On reversing out of Haslar Creek, his judgement impaired by the vast quantity of alcohol he had consumed, Sealion’s commander successfully avoided a sand dredger by a violent alteration of heading. However, this caused the Sealion to be caught up in the strong ebb tide sweeping through the narrow entrance to Portsmouth Harbour on the western side of which lies the wardroom of HMS Dolphin, which has a large patio adjoining the sea wall. Here all the squadron officers were gathered to bid her farewell. They were treated to the sight of one of Her Majesty’s submarines leaving for sea duty, beam on, athwart the line of the channel and with her bows pointing towards — and passing a few yards away from — them. With a modest shudder accompanied by a muddy disturbance and rising bubbles, Sealion’s bows grounded at the Dolphin saluting point, while her stern was swung by the fierce tide to point down channel towards Southsea Castle.
HMS Sealion was drawn off the bottom by the application of full astern power, thereafter continuing down the buoyed channel stern first until the commanding officer found a suitable position to turn her round. This was a very inauspicious start to Conley’s time as navigator.
Having arrived in the Gareloch, Sealion undertook several weeks of workup with the assistance of the squadron shore staff. Conley soon learned that when things went wrong the commanding officer was like a raging bull in the control room, yelling at everyone he conceived to have contributed to the cock-up. The first lieutenant was demonstrably ineffective and unwilling to support his fellow officers.
Part of the work-up involved passing at night through the stretch of water between Kintyre and the Isle of Arran in a submerged condition. This was very demanding, as there were very few navigational marks or lights from which to take bearings through the periscope, while the lack of a moon made it doubly difficult to identify significant features along the shoreline against the backdrop of the dark mountains. The evolution involved various scenarios which included exercising minelaying procedures, inshore photoreconnaissance, the avoiding of ASW warships and penetrating a field of dummy mines which had been laid off the coast of Arran. As navigator in such close-quarters situations as these evolutions generated, Conley was on his mettle. Under an exemplary command team this would have taxed his abilities, even if he had been an experienced navigator; in his present circumstances this was to call from him extraordinary reserves. Properly, the first lieutenant should have reorganised the watch-keeping rota to avoid the navigator being kept at continuous fever-pitch for fourteen hours in the control room but, if the ordeal was to prove one of the most arduous Conley endured in the Submarine Service, it proved something else: he could run on little sleep for several nights running, and he could handle extremes. This was noticed by others, particularly Sealion’s captain who, despite his ‘very aggressive behaviour’ to Conley at sea, expressed every confidence in his new navigator, and gave up checking up on his work.
Whilst Sealion passed her work-up, just meeting the overall satisfaction of the squadron staff, her commander did not. Both he and the first lieutenant were soon to disappear, but not before Sealion undertook trials of a prototype Polaris submarine communication buoy. This involved fitting special rails to the after part of the casing to house and recover the buoy, which measured approximately 8ft by 6ft; it was attached to the submarine by about 1,000ft of wire. Fitting of the rails was taken in hand by Scotts Shipyard at Greenock, which had a distinguished history and where two ‘O’-class submarines previously mentioned were being completed for the Australian Navy.
At the same time the opportunity was taken to replace many of Sealion’s very tired fabric and furnishings, all of this work being concealed in the cost of the rails. However, although the workforce evidently possessed a much better work ethic than their cousins in the Royal Dockyards, the senior directors were very uninspiring and the yard’s infrastructure was very rundown and undercapitalised. The boat required dry-docking for a few days but the Scotts dock needed the continuous running of pumps to keep the wooden dock floor reasonably free of water. Other evidence of decrepitude was the use of ancient telegraph poles as side shores, to keep the submarine in position on the blocks. Unsurprisingly, like most other British shipyards which were living on an historical reputation for excellence, Scotts would go out of business a few years later.
The deficiencies of the yard were made manifest before the Sealion reached her trials areas. The buoy trials took place in the Mediterranean, in waters to the east of Gibraltar. Rough weather encountered crossing the Bay of Biscay on the surface tore the newly welded rails from the casing and a new set had to be manufactured and fitted by Gibraltar Dockyard. Once this had been accomplished, Sealion embarked on her trials which involved running eastwards daily from Gibraltar, testing different buoy types, configurations and towing wires at dived speeds up to 16 knots.
Besides having on board a number of technical staff — or ‘trial scientists’ — opportunity was taken to host a number of local guests at sea for the day, including army personnel, the medical staff from the naval hospital and local dignitaries. Accommodated in the wardroom, most commented on the bemusing array of cans strung out below the deckhead to catch water from a leaking cable gland. On one occasion Sealion departed from the dockyard with an army band playing on the forward casing, though some difficulty was experienced getting the drums below through the accommodation hatch once at sea.
The buoy trials proved successful in demonstrating the hydrodynamics at a range of speeds, but on the final day the trial scientists produced a tow wire covered in ostrich feathers, which had been fitted with the aim of avoiding wire ‘strum’. This was a harmonic oscillation of the wire that occurred as it was drawn through the water and which, by being a ‘potential acoustic counter-detection hazard’, would possibly betray the position of any submarine deploying the equipment in an acute operational situation. An expedient relying upon ostrich feathers to reduce strum was predictably regarded with that scepticism ‘Jolly Jack’ has for the intellectually derived solutions of boffins. Jolly Jack won: on working up to full speed, the wire parted owing to the increased resistance of the feathers and the buoy was lost — never to be recovered.
The lax atmosphere that prevailed aboard Sealion guaranteed that a final departure time from Gibraltar two hours before midnight would result in a significant portion of the ship’s company returning from shore leave one hour before sailing in less than sober state. This proved to be the case and shortly afterwards, true to form, the captain arrived by car a few minutes before departure and also staggered across the brow in a sorry state. Certain irregular preparations were made by members of the crew before leaving the berth while the commanding officer worked up his own departure plan. Ignoring all harbour speed restrictions, and determined to make his last departure a memorable one, Sealion was reversed from her berth at maximum speed and created a significant wash as she came abeam of the guard ship alongside, HMS Zulu.