastated by his death, but of course I had to be as strong as I could for my aunt and uncle. I didn’t know how to process my feelings or communicate my grief, so I just bottled it up and allowed it to fester. It wasn’t really an era for discussing feelings – that wasn’t how things worked – and my whole family suffered in silence.

My parents would let me out of the house for hours at a time. I’d disappear up the local park, playing football, climbing trees, annoying the neighbours, staying out till dark; fish and chips every Saturday lunchtime, going to Woolworths to buy The Jam’s Sound Affects, my first LP – not ‘vinyl’, it was never called that, a modern term used by people who were never there in the first place; playing ‘knock and run’ … slowly I was tapping into a new sense of adventure as my body and confidence grew.

As I became older, this love of adventure – plus Simon Murray’s book, which had provoked my failed attempt to join the Legion – pushed me towards a life away from formal education. When I returned from Marseilles, the Navy looked like the next best option for an unconventional life – and I’d also heard that the Submarine Service paid well. Serving Queen and country never entered into it for me, as I was neither nationalistic nor a particular fan of the monarchy. The only people who ever talked about fighting for Queen and country were – and still are – feckless politicians who’d never done, nor ever would do, any of the fighting. Queen and country? One was outdated as an institution, the other past it as an idea. No, I wanted to do it for me.

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