Having discovered that his bunk was untenable, he decided to sleep under the wardroom table where books, a typewriter and miscellaneous odds and sods fell on top of him when the Odin hit a particularly big wave.
Once alongside in Newcastle, and according to an unwritten tradition of the sea, as the junior officer Conley found himself on duty at the evening drinks reception. This was for local dignitaries and other guests, and towards the end of the gathering he was instructed to somehow manoeuvre a very drunken lady mayor out of the submarine by way of the access hatch and up a steep gangplank to her awaiting limousine. This was only achieved with a great degree of difficulty and the help of several members of the duty watch.
Solicitude for its submarine crews had persuaded the Ministry of Defence in the 1960s to grant them the privilege of living ashore when on courtesy visits to non-naval ports. On the day following his onerous duty of discharging the pickled recipients of Odin’s hospitality, Conley checked into the comfort of a central Newcastle hotel. However, owing to the cost of the hotel exceedingly the daily subsistence allowance, the first lieutenant decided the officers would move into the far cheaper local Mission to Seamen. This proved clean, friendly and hospitable, leaving sufficient of their allowance to be spent on enjoyment and Odin’s crew took advantage of the city’s hospitality, so much so that, the appointed day for her departure being a Sunday, a large gathering of well-wishers watched from the quay. They were treated to the rather unedifying sight of the commanding officer and the first lieutenant rummaging through the dustbins placed on the quay for the boat’s use, in search of a local telephone directory. This was required to determine why the ordered tugs had not arrived on time. This impasse resolved, the submarine slipped her moorings, made her farewells and began her passage downstream. On the way out of the Tyne, Conley received another reminder of the fragile mortality of submariners as Odin passed the spot where, a year earlier, one of his Dartmouth contemporaries had drowned after he was swept off his submarine’s casing and his lifejacket had failed to inflate.
HMS Odin’s next task was to return by way of Cape Wrath to the exercise area off Malin Head where she was to take part in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) evolutions, in the role of the loyal opposition to a group of frigates and destroyers acting as convoy escorts, supported by maritime patrol aircraft (MPA). Notably, towards the end of the exercises the escort force encountered a Soviet Whiskey-class diesel submarine which, after several hours of prosecution by sonar, surfaced and requested a weather forecast. This incident was a reminder that the United Kingdom’s naval forces and coast were subject to continuous surveillance by Soviet forces, surface and subsurface. Indeed, for several decades a Soviet intelligence gathering ship was to be permanently stationed just outside territorial waters on SSBN patrol transit routes to the north of Ireland.
With the exercises completed, Odin headed for Lough Foyle and a visit to Londonderry, berthing alongside HMS Stalker. This was a large infantry landing ship which had been built in Canada for the D-Day landings and later converted to support submarines. The Joint Anti-Submarine Training School, which had run the exercise, was installed in HMS Sea Eagle, a shore establishment in the city. Inevitably, submarines arrived last into port and delivered their exercise records after the other participants. With inter-Service rivalry rampant, the trick for a submarine officer reporting in to the staff who had been monitoring the exercise was first to examine closely the large floor plot in Sea Eagle. Here the exercise had been followed and set out, so a subtle shift of one’s own submarine’s position away from the locations of reported submarine detections, especially those by aircraft, afforded an egregious satisfaction.
Many of the officers of the visiting warships congregated in the evenings in a local hostelry which usually reverberated to loud Irish Republican music, rousing in tempo and melody, if dubious in sentiment for officers of Her Majesty’s Navy. ‘The Troubles’ were yet some months away and although fault lines fractured Ulster society, the lubricating effects of alcohol and Celtic music won the day. Nevertheless, late one evening, whilst Conley and his colleagues from Odin’s wardroom were enjoying this convivial and noisy hospitality after official closing time, the pub was raided by the police. The Royal Ulster Constabulary made rather futile attempts to take the names of the large number of customers present, which included a rather bemused group of officers from an American destroyer.
Another favourite haunt was the village hall dance in Muff just across the border in the Irish Republic, where Irish dance bands provided outstandingly good music and the local girls were willing to dance. The urbane intrusions of young British naval officers and ratings often provoked fights, which had the curious quality of proceeding at the pace of the music being played.
Conley and his shipmates were all struck by the friendly welcome they received from the people of Londonderry who, at that time, never bothered to lock their house doors. However, the city was evidently a poor place and the armed police patrolling the streets gave hints of the tensions which would tear apart a citizenry divided by two religious factions and plunge Northern Ireland into a dark and bloody era of widespread violence. Despite the disenfranchisement of the Roman Catholic population by the requirement of being a freeholder to vote in local elections, it was remarkable that Conley and his colleagues were struck by the genuine friendliness of the local population to the Royal Navy. However, it was little wonder that the Northern Ireland Civil Rights organisation was to be increasingly strident in its appeals for equality, while the repression of their demonstrations by the largely Protestant Ulster Constabulary was to act as a catalyst for the many years of ‘the Troubles’ then looming.
By this time Conley had settled into submarine life. Notwithstanding his early experiences, the Odin proved a happy and efficient submarine, well led and motivated by the strong team of her commanding officer Lieutenant Commander David Wardle and his second in command Lieutenant Biggs, her morale buttressed by the colourful tradition of the Submarine Service in allowing the wearing of exotic outfits at sea. This slackening of the strictures of naval discipline was a hangover from the Second World War, but added immensely to the bonding of a submarine’s company, at the same time marking them as special — and to the individuals — an elite within the Royal Navy, part of that cocking a snook at the rest of the Fleet that went with their insistence that they served in ‘boats’.
Aboard Odin at the time, the ratings manning the sonar system dressed as French onion sellers, engine room artificers wore Arab garb and the control room watchkeepers attired themselves as high Victorians. Conley stuck to a fisherman’s sweater and slacks, which reminded him of his roots. This non-conforming and so-called ‘pirate rig’ would be prohibited in the early 1970s as, with its increasing number of nuclear submarines, the Royal Navy’s Submarine Service underwent the major cultural shift discussed elsewhere. Moreover, the cleaner conditions aboard the nuclear submarines were more conducive to the wearing of formal uniform, whereas the old diesel-engined boats always smell strongly of diesel fuel, an acrid odour which permeates everything, including clothes, and pirate rig could be left on board when men went on leave, rather than risking the ire of their wives by bringing the very pungent stench into the home.