What's It Like Living On A Submarine? | Submarine E2 | Our Stories

[Music] last week in submarine after three and a half years alongside and 200 million pounds spent superb her officers and men are ready the boat has been inspected and the crew are about to take her to sea it's an hour to go before the big moment the re-dedication ceremony where superb is officially accepted back into the fleet guest of honor is lady philippa williams who launched the boat 25 years before [Music] it's a ceremony that has changed little since the first superb was captured from the french in 1710. hms superb rededication order by admiral sir michael boyce knight commander of the order of the bath officer of the order of the british empire admiral and her majesty's fleet and commander-in-chief of her majesty's ships and vessels employed and to be employed in the fleet there have been nine superbs each with its own history and folklore some exemplary in battle some destined for peace duties the present vessel is the first submarine to carry the name but it carries more firepower than all its predecessors put together she may sail under the motto with sword and courage but it takes courage to face hostility with the sword undrawn and a special breed of men to crew her men of the trade as they are known and celebrated in rudyard kipling's poem their feats and fortunes and their fames are hidden from their nearest kin but at this ceremony the men and their families are far from hidden it is a time of celebration for the return of superb and the men of the trade may god the father bless her bless us may jesus christ bless her bless our shame it's just a great day it's an announcement we're back the pennant flies proudly and signals that superb is ready to do her duty for the crew there's a last week for the domestic life and then men like phil doc mcgonagall will sail for no one knows how long you don't really get used to it you know you're going to go but you don't ever want to go back it's always a big thing at the end of your leave for both kate and myself for it to you know like a big thing hanging over that in a week's time then we'll be separated again for from now till christmas we'll see for most of the time really so from now till then it'll be most of the time going to be away i'll get home probably twice possibly three times if i'm lucky so come here for wife kate the final days are as stressful as any in married life since almost the day he came home really you sort of count down it's like counting up to christmas when you're a kid you're just you're marking off the days on the calendar almost and as time goes by i get more and more stressed about it and more and more sort of head up and jumpy and and perhaps my temper gets short and you just i don't know it's just a horrible feeling you're just wishing three weeks of your life away really when you should be spending three weeks enjoying time together but i hope we have you know i just feel time runs out so quickly time together is precious in two years of marriage the longest period leading hand jamie saudin from penzance and his wife mandy have spent together is five weeks well we haven't been mad very long so i haven't really had that long at it to sort of really say what my life is like especially as he's away obviously so much so at the moment so fingers crossed in the future it'll be more like married life rather than him being 600 miles away i think about the most we haven't spoken to each other or any contacts about a month i i i get quite worked up before and um more so you know the last phone call no i love you i love you i'll give you all this i don't know if everyone else does that but i did and when i said that i didn't mean it and always you know you start use like you know sort of like your last words for that sort of length of time i i really hate that bit i will definitely cry every time if i'm at work or whatever you know sort of it's quite hard to sort of like be normal and casual we're not going to speak to your husband for like quite a while no i don't do that don't do normal every week she cries when i leave it's like no exceptions every week so i don't think she'll ever get used to it but it may she may put up with it but i don't think i want to i won't know to get out you know to ever get used to it i mean i think because then the magic's gone in this sort of you know people started getting independent of each other and i don't want that to happen so you better write to me sometimes it is upsetting for me as i say we haven't been together that long so it's not like you know we've fed up a week we're bored of each other you know it's all very much in love and we want to be together really [Music] piece by piece step by step the separate elements that make up a crew are coming together some come from scotland some from the south west some from portsmouth and hampshire service life takes its toll on relationships ships away at sea postings abroad for many months don't provide the continuity that married couples need commander john humphries is of two minds about leaving shore for the sea he has the worries of a recent split with his wife and wants to bury himself in work but there are three children he's leaving behind morning while superb was alongside the loved ones had at least a small sense of security now that she's going to see even that will disappear i mean i know we're not allowed now to know where they go and i mean i don't anyway but i mean it's just the fact that you can only send like you've only got like four family grams which is like 20 words on it and after you've put like raspberry um love you miss you house fine i'm fine you you just don't know what else to say and plus you don't hear anything from them at all from the time they leave to the day they get back so it is just constantly worrying um whether basically he's he's okay [Music] for many of the crew living away from the office like keith asprey can mean a 10-hour car drive from plymouth to scotland and for wives like sherry it heightens the sense of isolation john humphries on the other hand lives almost on top of the shop but that can mean he's always on call the escorts park just down there in the do not park here zone rain i'll go and get myself rogered by a mod policeman for having it parked in the wrong place well as long as it's not on camera right there that goes back to uh jerry collins yeah it's just our dear school okay all right very nice thank you very much what's up nothing we're going to see does it mean we're going to see sir oh mob keith asprey and dave perrin are mates