A Very Different Navy.

Early in the morning on 5 January 1960 the car deposited me on the quayside in Chatham where HMS Shackleton was moored.   It was a cold and cheerless day that contrived to chill me to the bone as I struggled up the gangway with my kit and toolbox.   The weather was matched by my spirits to some extent.  I was not best pleased.  My previous two commissions had, for long periods at a time, taken me away from my new family.  Fourteen months after our marriage I had been sent to HMS Adamant which, initially, was moored for more than a year at Rothesay Bay in the Firth of Clyde before becoming a permanent occupant of a berth alongside the jetty at Faslane.  Immediately after leaving Adamant I flew to the Far East to join HMS Cardigan Bay, returning home in October 1959 and now, only three months later, I was joining a ship that was to take me on another sea-going commission to north-west Scotland for a period of at least eighteen months.  I reflected rather glumly that, if the rest of my naval career followed the same pattern, our daughter, born in the autumn of 1957 would be a teenager before I got to know her properly.  Still, one had to be philosophical about it.  I had, after all, signed up for whatever the Navy required of me and was therefore obliged to make the best of it.   As with my time on the Adamant, the Shackleton commission would ensure that British Rail enjoyed my patronage as frequently as I could get time off to return home for some leave.

HMS Shackleton was a survey ship which, together with its sister ship HMS Scott, had initially been laid down in 1937 as a fleet minesweeper.   Having done sterling service as part of the regular navy both ships were converted for surveying duties at the end of World War II.   Conversion consisted primarily of the removal of all minesweeping equipment, with the exception of a pair of heavy duty davits near the stern, and the construction of a large chartroom built on to the superstructure and extending over the quarterdeck.  Additionally, provision was made for housing two large, and heavy, inshore survey cutters together with three motor whalers and a smaller motorboat on the upper deck.  The addition of all this extra weight well above the waterline taken together with the substantial surface area of the chartroom conspired to give the ship a lively motion in a short sea.  This latter characteristic was to make itself clearly felt much later, however, as we made the journey from the dockyard to the Western Isles.

I was joining Shackleton as the senior marine engineering artificer.  This was presumably to give me experience of taking on full responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the ship’s machinery because I was soon due for promotion to charge chief.   It was a good time to join the ship.  She was in the middle of her off-season refit so I had plenty of time to become fully acquainted with the ship’s layout and the disposition of the machinery.    The machinery itself was an interesting combination of steam turbine main engines and reciprocating auxiliaries.  The turbines themselves were very small, housed in an equally small engine-room, and I got the distinct impression sometimes that we were working with models.  Whilst we were “in steam” our electricity was provided by two reciprocating DC generators and, although my responsibility for the ship’s electrics ended at the breaker fitted to the generator, the main switchboard for the ship was housed in the engine-room just forward of the throttle watch-keeper’s position.   It was, from memory, about five feet in height and about eight to ten feet in length.  The main switch gear comprised a series of open “knife switches” made from gleaming, solid copper with the polarities clearly identified by red or blue paint.   Earth connections were painted yellow and, amazingly for a former warship, all were enclosed within sliding glass doors.   It was an impressive looking piece of kit and I was quite proud to have it in my engine-room.   The ship’s electrical artificer was also proud of it and would regularly send one of his mechanics “down below” to open up the switch board and polish the live copper work of the switches.  I was reasonably complacent about this practice whilst we were at anchor but I would get distinctly twitchy if it was carried out whilst the ship was rolling and pitching in a heavy sea.   The mechanics themselves were quite blasé about it.  “It’s OK Chief so long as you don’t touch a red one and a blue one at the same time.”   I became noted for resisting the oft repeated invitation to try it for myself!

