Life Onboard the TRIUMPH - In the Guardian there is an interesting record of the recent voyage of the Fleet Submarine TRIUMPH which describes life onboard the submarine, which is worth reading.   Salient comments include:-

·         The Journalist joined the TRIUMPH at Crete for the week long run to Gibraltar, passing through the Straits of Messina at sunrise.  Getting off at Gibraltar, took place two miles off the coast in a heavyish swell by dinghy, transferring to a small patrol vessel. 

·         The TRIUMPH deployed for some ten (10) months.

·         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".

·         There's a high expectation of the trainees that they have a lot to prove, but once they're in the club, you can be confident they've reached a certain standard."

·         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 make war; and the back half, where the nuclear reactor sits beneath the tunnel that separates for'ard from back'aft and where the engines are.

·         The engineers call the nuclear reactor "the big kettle".

·         A key distinction to grasp is between fast attack submarines such as TRIUMPH, which are armed with conventional cruise missiles , and the four nuclear armed submarines, called ballistic submarines or “bombers” – are, at 180m long, almost twice the size of TRIUMPH. The “bombers” stay at a constant depth, move very slowly and do everything to avoid detection. It is three months of suspended animation; 180 men aspiring to the life of a flat fish, though a highly educated one – many are doing Open University degrees to pass the time and improve themselves.

·         TRIUMPH has a bigger crew and are, according to the men who have served on them, deadly boring. "Their job is to stay silent,"; "You have no contact with the outside world."

·         This is a highly segregated society, yet also a very organic one. There are three separate messes, for officers, senior ratings and junior ratings, each situated on the short corridor that serves as the men's living space. The separate messes with their different atmospheres – the Xbox is never off in the junior rates mess – suggest division, yet everything else implies unity.

·         The pay structure is relatively flat: The Captain earns around £85,000; the most junior rating gets £30,000. What other organisation has that sort of ratio between top and bottom?

·         Every crew member, officer or rating, has to know everything about the boat – the function of every one of the thousands of valves. There are half a dozen trainees on the boat studying for their dolphin badges, and they are forgoing all sleep to memorise the handbook they have been given in time for a test that could be sprung on them at any time.

·         The crew work 12 hours a day, split into six-hour watches, with changeovers at 1 and 7.

·         Sleeping on a submarine is no fun. The Captain, alone on the boat, gets his own cabin; the senior officers share; and everyone else is in hot, cramped, fetid dormitories. Bed space is so limited that some of the most junior ratings have to "hot bunk", sleeping in the bed vacated by a man who has just gone on watch.  You can hardly move in the bunk – sitting up is impossible – and if you turn over you are likely to tip out and end up on the floor. You have to share your rack with a gas mask and various other bits of safety equipment, plus a lot of your own gear.

·         Each bunk has an air vent, which does offer some respite from the heat.