and share the driving for gail perrin and her children the next few months are going to be a test they don't know when they'll see him again bye mike say bye-bye when you get there if it's after 11 o'clock i'll just let the phone ring twice before 11 o'clock you pick it up all right take care i'll see you in two weeks at three weeks or five weeks okay bye bye gale is the rock on which the young family is based but she admits that she's not as tough as everyone thinks and that includes her husband bye in the early days when dave was away i'd lay in bed at night and i'd listen to every noise every creak thinking that there's somebody in the house you're gone but now i don't i just i just go to bed i'll go straight to sleep i don't even think about it now can you get someone to bring it down for me super b is ready and the captain and the crew have to be ready too it's very very exciting in fact it's probably the most excited i have ever been in taking a submarine to sea because this is you know my work if you like our work and the sense of relief getting out of here is going to be enormous if the sense of relief is enormous so is the payload a third of all this has to be crammed into hms superb what you can actually see here is one ship and two submarines outfits in here and ours actually includes one whole rack with two sides on it and that's how how many items the stores will be going on board hms superb there is around about at the moment 14 000 line items that's separate types of items and within that you could maybe up have up to 100 to 150 of those when you actually see it off the boat it is quite surprising because you can't believe it'll actually fit on board provisions for 125 officers and men it's an order any supermarket would love it's not just the army that marches on its stomach we have three stores on board one two and three store funnily enough and we have the freezer and the cool room this is number three store this is our biggest store this is where we would store the bulk of our dry produce i.e stuff that you can see around us now stuff that we would use on a daily basis uh number one store which is a smaller store and we would have our emergency provisions in there which is basically a seven day menu should we run out of food and then the captain exeter may right we've got seven days of merchant menu we can still for those seven days on dry produce only that's not including fresh or frozen because obviously you'd run out of fresh by this point when we're carrying a warlord you wouldn't be sitting in here now i mean it would be literally to that hatch and we have to produce what we call a fallout menu which is exactly where it is it's whatever falls out the stores we put on the menu after three and a half years superb is going to see right george that's your love on the day of the new superb's first sailing the scottish weather clags in as the ross scythe tugs fuss about making sure that all is safe for their charge to take to the waters of the firth of fourth the skipper is keen it's been a long wait there is an air of expectancy amongst all the crew with some hours to go the preparations are nearing fever pitch this is what the submariners signed up for what they train for and what they get paid for they want to make sure that superb gives a good account of herself to those standing in the drizzle on shore this is the cruise boat and they want to be proud of her and make everyone else proud too this is about the only time a submarine will sail when everybody wants to go to sea there are normally one or two who are going to miss the kids or getting out of recycle achieving the end of refit is a monster and everybody wants to do it and i don't know whether you've protected it but there is a there is an excitement out there okay before we start uh this is the first of many briefs we shall do together and uh let me give you a couple of points of philosophy people sitting here are here because they have a contributing contribution to make so at the appropriate time when your comments and thoughts are asked for feel free to make them one or other of you may spot the only thing that everybody else has forgotten about all right so the purpose of the brief is to discuss what we're going to do when we're going to do it how we're going to do it and to pull our experience we have not been to see together ever before okay so we have got to be thinking all right carry on [Music] sailing time is getting ever nearer and there is still a lot to do everyone is moving around at the same time space is at a premium good afternoon this is the leaving harbour for ross ice and the anchoring brief for 29th 5th 98 all times our zulu comms will be channel 71 for fourth nav channel 13 for the tugs and channel 16 is qhm leaving dockside even for someone with years of experience is a nerve-wracking time in a virtually rebuilt boat it is doubly so ahead lies a three-day surface passage around the tip of scotland to fazelane a pilot will be on board when she slips her moorings who knows the waters notorious waters at the best of time and this is with a crew that has never sailed together and in a boat that has not been outside the dock gates for three and a half years using the head mark rather than the stair mark on that leg yeah yeah moving over from the 144 the first obstacle is a bridge a big one the fourth rail bridge it's a narrow passage between the spans and john humphries is already thinking about what could go wrong push comes to shove and i start careering towards the bridge you can stop me well what we'll do is we'll keep the two tugs on the starboard side um i mean the worst city at scenario is that uh we'd need to tugs you could stop and get tubs to do make a tunnel on that first leg through the bridges but i mean i don't see the necessity of that but i mean the tugs can push you know keep them on the starboard side is something to turn you if things go wrong the worst case scenario is a throttle jammed full open all right isn't it or if i test a stone propulsion go backwards i don't think it'd make any difference at all no no fine thank you the point i forgot to mention was the fact that the pilot will be just basking disembarking the pilot before we get to oxcars let's go you want to get off please never mind right thank you very much come and have a chat when the water is cleared ultimately it will be the skipper's responsibility to get superb safely out of dock and into the firth without hitting anything their lordships in the admiralty would not be pleased if there was a scratch on their expensive submarine with