The survey season in the UK ran from March until October inclusive.    With the aid of the Global Positioning Satellite system one can nowadays  locate one’s position anywhere on the surface of the globe to within a few feet.  Back in the 60s, however, although there was a radio navigation system in operation, the accuracy of the survey work done was largely dependant on good visual sighting of markers erected on the shore.   Sufficient light was therefore the principal criterion for a good survey and the “closed in” weather during the winter months, dreadful for surveying, could be used effectively to catch up with much needed maintenance and refurbishment of equipment.   So it was that the refit ended in late February and saw us heading down the English Channel, round Land’s End, through St George’s Channel and up the Irish Sea.  Our first port of call was to be Greenock where we were to top up our oil tanks from the bunkering facility there.  From Greenock we turned through the North Channel and out into the Atlantic, passing to the West of Mull, then Ardnamurchan Point and Mallaig and entering the Sound of Sleat which lies between the southern end of Skye and the mainland.  The northern end of the Sound of Sleat must be one of the narrowest stretches of navigable water in the British Isles.   The ship entered the Sound at mid morning and as we went further into the Sound the passage got narrower until one felt that one could reach out and touch the land at either side.   It was a beautiful day and the scenery was quite spectacular.  I think that the Captain had in mind that approaching the survey site by this route would provide a fitting start to the season, and so it did.  Although the dangerous nature of the passage required that special sea dutymen should be at their stations throughout the transit it was possible, by arranging appropriate reliefs, for all of us to spend a few minutes on the upper deck during the most memorable part of the passage.  Leaving the Sound past the Kyle of Lochalsh we passed to the north of Scalpay and up the Sound of Raasay, entering the shelter of Portree Bay and dropping anchor about a mile from the town.   This was to be our base and we would get to know the waters in and around the Bay very well over the next eighteen months.

The principal task in the Western Isles was to carry out a major survey of the Inner Sound which separates the Isle of Raasay from the mainland.  It is a relatively small stretch of water ranging from three and a half to six miles in width and rather less than twenty miles long.  To the north, and narrowest, end it is open to the Minches but it is otherwise doubly sheltered by Raasay and Skye to the west and by Skye to the south.  Secondary tasks included a less intensive survey of the Sound of Harris and the Sound of Iona.  Since both stretches of water were open to the worst the Atlantic could do these surveys were scheduled to be completed bit by bit, whenever there was a reasonable break in the weather.  Last on the schedule was to be a survey of the Sound of Bute to the Holy Loch, again a relatively sheltered stretch of water, which could be carried out during one of our regular visits to Greenock to refuel.   Portree was to be our base, largely I suppose because McBraine’s steamers called there regularly and brought mail and heavier fright.   About once every two weeks the ship would visit Oban to replenish consumable stores, arriving on a Friday afternoon and staying for the weekend to give the ship’s company the opportunity of a “run ashore” as a change from the rather quiet, Gaelic speaking, night life of Portree.   Occasionally there would be a long weekend visit to Oban lasting from a Thursday afternoon arrival, in time to catch the 4.00pm “sleeper” from Fort William to the south, and leaving again on the Tuesday morning.  Only those with urgent business in the metropolitan areas would venture to catch this train however.  Having done it once for myself I can attest to the fact that the journey, although interesting, took forever.   For most of the ship’s company the taking of weekend leave was reserved for when the ship called at Greenock to replenish fuel.

