On completion of my Part I training at HMS Raleigh, I was drafted to HMS Collingwood at Fareham in Hampshire.   The instructors then had the difficult job of training me as an electrician.   I was a bit unsettled at this time and was homesick.   I decided to deliberately fail my first tests, thinking that they would send me home as unsuitable, several people had already done this.  However, the navy was reluctant to let me go as they would have to give me a train ticket back to Sunderland.  

Consequently, I was back-classed and was made to attend extra instruction out of normal hours - when everyone else was enjoying themselves.   I soon got the message that they wouldn't let me go and decided any further attempts to fail tests would be futile.

True to form, the navy taught me all I needed to know about keeping a ship afloat as an electrician.  It really had big plans for me and the Sea Lords entrusted me with the maintenance of its biggest ship.  I was drafted to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in February 1964, so it was back onto the train for the return journey to Plymouth and Devonport dockyard.

For a potted history of the Ark - click here

The "Ark" had just returned from the Far East and had started a short refit at Devonport Dockyard when I joined her.  The refit crew were all accommodated in various messes at the Royal Naval Barracks, HMS Drake.  My first mess was in one of the old stone blocks, where around 200 men were accommodated in one large dormitory on each floor. Row upon row of two-tier metal bunk beds were interspersed with two lockers, stacked one on top of the other. A number of pot belly stoves were scattered around the mess for heating.

My next mess was in a wooden hut near to the gate into the dockyard through which we had to march to and from for the "Ark".   The next hut was used by the Devonport field gun crew, who trained on a cinder square next to the huts.

The Ark was still using 220 volt direct current switchgear and spares were in short supply.   Whilst in refit, many sorties were made to strip spare parts from ships of the reserve fleet, moored up the trot.   The old World War two aircraft carrier HMS Magnificent, awaiting consignment to the scrapyard, was the target for many such visits. 

After its refit the Ark visited Brest in France, my first visit to a foreign country, and we took part in a NATO exercises off the north of Scotland.  The weather was very rough, with little opportunity to launch the aircraft.  Journalists, onboard to cover the exercise, spent much of the time below decks and were appalled at the conditions in which the crew were living, and those conditions became front page headlines.  Under the heading of "Slum Ship". 

The ups and downs of the Ark Royal

Over half of the crew slept in hammocks, many slung in passageways, or, dossed down in cold draughty companionways on camp beds.   Not bad in the Far East where it was nice and cool in the hot weather, but not very nice off the north of Scotland, in freezing weather and in a force 8 gale. 

In June 1965, five days after my wedding, the Ark set sail on a 12 month deployment to the Far East.  Visits were planned for Gibraltar, then passage through the Suez Canal, before stopping at Aden and then on to Singapore.  From Singapore we visited Hong Kong, Subic Bay in the Philippines, then into Freemantle in Australia for Christmas. 

Ark Royal arriving at Freemantle, with HMS Devonshire astern

Trouble was brewing in Rhodesia by this time and their was an aircraft carrier requirement to patrol the Beira Straits. 

Ark Royal relieves Eagle on Beira Patrol

Fortunately for us on the Ark, our sister ship, HMS Eagle, was nearer and it was sent, whilst the Ark returned to Singapore.  Unfortunately, whilst in Singapore, a fire broke out in the boiler room and the ship spent the next six weeks in the dockyard whilst repairs were carried out.  The Eagle, meantime, also did our stint off Beira and was then able to lay claim to having spent the longest time that any navy ship had remained at sea since the second world war - well done chaps!

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