A few days later, having left the Eagle and her consorts, Cambrian headed for Singapore where she arrived in mid May. She was to conduct several patrols aimed at inhibiting Indonesian infiltration of Singapore or the Malaysian mainland. Prior to this and in the light of the experience of others, vertical steel plates were secured down either side of the iron deck. This was to provide some protection to any boarding party assembling where the freeboard was lowest, prior to scrambling onto an intercepted vessel. This was a vulnerable moment for those involved and several incidents of exploding booby traps had been encountered, the most recent aboard a minesweeper when a member of her crew had been killed by such an anti-personnel device on a boat ordered alongside for inspection. In addition to this extemporised armour, a Bren gun was set up above the bridge and this was complemented by two sharpshooters with high-velocity rifles.
During daylight hours the boarding and inspection procedures were exercised with any random small craft encountered at sea, but by night the ship was darkened, bereft of navigation lights, all noise suppressed as far as possible. A listening sonar watch was maintained in an attempt to detect any craft attempting a high-speed dash across the strait. In the event, there was an overwhelmingly high density of sonar contacts, and no suspicious craft were identified; nor were there any meaningful interdictions made during the course of the patrols.
In late May Cambrian returned to Singapore for storing and refuelling prior to proceeding to Hong Kong for an informal visit. The ship sailed with about fifty Chinese unofficially embarked on the upper deck for the passage, all of whom were reputedly ‘cousins’ of Cambrian’s Chinese laundrymen, and who brought with them an array of possessions: bicycles, sewing machines and laundry equipment.
As the Cambrian brought up to her anchor in Repulse Bay, prior to entry into Hong Kong, Conley received another shock at the world’s poverty when he observed Chinese approaching in sampans to scoop up the garbage which had been dumped over the stern. In the main the Royal Navy maintained a benevolent attitude to those less privileged: in addition to the unofficial passage granted to the extended families of the Cambrian’s laundrymen, the official engagement of a local ‘side party’ was a long-standing tradition of the Service in Hong Kong. The side party invariably consisted of half a dozen women to which, on this occasion, a young girl was attached. They were supplied with paint, rollers and brushes, and undertook the painting of the Cambrian’s grey topsides in exchange for collecting unused galley food and some worn and redundant nylon mooring rope.
When the Cambrian put to sea a week later, the side party, dressed in their finery, accompanied the ship out of the harbour in their decorated sampan, detonating firecrackers of fulminate in appreciation of the ship’s largesse; it was a strangely touching, even numinous moment, as they worked the long sculling oar or yuloh over the sampan’s stern in an attempt to keep up with the lean grey shape of the destroyer. Eventually, they dropped astern and out of sight, an odd link between two vastly different cultures and part of the hail and farewell of seafaring.
On her return to Singapore, Cambrian undertook yet another maintenance period, berthed alongside the repair ship HMS Triumph. Owing to their own vessel being shut down, the ship’s company were moved into temporary accommodation aboard the former aircraft carrier. On dumping his gear into the cabin allocated to him, Conley discovered in the wardrobe the uniforms of two midshipmen who had died in action during the Confrontation. Clearly, nobody had thought about the clothing’s prompt return to the next of kin.
Life, Conley was quickly made aware of, went on and midshipman’s examination boards were convened aboard the commando carrier Bulwark, with the practical engineering oral tests on board Cambrian herself. During the course of the predominantly oral examinations, in answering set questions Conley failed to cite correctly the formula used to determine the weight of an anchor cable link or to describe the ‘Canterbury’ test for the purity of the ship’s boiler feed water. These examples were notable only for the futility of some of the detail a midshipman was supposed to absorb. Despite his failure on these two arcane points, Conley’s board results were satisfactory, if unremarkable, marking his progress.
In early July, towards the end of her deployment to Singapore, HMS Cambrian joined the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and a number of other warships to carry out an exercise in the northern part of the Strait of Malacca. Despite her frequent stops for maintenance, Cambrian was showing her age, her smooth running interrupted by a series of defects culminating in a fire in pipe lagging in the engine room. It was minor and soon extinguished, but the threat of such occurrences only made the demanding duty of acting as plane guard even more stressful.
This role required the Cambrian to take up a station on Ark Royal’s port quarter at a range of half a mile. Keeping station at night at speeds of up to 30 knots, while frequent heavy tropical rain squalls markedly reduced visibility and caused severe sea clutter on the radar, was very challenging. The situation was exacerbated by Ark Royal’s occasional tardiness in communicating intended changes in her course and speed. On one occasion the carrier’s stern loomed unexpectedly out of the darkness as Cambrian almost overshot her, not having received any signal indicating a drop in speed. Since this incident occurred shortly after the Australian carrier Melbourne had rammed and sunk her plane-guard consort, the destroyer HMAS Voyager, and eighty-two of the destroyer’s crew had perished, it might have been assumed that procedures would have been tighter.
On completion of the exercise Cambrian headed for the island of Penang for a week’s visit. One of the ‘A’-class diesel submarines which had been engaged in operations off the Indonesian coast, HMS Amphion, was berthed alongside and her crew were very grateful to be offered showers and other facilities aboard Cambrian. Conley was struck by the high morale of the submariners, who had just enjoyed a very successful exercise as the opposition against Ark Royal and her escorts. At the end of a memorable run ashore, several of the ship’s wardroom, including Conley himself, took part in a trishaw race in heavy rain. In this the trishaw owners were bundled into their own conveyances and relaxed under their hoods, pleased to earn a fare whilst the high-spirited naval johnnies did the pedalling.
Penang was the last port of call for Cambrian in the Far East and she soon afterwards left for Aden. After refuelling at Gan, the most southerly of the Maldives, she escorted the commando carrier Bulwark across the Indian Ocean. In early August the two men-of-war entered Aden, where the security situation had deteriorated further. All ships in the harbour, both men-of-war and merchantmen, were on high alert for fear of attack by saboteurs.