                                     During the refit period life on board the Shackleton was not too dissimilar to life on board any other naval vessel.  It was the voyage to Scotland and the first week or two on the survey ground that consolidated my view that the Survey Navy was very different from the Regular Navy.  It was not just the white painted hull and yellow funnel that set the Shackleton apart.  Although there was a nucleus of regular naval personnel on the ship, a large proportion of the ship’s officers and ratings were specialist surveyors or oceanographers.   Their dedication and enthusiasm for their job was infectious and spread throughout the ship’s company so that the whole ethos became markedly different from that of a regular warship.  The Shackleton was a very happy ship and it showed in every aspect of life on board.   There were a number of factors that contributed to this state of affairs.   Not least of these was that the ship operated what was known as “canteen messing”.   For each member of the ships company there is a set cash allowance which is used by the catering staff to provide three cooked meals a day.   Whereas on a regular warship the overall menu and choice of meals is left to the catering staff, on a ship with canteen messing the catering staff will post a list of what is available in the stores and individual messes will choose what it is they want to eat.   Furthermore the messes themselves can supplement the choice by providing their own food which the chefs will then cook for them.  At the end of each month there would be a reckoning.   Messes that had over-indulged themselves from the ship’s stores would be obliged to make an appropriate contribution to the catering fund and messes that significantly supplemented their diet during the previous month would receive the balance of their catering allowance.  In my experience most messes on the Shackleton fell into the latter category.  We were, after all, in a part of the world noted for its wild life.   It was not unusual to see a haunch or two of venison coming over the side, or several braces of rabbits or capercaillies, or grouse.  In season of course!   The consequence was that the ship’s company were very well fed and most had some extra money to spend on that other mainstay of a sailor’s well-being – good ale.

 My contribution to the menu was fish.   I had brought my eight foot, split cane, sea rod with me in the hope that I might be able to indulge my hobby during the commission.    But the man who shared the technical office with me was obsessional about fishing and assured me enthusiastically that we were going to be spending time in some of the best sea fishing waters around the coastline.  Duggie Rimmer , known  to his staff as “Herr Gruppenfuhrer” when he was out of earshot, was the Chief Stoker.  He hailed from Whitehaven and was from a family that numbered many fishermen amongst its members.   There was little that he did not know about the native sea fish of the British Isles nor about the techniques for catching them.   He was good company, and between us we developed a mini fishing industry on the Shackleton that supplied many of the messes on board at one time or another.   This was not lost on members of the wardroom and it was only a short matter of time before we were approached by one of the officers who asked if we could see our way clear to providing fish for the wardroom as well.   We pointed out that our fishing activities were limited by the fact that we could only fish the water in the immediate vicinity of the ship.   If we had a boat available we could widen our scope, and catch, significantly.  So, after some negotiation, it was agreed that we could have unlimited use of the Captain’s launch in return for regular supplies of fish and crustaceans to the wardroom and Captain’s steward.   Thereafter, whenever the ship was anchored for the night, the launch would be lowered and attached to the boom.  All we had to do was to advise the quartermaster before taking the boat and setting off for a fishing trip.   Duggie Rimmer lost no time in taking the boat away for a foraging expedition and returned with half a dozen battered lobster pots acquired very cheaply from a fisherman in Portree.  These we repaired in short order and every morning at, or before dawn, we would take the boat away and drop the pots which would then be recovered in the evening.   It was invariably the case that we would get a reasonable catch of edible crab or lobster either of which proved to be excellent currency for bartering on board.   “How many pounds of venison will you give me for these two lobsters?”    Yes, we ate very well indeed!

 It would be untrue to say that fishing occupied the minds of everyone on board.    However, the original charts of the Inner Sound showed a number of clearly identified fishing grounds and it is remarkable how many times I received a telephone call from the officer of the watch saying, “We’ll be stopping for lunch chief and the drift will carry us over such and such a ground.”   And so it was that when lunch was ready the ship would be positioned upwind, or uptide, of the fishing ground.  At that point the bridge would signal “stop engines” and the ship would be allowed to drift slowly over the fishing ground while everyone ate, or fished, as the mood took them.   This could happen in the evening too.  We did not always return to Portree at the end of the day.  If the weather was good, which it often was, we would anchor either over or adjacent to one of the Inner Sound fishing grounds and thereby enable everyone to get some serious fishing done.   Most of the time rod and line would be the method used but, occasionally, we would adopt a different technique.  This was particularly the case just after the spawning season when the sea would be alive with shoals of whitebait.   They would be attracted in their tens of thousands to a powerful floodlight suspended a few feet above the water.   On such a night we would send a message round the ship and the chefs would appear on the quarterdeck with a number of primus stoves, frying pans and several pounds of butter.  So too would most of the ships company.  Perforated buckets would be lowered gently into the water, close to the floodlight, and hauled rapidly out again filled with wriggling whitebait.  A quick rinse in fresh water and then straight into the buttered frying pan for a couple of minutes before being consumed with gusto by those waiting patiently for a portion.  