all the planning and preparation and help you might think that it would be no more difficult than backing a newly restored car out of the family garage albeit a two 4200 ton car john humphreys thinks not right theory it's dead easy you just strap some tugs onto the side and you pull her off the wall swing around line her up for the entrance to the basin open the cassoon and you drive out but it's not like driving a car out of a garage because the thing goes sideways in the wind and you've got uh if the tugs equate to the wheels on your car well you haven't got a wheel on each corner you've got two on one side and one on the back and one somewhere else sometimes so it it's a question of balancing the forces in moving the boat and the really dodgy bit is going through the the entrance gate because we really can't afford to hit anything when the hull and went down to the hull we won't be moving that fast but we're quite delicate we flower we don't want to knock anything off so once we're out of the entrance that's the difficult bit over the skill is in the handling of the tugs and luckily the pilot does that superb severing of her ties with the land is one thing but for the crew on board there's now a severing of ties with those nearest and dearest to them you cry a lot to yourself but then when i speak to him on the phone if i'm able to then he would never know that really i mean he would never detect that because it's either after that or before that or it's you know you do it to yourself you don't admit it to anybody i mean even like to my parents they don't or they don't understand what they don't know you know how upset people get and humps i get a sailor who says he doesn't suffer homesickness is being economical with the truth it's an occupational hazard and it never gets better no matter how many times you sail away according to reggie perrin homesickness is a big thing suffered by servicemen i go away to see and after about two weeks that's when it hits me and it lasts about five days normally once i finish my watch on board i just want to go and be away from everyone just think about home i've done that so many times now i shouldn't do it but you can't help it you just can't help homesickness is a big thing every service family men and women cope differently every man on board has on this first day work to do and there's little time to think of home life for the wives it's different sherry asprey prepares herself every time keith goes to see but there's always some pain the day he goes back it's really bad because i know that he's going and i'm not sure when he's coming home and it doesn't get any easier i think it does get harder but you cope with it every time they come home and every time they leave you cope with it in different different ways every time i think it's one of those tales of the sea for sailors a ship is a mistress expensive not always faithful and at times temperamental superb is she's a woman with all the vagaries that entails in particular having come out of recycle done the refit having spent 200 million this swiftshield glass submarine is at the peak of her fitness i got up this morning when it was blowing a hooligan and that's over on in uh fazlane i actually live in helensborough and i thought ah okay the weather's doing that there's a northeast layer over here with a bit like it might be a southerly over there and as i drove over this morning it wasn't it's still a north easterly it's blowing up to 20 knots so as we go from here out of the firth turn left to go north we'll start rolling like a pig all the way up to the pendant firth and then we'll turn 90 degrees left and we'll roll like a pig all the way across top of scotland so what does it mean it means we're all going to be sick and for some the rolling of a submarine is worse than for others even the dog i am the worst on board much to the delight of many of the ship's company including the captain i can be frequently seen on the surface in the control room vomiting into a bucket which puts a lot of other people off but it's just part of the job in play there's not a lot i can do fortunately we're not on the streets that often say it's not too bad but when we are 99 times out 100 now being the first to be sick here the first brief passage is the start on the surface all the way no dives that comes later in the next 12 months there will be tests to depth more workups for the crew and weapons testing they will take the submarine and its crew far out into the north atlantic until the warmer waters of the mediterranean [Music] but this trip will always be remembered by those on board it signifies the return of hms superb from the unnatural home in a dockyard to the element she is designed for the sea [Music] superb false and all is now their home and over the next months they will face some of the toughest tests they've ever undergone [Music] but now they believe that the hunter killer is up to anything that's thrown at them for the skipper it's the culmination of everything he's worked for in the navy the previous two commands i've had i've walked into a boat that was already running i've taken over somebody else's system if you like sat down in his chair and then progressively modified things during my time on board with this boat the product the way the people operate the way the boat runs work ethic how we approach problems comes from my organization and stands all falls on my organization so it's if it's much more of a challenge for me bringing the boat out taking it to sea for the first time three and a half years wondering whether the bloody thing will work properly will i get under the bridge without hitting it get out to sea make it work and then start to show people how good a product the boat actually was that was that was exciting going to see uh in command is the only way to go to see my view anyway but that was a special moment next week in submarine superb takes her first diving test anxiety on the home front the first weapons are fired and the sea riders arrive [Music]

Channel: Our Stories

Views: 128,471

Keywords: Our Stories, Documentary, Observational Documentary, Real Stories, Full Episode, Full Length Episodes, Full Documentary, Fly On The Wall, Yearbook, Real Life, Documentaries, Real Lives, Behind The Scenes, submarine, royal navy submarine, nuclear submarine, life on a submarine, hms, hms superb, royal navy documentary, navy documentary, british navy, submarine documentary, submariner, life in the navy, navy training, royal navy training

Id: fENbeRIx3Oc

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022