‘Just don’t be in the toilet when we dive deep,” executive officer David “Bing” Crosby advises me. “The bulkheads bend and you can’t open the doors.” Forget all the technical stuff about monitoring “the Bubble” when you dive – I never quite understand the role of that mysterious piece of equipment – this is the kind of practical guidance I need. I vow to stick close to Bing, second-in-command on the nuclear submarine HMS Triumph, and a funny, down-to-earth bloke. “It’s like having children,” he says as the younger officers grapple for space at the first morning briefing I attend. “I’ve got children, and sometimes I think they’re worse.” This seems to be meant affectionately.
I have been on the boat – submarines are always called boats, never ships – for less than 24 hours and am writing this log at a depth of 60m. Sorry, I spoke too soon. We are just rising to periscope depth – 18m below the surface – and the tall desk on which I am typing has started to list. At least I’m not in the toilet. I joined HMS Triumph in Crete for the final week of its 10-month deployment. I had never been on a submarine before and don’t especially like confined spaces. I plan to get off at Gibraltar six days from now, though the captain warns me this may not be possible if there is fog as the launch can’t come alongside.
HMS Triumph distinguished itself last year in Libya, firing missiles at Gaddafi’s key installations, including the one which hit the colonel’s compound. The submarine’s captain, Robert Dunn, feels they have been largely written out of the Libyan campaign and is keen his crew get their due. “If it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive,” he tells me over breakfast, quoting Henry V. “Faint hearts never fucked a pig” is another of his maxims, which may be a translation from Clausewitz’s On War. The book sits on a narrow shelf in his small cabin beside the control room.
This is Capt Dunn’s final command; in fact his very last week at sea. At 48, and after three years in charge of HMS Triumph, he will be getting a desk job. It is also Chief Petty Officer Simon Johnson’s final week at sea. There is a nice moment during my week aboard when the submarine (never sub, an egregious Americanism) has to surface to pass through the Straits of Messina. We go through at sunrise and Chief Johnson, who is up on the bridge, tells me it’s the first time he has sailed past Stromboli since he was on the frigate HMS Leander at the start of his naval career 30 years ago. The volcano has bookended his life at sea.
I ask Chief Johnson why he switched from surface ships to submarines. “I got drafted in 1983 and didn’t have any choice,” he says. “I tried to get out of it. I didn’t want to be a submariner. If you ask a general service chap what they think about submarines, they’ll say: ‘Horrible, dirty, noisy, you can’t have a shower, you’re always stinking.’ Well, in the old days that might have been the case – water was very restricted – but you can see yourself; conditions are not that bad. On my first boat, Spartan, at the back end of 1983, it all clicked – it was a completely different way of life from general service.”
He goes on to cite what most submariners say is what they like about life beneath the waves: the relative informality. There are, of course, distinctions between officers and ranks, but in so confined a space nothing like the rigidities of surface ships; the sense of being an elite, what one able seaman calls a “brotherhood”; the camaraderie that comes from knowing they rely entirely on each other. When a man, whether officer or rating, becomes a submariner, he is awarded a badge formed from two dolphins and a crown. The badge admits you to an exclusive club – there are around 3,500 operational submariners in the UK. It means that, in the event of an emergency, you will be a help, rather than a hindrance. Until then, in the uncompromising language of submariners, you are an “oxygen thief”.
“Everyone who wears the dolphins badge has a common ethos, common training and a common focus,” says Lieutenant Stuart Keillor, an impressive 31-year-old Scot who will one day command a submarine. “No one does this job unless they want to. There’s a lot of willpower in putting yourself into this environment for a long period. There’s a lot of loyalty; and for that reason I’m very comfortable with my shipmates. There’s a high expectation of the trainees that come on here. They’ve got a lot to prove, but once they’re in the club, you can be confident they’ve reached a certain standard.”
I know I will never be in the club. Climbing the ladders between decks exhausts me; I am forever hitting my head on protruding bits of metal; and once in the control room, while leaning against the periscope, I stumble backwards and accidentally press a button. Luckily, it is the button that says “search” and not the one next to it that says “attack”. I don’t want to be responsible for a missile assault on Algeria, to which we happen to be close at the time.
The submarine is two separate worlds: the front half, where the men (and at the moment it is all men, though there are likely to be female submariners from next year) sleep and eat and