For the most part our fishing activities yielded the sort of fish that can be bought over the counter at any fishmongers.  Whiting up to about twelve ounces in weight were plentiful, so too were haddock.  The average weight for a haddock would be one and a half pounds but occasionally we caught some monsters of around four pounds.   Large saithe too were there in great numbers although they were not so popular for eating and, towards the end of the season, cod made their appearance.   The largest cod landed with rod and line weighed in at a splendid eleven pounds.  That fish provided, with the aid of the chef, the best cod steak I have ever tasted.   But it was often when Duggie and I took the launch closer inshore that we managed to catch some of the more interesting and exotic fish that were indigenous in those waters.   I’ll never forget my astonishment when I landed my first cuckoo wrasse, a brilliant yellow fish with black and bright blue stripes radiating back along its body from a blue head.  It would have seemed more at home in a tropical fish tank that in the relatively cold waters of the Inner Sound.  Ballan’s wrasse and corkwing wrasse were also caught in the shallow waters near the coastline.  The latter fish is another with a bizarre colour scheme, a green upper body with a pinkish underside and narrow green and pink stripes radiating diagonally across the head from mouth to pectoral fins.  Our most exciting fishing adventure occurred however when we were anchored off Iona.  The Sound of Iona opens directly into the Atlantic and so enabled access to some of the larger denizens of deep water.   A group of half a dozen of us had started fishing shortly after supper.  Duggie had suggested that we use pieces of dab as bait and one after another each one of us experienced a massive bite which separated hook, sinker and trace from the fishing line.   This happened several times and Duggie was beside himself with suppressed excitement.  “There’s something really big down there.” he kept saying.   I was carrying about 400 yards of 90 pounds breaking strain line on my reel and Duggie suggested that we splice a large hook directly on the end of that and bait it with a whole dab.   This we did and within minutes I felt an enormous tug on the line which screamed off the reel at a great rate.  I applied the brake judiciously and eventually managed to be able to take some line back before the fish took off again and the line screamed out once more.   This went on for hours before the fish began to tire and eventually it leapt out of the water a hundred yards or so off the port quarter.  Duggie nearly jumped out of his skin as he spotted it.  “My God, you’ve got a tunny” he spluttered.    But the light was bad and it was difficult to be sure.   It was big, whatever it was, and Duggie was despatched to ask the officer of the watch if he could summon a cutters crew to gaff the fish and get it inboard.   By this time many of the ship’s company had gathered on deck to watch the fun and there was no shortage of volunteers to man the boat. As the cutter manoeuvred just off the stern gangway, I drew the fish slowly in until it could be gaffed by Duggie.  Even then it took three of the crew to lift the still lively fish into the cutter and get it up on to the quarterdeck.  It turned out to be a tope, a relative of the blue shark, over six feet long but weighing in at only forty-two pounds.   I felt exhausted and figured that I had lost as much as that with the effort of fighting it.

It has to be said that, for the regular members of Shackleton’s ship’s company employed on routine or watch-keeping duties, surveying was pretty dull stuff.  Once the shore markers had been erected and the inshore surveying crews placed in position the ship’s task was to steam up and down in absolutely straight lines taking depth soundings.  This was great experience for the bridge officers who were able to get their station-keeping off to a fine art but it could be quite boring for the rest of us.   Still, there was always the fishing to look forward to and the commission was livened up considerably by meetings with a series of characters and by engagement in a number of unforgettable activities.

