44 NAVY NEWS, MAY 2010

Snake ‘n’ Jack

WHAT’S the connection linking Patrick Moore, Simple Minds lead singer Jim Kerr, exploding toilets, Charles and Di, Princess Anne, two well-fed penguins, a brass band, Hissing Sid and long sneakies?

Pieces for our time

A DECADE ago, the Navy decided to rid itself of 34 tons of oak and ten tons of copper, detritus from HMS Victory during 70 years of restoring Nelson’s flagship in her Portsmouth dry dock. It was snapped up by

businessman Jonathan Bowman with a couple of caveats: that it was turned into something befitting Britain’s most famous warship – and that royalties from products helped (a little) towards the upkeep of the man o’war. It was he admits “a gamble”.

So what became of all that wood and copper (enough, if you were wondering, to fill a four- bedroomed house)? Well, some of it was turned into 118 different products, 2,275 pieces in all, worth over £1m. The unusual story is told by

the businessman in Victory at

any Price (Chandler, £24.95

ISBN 978-0-9563823-0-6). What’s impressive is the skill

of the various craftsmen and women – and their inventiveness in turning old wood and copper into as broad a collection of objets d’art as you could imagine. Sundials, bookends, barometers, chess tables, cabinets, bellows, bells, chairs, rum tubs, a wonderful ‘turning a blind eye’ toy (when moved, Nelson raises his telescope to his ‘wrong’ eye) and a miniature coffin. Five hundred scale replicas of

Nelson’s casket were produced by artist Lucy Askew. Inside it were not the admiral’s remains but a commemorative booklet containing contemporary accounts of the funeral in 1806. Prices ranged from £22.50 (a pendant) up to a dining table and eight chairs (£20,000). Not everything worked (or

sold). A playing cards box was “nicely made but just too expensive” (£215), while there were too few undamaged lengths of wood to produce more than half a dozen full-size rum tubs (smaller ones proved rather more successful).

And all 150 admiral’s chairs crafted by Stewart Linford sold... at £2,995 each. ■ Navy News readers in the UK can pick up a copy for £19.95 including postage via mail@

victoryatanyprice.co.uk or

writing to the author at Hollands Hill, Barnham Broom, Norfolk, NR9 4BT.

HP BOOKFINDERS: Established

professional service locating out of print titles on all subjects. No obligation or SAE required. Contact: Mosslaird, Brig O’ Turk, Callander, FK17 8HT Telephone/Fax: (01877) 376377 martin@hp-bookfinders.co.uk

www.hp-bookfinders.co.uk

The answer, obviously, is submarine HMS Courageous – aka The Mean Machine – whose two-decade career is charted meticulously – and lovingly – by two of her former crew.

Indeed, Submarine Courageous:

Cold War Warrior – The Life and Times of a Nuclear Submarine

(HMS Courageous Society, £30

ISBN 978-09563-47206) is one of the finest ship biographies

to cross our desk, beautifully produced, copiously illustrated, and jam-packed with dits.

WO(TSSM) Michael Pitkeathly – “a submariner nutcase” in the words of his mum, he joined Courageous in build in Barrow and today serves as a

guide on the boat – and former marine engineer Capt David Wixon.

It’s been compiled by

monitoring the activities of the Argentine Air Force.

She also ‘adopted’ two penguins in San Carlos Water; the birds steadfastly refused to leave the casing when the boat surfaced for re-supplying. The fact that the crew fed them on jam and scones possibly didn’t help...

Such vignettes can be found on every page (there’s also a good selection of cartoons and pictures of Jack being, er, Jack).

The wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di in 1981 prompted the traditional signal of ‘splice the mainbrace’ throughout the

It arrived aboard Courageous in San Diego, where she was conducting Sub Harpoon missile trials, at 9am (5pm back in Blighty...). Well, you can’t disobey an order, can you? So treble tots all round for the ship’s company.

ous in San Diego

The duo have collected scores of first- hand accounts of life aboard the ‘Mean Machine’, as the men called her, at work and play, plus newspaper clippings, official and unofficial photographs, and excerpts from the ship’s newsletter, all connected by an excellent narrative.

Courageous was the last of the first generation of nuclear boats built for the RN and her career is arguably overshadowed by her sister Conqueror and her actions in the South Atlantic one Sunday afternoon in May 1982.

HMS Courageous was in the Falklands as well – she conducted a 93-day patrol... on the back of a ten-month deployment to the USA – but by the time she arrived, the Argentinian Navy was largely confined to harbour.

“The only rum we had onboard was called Ronrico 151 and it was like rocket fuel,” recalls POMEM Rip Kirkby. More than one deep headed straight for the heads, others retired to a hotel where the Yanks were glued to a telly watching royal proceedings in London. “We just carried on celebrating,” says Kirkby.

When not enjoying tots, Disneyland, Sea World and the zoo, the submariners were working hard on their missile trials. After 14 trial Harpoons, number 15 was fully operational. It made rather a mess of a WW2 vintage US destroyer.

al Harpoons, number

She earned a battle honour for her duties but, as her then CO Rupert Best acknowledges, much of the time was “pretty tedious”. Aside from the usual shipboard entertainment, there was one thing many submariners asked for: the football scores. The American football scores, that is. Courageous’ long spell in the States had converted some of her crew to gridiron fans.

