Richard Humphreys - Under Pressure

As he checked my name against the list of names permitted on board that day, I detected a Mancunian accent. I knew full well that if your name wasn’t down, you weren’t coming in. Had even the First Sea Lord – the highest ranking officer in the Navy – come a-calling unannounced and wasn’t booked in for the day, he’d have had a long night waiting up top freezing his nuts off. Nothing was compromised at any point; clockwork and military precision were the order of the day as the security of the boat was paramount. My cockiness on passing Part 2 submarine training five weeks earlier had quickly dissipated, and it was with a deep sense of unease that I made my first steps across the gangway and prepared to go on board.

*Rigid inflatable boats.

†All captains have to pass the Perisher course to command a submarine, and all seconds-in-command on nuclear submarines will have also passed the course.

I was greeted on the casing by the coxswain, CPO Freddy Maynard, a gruff northerner of Yorkshire descent. On initial impression he seemed fair, despite possessing the look of a man not to be crossed in any shape or form. The coxswain is the chief of the boat, the head NCO who looks after its company in terms of discipline; if you’re up before the captain because you got pissed in Helensburgh and started acting like a spoilt arsehole, it’s the coxswain who’ll be giving you the evil eye and enforcing any punishment according to Navy regulations. Chief of the boat, he’s the third most important person on board after the captain and the XO.

It was time to go on board and see what all the fuss was about. Even though I’d had three months of training, this was the first time I’d ever stepped aboard a nuclear submarine. I was shitting it. The main access hatch was a straight drop down a ladder of about 10 to 12 feet, starting off vertical, then halfway down kicking out towards 1 Deck, as the top deck of the submarine’s three decks was known. The first thing I noticed was the claggy heat as I reached the bottom and turned 180° to carry on down to 3 Deck, where my locker and bunk were located. There was a distinctly stale odour down here: the ghosts of farts long dead, mixed with heat, oil and the CO2 absorption-unit chemicals they used to recycle air back into oxygen. Add to that special cocktail the collective sweat of a crew of 143 men and bingo, you had the submarine smell. It was grim all right.

The second thing to strike me was what lay immediately above my head – and the need to duck. I cracked my forehead on the overhang of the steps down to 3 Deck, giving me a nice egg of a swelling above my left eyebrow. Although Resolution was the biggest submarine built by the Navy at that time, it was hellishly cramped in terms of living space, and moving around its tiny passageways required all manner of contortion. The raison d’être of the submarine is first and foremost machinery and functionality, with the bodily needs of men coming a distant second. I noticed valves, gauges, low ceilings, wires, switches and dials all round, and wondered how in hell I was going to cope learning the mechanics of all of this.

Two people couldn’t pass on a corridor without one moving aside. You could stand in the middle of the passageways on 1, 2 and 3 Deck with your outstretched hands and touch either side of the sub. It was impossibly tight. Then there were the protruding pipes to bang your head on, bulkheads to trip through, small hatches to navigate, valves and dials all over the place, plus vertical ladders between decks … there were risks everywhere. I had to pass through hatch after hatch and ladder after ladder before getting to my bunk at the bottom of the boat. The lack of space was giving me the fear. I couldn’t let on, but on first impressions I wasn’t sure life in a steel cigar-shaped tin can was going to work for me. It was all the equipment, for fuck’s sake. It was everywhere you looked, coupled with those passageways and ladders eating up all available living space. Plus, there were nuclear weapons and a nuclear reactor to worry about, never mind their impact on the space. I was already starting to regret my ballsy decision to become a submariner.

The walls started to close in as panic got a hold of me, so I ran to the toilets to take some deep breaths. Christ, we hadn’t even left the dock yet and I was getting into a state. I just needed to regroup a moment. Anyone who tells you they’re not nervous when they first step on board a submarine is talking nonsense; the machinery, claustrophobia and alien smells, it’s not good for the uninitiated.

Fortunately, the crew were mostly friendly and eager to help me settle in. I started to calm down after about five minutes as I messed about and put my kit in my locker along the passageway near my bunk space, although ‘locker’ is probably overdoing it. Was I really supposed to fit my kit for a two-month patrol in there? It was about half the size of one you’d find in a local swimming pool. There was a drawer back in my sleeping compartment where I could put my shoes and boots, but storage-wise that was it. I rolled out my Navy-issue green sleeping bag on my bunk and left my own pillow on top. The lack of privacy was plainly obvious. I was going to have to put my faith in the hands of my fellow crewmates and needed to be a good judge of character.

Submariners hanging out in 9 Berth, where I spent my time in the land of nod. My bunk was the top one in the middle rack of three, never the bottom. ( Wood/Express/Getty Images )

My main fear was that I couldn’t do it, that it would all be too much. How would I cope? What dangers would lie ahead? How the hell was I going to remember everything – both my job and everyone else’s – while contending with this ever-present claustrophobia. I’d only experienced being cramped in an escape hatch at the SETT at HMS Dolphin , but ten minutes in the submarine and I was already having a crisis of confidence. How would I manage being underwater without daylight for anything up to 80 or 90 days? And nuclear weapons? What if we had to use them?

It was still the height of the Cold War, with Gorbachev only recently having come to power, and the Soviets were hard at it. The Navy’s hunter-killer nuclear subs tracked their aggressive submarines across the North Atlantic, in the waters between Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and the Arctic Ocean, while our diesel-electric O-boats penetrated Soviet waters via the Barents Sea. It was like time had stood still for the last 15 years, each side trying to gain the upper hand.

The Americans, too, in their ‘Los Angeles’ fast attack submarines, were playing cat-and-mouse games in the Pacific, with Reagan well into his second term as president and hawkish as ever, despite the apparent friendly overtures from the Soviets now that the affable Gorbachev wielded power.

I wasn’t the only new starter; Philip, a bright, introverted lad from the Lake District whom I’d gone through training with at HMS Dolphin , was joining the boat at the same time. In addition, there were a couple of other junior rates,* all of us within the warfare team in the boat and collectively under the guidance of the coxswain.

As a submarine ship’s company is notably smaller than, say, that of a frigate or aircraft carrier, the coxswain is the de facto master-at-arms, a person to keep on the right side of. His main duties include being in charge of operating ship control while diving, surfacing and returning to and from periscope depth (PD); supervising the ratings who control the foreplanes and afterplanes, which regulate the depth and pitch of the boat; and overseeing new members of the crew. He would keep a steely eye on us throughout the forthcoming patrol.