Some time into our first season the Senior Engineer was replaced by Lieutenant J.H.R.Gale.  Inevitably he became known as “Windy” and proved to be a charming man who, luckily for me, interfered very little with the routine matters in the Engine Room Department.   “Windy” had a very unusual habit in that, during moments of abstraction, he would chew the lapels of his uniform jacket.   He had good teeth and his working uniform had lapels that were in tatters.   Quite how he got on with this problem in a more disciplined environment it is difficult to say.   We developed an accord about his habit on the rare occasions when we had to dress up in our best suits.  If I noticed the lapel being moved towards his mouth I would make a movement to catch his attention and then look pointedly at his chest.  “Windy” would grin sheepishly and the lapel would resume its normal position.    It turned out that some official at one of the distilleries on Islay was related to “Windy”.   I believe that they were brothers in law although the precise nature of the relationship was never made clear to me.  What did become clear was that having a relative working at a distillery could sometimes win an unexpected reward.   One late afternoon “Windy” appeared at the door of my office.  “Chief, I’d like you to give me your opinion on this,” he said.   I followed him through to the cabin flat and was ushered into his cabin where I was invited to take a seat on the bunk.   From a locker “Windy” produced a bottle of a clear, slightly oily looking liquid with the faintest of faint green hue.  He reached over and took his tooth glass from the washstand and placed it on the desk next to the bottle then rummaged unsuccessfully for another glass.   On the desk was a small, half-empty tin of salted peanuts which he carefully decanted out onto the desk top.  After rinsing the tin at the washstand he placed it alongside the glass, uncorked the bottle, and poured a generous measure into each.   He handed me the peanut tin.  “Cheers,” he said lifting the glass to his mouth.   I watched him take a large swig from the glass then followed suit.  My head seemed to explode in a shower of stars as the liquid made its way down my throat taking most of my taste buds with it.  It became difficult to breathe.  Through a haze of flashing lights I could see that he was talking again.  “It’s green whisky” he said, “sort of experimental stuff.”   After a short pause he added, rather unecessarily, “It’s not matured you know.”  When invited to have another I managed to summon up enough breath to whisper that one was quite enough as a starter and made my escape with as good grace as I could muster.   On a number of other occasions I accepted “Windy’s” invitation for a tasting and was offered the same peanut tin each time.  On the last visit I noted with some alarm that the bottom half of the normally dull peanut tin had become very shiny. 

In the middle of June I was invited to join “Windy” and the seaman officer in charge of boats as they waited on the upper deck for two large packages to be winched aboard.   They were followed by a number of five gallon jerry cans containing petrol.   The packages contained, in the larger, a heavy-duty inflatable craft and, in the smaller, a powerful looking Johnson outboard motor and accessories.   “Here’s something for you to play with, Chief,” said “Windy”.  The brief turned out to be an evaluation of the inflatable craft under operational conditions.  Some had been delivered to the survey service because their shallow draft was thought to be ideal for work close inshore.   Others had been delivered to the marines for evaluation during combined ops landing exercises.   My role was to assemble the engine, mount it up on the wooden transom of the inflatable, and to carry out initial trials of the engine, and boat, under a variety of conditions.    It sounded as though it could be fun.   The seamen cleared a space on the upper deck adjacent to a winch.  This was to be a temporary home for the inflatable during its trials.  During the next day or two I secured the tilting bracket to the transom and made provision for a pair of security cables to be attached to the engine in case it proved to be too powerful and tore itself off the craft.  In the meantime the seamen dealt with inflating the boat and when the ship anchored on the Friday evening it was lowered over the side and secured to the boom in readiness for its first trial the next day.  Saturday morning dawned glorious and, having filled the red petrol tank and lowered it into place, I donned a lifejacket and, together with a seaman, climbed down into the craft to make an initial evaluation of its performance.   We took the precaution of taking dinghy paddles with us - just in case -  but they were not needed.   With the petrol tank connected and the carburettor primed the engine started sweetly after a couple of pulls on the recoil starter and we cast off.   Initially we were content with some quite staid manoeuvres at relatively slow speed but as we became more confident in the handling of the inflatable the speed increased until, with the throttle wide open, the craft appeared to be screaming along with only the propeller of the outboard in the water.  It proved to be amazingly stable and, even at top speed, it could be turned on a sixpence with no problems at all.   The speculative assessment proved to be an understatement.  It was not only fun, it was exhilarating.   Over the next week or so the inflatable was tested as it was meant to be used, close inshore in very shallow water.  The responsiveness of the engine together with the manoeuvrability of the craft rendered it entirely suitable for this purpose and it seemed clear that we would be able to turn in a very positive report at the end of the trials.  The one omission was that we had not been able to test the craft in anything other than a calm sea but this opportunity came along during one of our visits to Iona.   We were anchored in the Sound just off the island community.  There had been some rough weather out in the Atlantic that had resulted in a heavy swell which came sweeping unopposed through the Sound.    Although the Shackleton herself was entirely safe under these conditions it was not deemed safe enough to lower one of the cutters.  And this presented a problem because some of the officers had been invited to attend a community function on the island and it seemed that that the visit would have to be called off.  Until, that is, someone had the bright idea of using the inflatable to ferry these people ashore.  I was requested to drive the inflatable on its ferry duty and, together with my seaman colleague, got our passengers safely on board.  They had to sit on the bottom boards which were fitted in short sections athwart the craft in a design that allowed flexibility of the craft in a disturbed sea.  Flexible it certainly proved to be on that short but memorable trip.  We managed to get our passengers ashore without getting them seriously wet but all of them sustained bruising to parts of their nether regions as a result of being severely nipped by the flexing bottom boards.   Sadly my involvement with the inflatable ended after that definitive test.   I felt that at least I had chalked up another first for the engine room department because there can’t be too many Chief Tiffies in waiting who have been asked to act as coxswain of a jolly boat.