Courageous spent a lot of time in the South Atlantic in the first couple of years after the Falklands war, and a lot of time

Courageous spent a lot of her early days on surveillance patrols – aka ‘long sneakies’ – in the Red Navy’s playground off the Kola and Kanin peninsulas. Four decades later, much of this work remains classified evidently, but the boat did snoop on the Soviet counterpart of FOST, watching and listening (and possibly joining in, unofficially...).

“Trailing other submarines was Courageous’ bread and butter,” explains her former CO Capt Andy Buchanan. “Training and vigilance were

everything.”

British boats would typically trail their quarry at ranges of between 6,000 and 10,000 yards – a safe(ish) distance... unless the Soviets decided to reverse course. The men of the Mean Machine evidently

Fleet.

enjoyed sneakies, for they penned a little song (to the tune of Colonel Bogey) to celebrate their escapades:

Courageous is long and black and sleek

Our cloak and dagger Would make you stagger

Courageous, we don’t claim we’re unique

For we found out and hide and we seek.

Sneakies are, we presume, largely a thing of the past these days, but As for life aboard, not much has changed. The chintz wardroom upholstery lives on 40 years later in HMS Daring (and most of the rest of the Fleet...). Hot bunking is slowly being phased out, but living in the bomb shop continues. Every mess showed a film – on a projector until the advent of videos – twice a day (anything with Clint Eastwood or Dracula was a winner), while the ship’s brass band (!) practised in the wardroom (there’s a photograph as proof). There were plenty of practical jokes (quite often involving sewage/heads), the slightest faux pas would be mercilessly lampooned in the Grumpy Corner Dit

Book:

Have you got any one-inch padlocks? Yes.

What size is it then?

And some things do change. Rapidly. Hair styles and fashions. Faslane. And kit. The control room consoles with their dials and buttons look horrendously outdated

cutting-edge in their day).

The result of all these personal testimonies, photographs, cartoons, cuttings is one of the best books you’ll find on the Silent Service – and an invaluable insight into the life and work of submarines during the Cold War, of interest beyond the immediate band of Courageous veterans.

So what of Jim Kerr, Patrick Moore and Princess Anne? Well, they were among Courageous’ many VIP visitors. As for Hissing Sid, he was the boat’s unofficial mascot based on the snake on the ship’s badge.

■ Copies

hmscourageous.co.uk

are available from www. or Courageous

Volunteer Development Manager, Flotilla House, S059, HM Naval Base Devonport, PL2 2BG. Proceeds help the upkeep of the boat which is a floating museum in Devonport.

The art of war(ships)

HISTORIAN Sam Willis’ quest to chart the career of the warship in graphic form now spans two millennia with the arrival of his latest volume.

Fighting Ships: From the Ancient World to 1750

(Quercus, £25 ISBN 978- 1847248-800) is the third tome (an apt word) showing how naval battles and warships have been depicted by art through the centuries. Two previous volumes cover the periods 1750-1850 and 1850 to 1950.

And as with those excellent works, this is a huge book (17in tall x 14in wide) beautifully illustrated with artwork from around the globe.

(they were, of course,

e, of course,

Although much of the book is devoted to the Western World from the 15th/16th Centuries onwards, neither fine art nor naval warfare were the preserve of the ‘known world’. Indeed, the Japanese

produced their own Bayeux Tapestry which is a far more realistic-looking piece of art than the more famous Norman embroidery: the Moko Shorai Ekotoba (illustrated account of the Mongol invasion) are 13th-Century Japanese scrolls which depict Samurai grappling with Kublai Khan’s invaders. There are new technologies

here: the Byzantines invented Greek fire – a form of flame thrower which spewed a fiery liquid over the ocean and attacking boats. This as William the Conqueror was living up to his name... And there’s the demise of means of naval warfare, such as a stunning panorama of Lepanto, the last major clash of galleys in 1571.

But enough of the navies of Johnny Foreigners.

Navye? Well, there’s the loss of the Mary Rose in the Solent, Sir Walter Ralegh’s map of El Dorado (he was convinced it lay on an inland lake somewhere beyond the Orinoco Delta), and a wonderful collection of playing cards produced to celebrate the defeat of the Armada (complete with 16th Century typographical errors). By far the most magnificent painting reproduced here comes from the year of Mary Rose’s loss, 1545, and a wonderfully vivid portrayal of Henry VIII joining his fleet at Dover.

● An award-winning image of HMS Courageous leaving Clyde Naval Base circa 1989

Picture: LA(Phot) Craig Leask

As well as traditional portraits, landscapes and tapestries, there are fascinating early maps: Francesco Rosselli’s 1508 chart of the globe which is fairly accurate when it comes to Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean but rather guesses at South America and Australasia. As well as an illuminating sweep through naval history, this is an illuminating sweep through maritime art and changing styles. By the 17th and 18th Centuries, there’s a growing realism in the paintings. None more so than the final image in the book, Greenwich Hospital and the Thames c.1750 as depicted by Giovanni Antonio Canal – Canaletto – which in places almost looks like a colour photograph. The Italian artist spent a decade in England but sadly, in this volume, there’s just one Canaletto...

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