The Valiant bomber was about to drop Britain’s first H bomb in the South Pacific in May, 1957.
I had been in the Royal Navy for four years joining at the tender age of 15. At the end of 1956 I was drafted to HMS Narvik. This would be the scientific control ship for the first three tests.
In January 1957 we departed for Christmas Island, stopping at Kingston, Jamaica, where I had been the previous year on HMS Vidal, surveying the West Indies. Leaving Jamaica we headed for the Panama Canal through to the South Pacific. As I remember the voyage to Christmas Island was fairly calm, unlike the crossing of the Atlantic where we were hit by two or three hurricanes. This was no fun as we had a shallow draft and every wave we hit shook the whole ship.
On my previous two ships we slept in hammocks, but Narvik had been fitted out with bunks which in a rough seas were not very comfortable.
I was trained as a telegraphist at HMS Ganges. On joining Narvik my primary job was reading and sending Morse messages, encrypting and decoding messages and other duties dealing with communications all on a watch-keeping routine.
We arrived at Christmas Island early February, our maximum speed was 10 knots but during the hurricanes much slower, a case of two steps forward and three back. We only stayed one day offloading vital equipment then set sail for Malden Island.
Denne historien er fra April 2017-utgaven av Let's Talk.
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STOP ME AND BUY ONE: Nigel's on the way with his 1981 Bedford
It’s something we all recall with delight. “Mum, it’s the ice cream man!” Let’s Talk’s motoring man David Clayton meets someone happy to be the owner of a Bedford ice cream van. Bring on the Strawberry Mivvis, choc ices and 99s ...
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Two centuries on Thomas would be DELIGHTED WITH HIS SUCCESS
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TURNING 50
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THE CHASE COULD BE ON FOR a Norfolk home for Bradley Walsh
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The calendar is rolling around to the WINTER SOLSTICE
Claire Manion, of Norfolk-based Broadsky Astrology, looks at how we have always honoured the winter solstice, our shortest day.
PEACE, GOODWILL AND PROSPERITY must surely follow
In view of such uncertainty hanging over the rest of this year – and possibly well beyond – it was hard to come up with a suitable offering for December in his usual style, says Keith Skipper. So, he has decided to settle for a festive story set in 1951, that he wrote some time ago.
Friends
Readers of our short stories don’t have to have long memories to recall work by Anne Maxwell, who had a previous short story entry published in the summer.