As the season drifted towards autumn the weather took on an indefinable, almost magical, quality.    There was a period from the end of August through to the first week of October when the air seemed clearer, somehow, and the colours sharper and brighter.  The fishing was good too despite the autumnal nip in the air but eventually the time came for us to return to the South for the end of season lie up.   We came down to Greenock for a couple of days to tidy up a few loose ends with the Bute Sound survey and to top up with fuel for the voyage.  The weather had deteriorated significantly from the middle of October onwards and there was a stiff breeze blowing on the day of our departure.   We were not scheduled to leave the Clyde until the early evening and, as the day progressed, the wind grew stronger with gusts up to gale force although there was nothing particularly alarming about that.   Perhaps we should have taken more note of the state of the ferry that left Greenock at lunchtime and returned some hours later with damaged bow doors.  Nevertheless, at five in the afternoon special sea dutymen closed up and the ship slipped away from the jetty and out into mid-stream.  By the time we passed between Ailsa Craig and Girvan the ship was beginning to react to the seas sweeping into the Firth from the North Channel so, after supper, I carried out rounds of the machinery spaces somewhat earlier than usual and retired to my bunk.

Sleep onboard a small ship in a short sea can tend to be rather fitful but, after a while, one becomes inured to it.  The creaks and groans of a steel hull under stress and the occasional crash as the ship takes a sea head on, or drops sharply into a trough, are all par for the course.   They blur into the constant hum of ship activity.  So it was on this particular night.  I can remember being jarred into wakefulness on a couple of occasions but the real bone shaking wake up call came about seven in the morning when I was flung out of my bunk by a particularly vicious roll and found myself on the deck amidst a litter of shoes and other small items that had not been properly secured for sea.   The ship was being flung every which way and I recall the white faced, rather wild eyed look, of the off duty watchkeepers who had managed, somehow, to remain in their bunks.  Dragging on a pair of overalls I set off on a check of the machinery spaces but with the ship moving so violently it became a real struggle to get round.  The only happy looking person I saw during this time was when I passed the galley.  The chef had wedged himself in front of his stove and was cheerfully frying up bacon and eggs.  “Morning Chief. Ready for breakfast?”  I quickly averted my eyes and passed on.  At the end of my rounds I went into the technical office where Duggie Rimmer was seated at his desk with his head resting on his arms.    He groaned as I entered, opened one eye and without lifting his head from his arms said “I’ve been in some real storms in the last twenty years but I’ve never felt as bad as this.”  I had to agree with him.  Although my seagoing experience was much less than Duggie’s I had weathered a few notable storms in my time, including a typhoon in the South China Sea, but nothing I had experienced before was able to match the ferocity of the Irish Sea on this late autumn morning.  For the first and only occasion during my naval career I succumbed to the misery of sea-sickness but once that was over I felt remarkably bright and set off once more to see how the ship was standing up to the battering.   My first port of call was the chartroom which boasted all round vision from its large windows.   It was rather like being in a submarine.  For most of the time all one could see was water with an occasional glimpse of a grey and lowering sky if one got close to a window and looked upwards.     On the bridge the Officer of the Watch told me that we were somewhere between Barrow and Fleetwood and heading south-east into the storm and not making much progress.   