A mid the shouting and confusion the Sealion’s captain had appeared in the control room and ordered the motors to ‘Full astern’. The drag of the reversed propellers gradually slowed the submarine and slowly she levelled out. Much to everyone’s relief, she adopted a bow-up angle and she was again put into ahead propulsion. Unfortunately, Sealion continued to make stern-way and increase her depth. This was because the motor room watchkeepers were having difficulty responding to the ahead order, owing to problems on the main motor control. By torch Conley noted from one of the small deep-depth gauges that at 600ft they were way below the safe depth of 500ft.
In response to the rapidly worsening situation, the commanding officer now ordered ‘Stand by to surface!’ Conley was alarmed to hear the first lieutenant instinctively ordering the manipulating of the main ballast tank vents as part of the normal surfacing procedure. The Sealion was far from being in a normal situation and Conley was fearful that, having opened the vents, they would be prevented from then promptly shutting them, which was vital to enable high-pressure air being put into these tanks to gain positive buoyancy and reach the surface. However, his heart beating and anxious about the state of the vents — were they open or shut? — Conley heard the air rushing into the main ballast tanks. Eventually, after what seemed like a long moment of suspended animation, Sealion began gaining headway as she headed for the surface.
As she approached the surface, the torpedo officer was assigned the duty of surfacing officer of the watch. Unfortunately, in the absence of the large-scale shallow-water depth gauges, it was difficult to judge when the boat had breached the surface. In consequence, the upper hatch was ordered opened while Sealion was still ascending. Fighting to open a hatch still under pressure, the torpedo officer was deluged by a torrent of water as, a moment or two later, Sealion surfaced and he got the hatch open with water still in the conning tower. A few moments later the officers of Sealion not immediately occupied assembled in the wardroom and, most unusually at sea, each had a glass of Scotch.
It was afterwards discovered that the incident had been caused by the failure of the after planes indication system, a defect compounded by the fact that there was only a single indicator in the control room. A further shortcoming was the limitation of Sealion’s deep-depth gauges which registered a maximum 750ft, well short of the 900ft-plus crush depth of the submarine’s hull. Moreover, the small-scale calibration of these gauges made it difficult to determine quickly whether the submarine was increasing or decreasing depth, a situation exacerbated by the emergency. If, like the Affray, the Sealion had been lost, it would have been very difficult to establish the cause, giving rise to numerous improbable conspiracy theories, such as Sealion having collided with a Soviet submarine spying on Resolution.
In fact, Resolution had not been in close proximity and failed to hear Conley’s underwater telephone transmissions. As for Sealion, she carried out repairs on the surface and after a few hours dived and continued with the trial. There was no subsequent inquiry.
Some time afterwards, Conley learned that on the night that Sealion made her uncontrolled dive, his grandmother had a premonition that he had drowned at sea. The following day she sent a telegram to this effect to an aunt of his who lived in South Africa. Although the incident shook up the Sealion’s crew, there had been no panic. At the time, as a twenty-two-year-old bachelor, Conley himself was not personally worried by what had happened, considering it ‘all part of the deal’. On reflection, however, he considered it a sufficiently exceptional incident which had come close to losing the submarine. HMS Sealion could easily have been the fifth Western submarine to be lost between 1968 and 1970.
The Scandinavian visits, over which Conley had inconsequentially agonised in his extreme moment, were to be Sealion’s swansong before paying off into refit at Rosyth. As he had anticipated, they were thoroughly enjoyable, with the crew extremely well looked after by very hospitable locals. For Conley, calling at Stockholm marked a professional high-point in his career thus far, because the mandatory embarkation of a local pilot was frustrated by a strike. Conley therefore personally undertook the long and tortuous pilotage through the skerries of the outer archipelago, a passage in excess of forty miles.
Undertaken in calm conditions, in brilliant, early morning sunshine and passing close to the immaculate lawns of cottages where Swedes were enjoying their breakfasts, it was one of those wonderfully memorable occasions when a salary appeared to be an unnecessary bonus. On arriving alongside in Stockholm, the crew were saddened to hear that the Swedish host submarine had suffered a battery explosion involving fatalities and therefore would not be partaking in the social programme arranged for them.
When Sealion arrived at Rosyth for a long refit in July 1969 her ship’s company was dispersed. Conley was part of this exodus. By the time he left Sealion he had served in submarines for just over eighteen months. His experiences in Odin and Sealion had been sufficiently varied to encourage a feeling of being a seasoned campaigner and to recognize that he had found his métier in life. It was not without some excitement that he learned that his next appointment was to the eight-year-old Oberon, then completing her extensive modernisation at HM Dockyard, Portsmouth. Destined to be a unit of the Seventh Submarine Division, Oberon was under orders to proceed to Singapore and he would, at last, be exchanging the inclement weather of the Western Approaches for the tropical climes of the South China Sea.
6
Far East Interlude
Lieutenant Conley joined the diesel submarine Oberon in refit at Portsmouth Dockyard in the summer of 1969. Commissioned in 1961, the boat was undergoing an extensive two-year modernisation. This included improved accommodation and, crucially, a much better air-induction system for the engines which, together with a significantly more capable air-conditioning system, would improve equipment reliability and make life much more comfortable for the crew. Despite the Labour government’s declaration of withdrawal of British forces from the Far East at the end of 1971, when her refit and work-up were completed Oberon was to be deployed to this region.
As work in Her Majesty’s Dockyards moved with its usual sluggishness, the refit was suffering delays and the ship’s officers were constantly engaged in dialogue with the dockyard authorities in order to instil somehow a sense of urgency in getting the work completed. The more time in dockyard hands, the less time the boat would be based in Singapore and, as this would be an accompanied deployment, where the families would join married crew members at government expense, there would be less time for the dependents to live there and enjoy the many benefits and pleasures of this foreign posting. Besides generous overseas pay and allowances, Singapore naval base had its attractions of being very family-friendly and offered excellent recreational facilities. Already the completion date had slipped by several months, and departure was now no longer scheduled for early 1970. The Americans might have put men on the moon but Portsmouth Dockyard was incapable of delivering ships and submarines from refit to schedule.