That situation held for most of the day during the height of the storm but gradually, as the day wore on, the winds and sea grew less and we began to put some distance between us and the Fylde coastline.   Many years after the event I learned that the Armagh Meteorological Observatory had recorded a barometric pressure of 965 millibars for the period in question together with the unsurprising comment that it was stormy with gale force winds.  Armagh itself is about thirty miles from the sea and relatively sheltered by high ground on three sides so presumably the wind strength would be somewhat less than on the open sea.   In any event the storm had almost completely abated by dawn the following day and the remainder of the voyage was relatively quiet apart from a little excitement caused by a boiler room forced draught fan.

During the night rounds before we were due to enter Devonport Dockyard I noticed that the forced draught fan for the starboard boiler was making an unusual noise that was traceable to the piston type slide valve controlling the steam supply to the cylinder.   Since there was only one fan per boiler any examination of the cause would entail shutting down the boiler for the time that the fan was out of action.  After discussing the problem with “Windy” the Captain was informed that we could not guarantee the performance of the fan in its current state for the tricky business of entering harbour the following morning.  Our recommendation was that we proceed on one boiler overnight while we investigated and corrected the fan problem.  So it was that the starboard boiler was shut down and work started on the still hot fan engine to remove the slide valve cover.  When it came off the cause of the problem was only too apparent.   The nut securing the slide valve to its shaft had partially loosened thereby altering the timing of the valve.  Worse still, the battering on the cast iron slide valve by the nut and landing on the slide valve shaft had cracked the valve itself so that when it was withdrawn from its cylinder it fell into four or five pieces.   This was a disaster because we had no spare valve and no suitable material of sufficient diameter from which we could manufacture a new one.   There was only one possibility.   We had a plentiful supply of Araldite in the engineer’s stores and the breaks in the valve were clean and uncomplicated.  So we glued the parts of the valve together.  The residual heat in the metal “cured” the Araldite very quickly and it was possible to put the valve in the lathe to clean it up before replacing it in the engine with the securing nut tightened firmly and pinned.   It was decided to light up the starboard boiler again about two hours before we were due to enter harbour.   If the fan performed satisfactorily we would enter harbour normally and if it did not we would be obliged to request tug assistance.   In the event the fan exhibited no further problems and our entry to the harbour was uneventful.   It was not the first time, nor the last, that the versatility of Araldite was to come to the rescue with a solution to an engineering problem.

The off season lie up and refit went off unremarkably and the following March we were ready to set off for another season on the survey ground.  At that time my promotion came through as charge chief and I was drafted to join FMU and await the next residential course in advanced engineering and administration at HMS Sultan.  So it was that I left Shackleton in May 1961 before the season had properly got under way.   I had joined the ship with regret and I left it with regret but for completely different reasons.  In the sixteen months or so that I had been associated with the ship I came to value the association with her and with many of my shipmates.  She, and they, are remembered with great affection even today.

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