I’ve also just remembered that the spare prop was still unpainted and reasonably shiny….and the “modesty boards “ were still fitted!
( New readers will have to go back to 1982 to see what I’m talking about).
Even though we’d just left the vicinity of Sardinia, our schedule said that we weren’t due another stop-over for another month. In Mombassa. Fair enough, we’d obviously have to stop at Port Said before transiting the canal, but that isn’t what you would call a “stop-over”, is it. But “events” made life sort of interesting. The first one was when the “poo tank” valves or something got a bit fed up and stopped working. “Poo-tank”? Change the first word and you’ll get the message….not as clear as we did though. In days gone by, all the “nasties” produced on board were simply pumped over the side into whatever pristine bit of water the ship happened to be floating in at the time. No-one cared about this very much. Everybody did it. Household “stuff”, Industrial waste, everything. Mostly it all got washed out by the tide…but tides turn, and a lot of it came back. On to beaches and so on. An old aerial photograph I once saw showed the mouth of the Tyne surrounded by a hemisphere of “brown” against the “blue” of the sea. Other rivers were the same.
But I digress. By now ships had to “contain” and “treat” the “poo-waste” in a tank, to be pumped out into somebody elses’ bailywick. All this “stuff” in the tank was supposedly treated by chucking in a handful of some bacteria or other that would gleefully gobble up all this gloop and render it “harmless”. They were helped in this by having a “macerator” (a propeller on a stick) that kept the contents from congealing. (The lack of all this was one of the reasons why the Royal Yacht was de-comissioned). But when it goes wrong……
I imagined us sailing serenely along with this brown haze travelling along with us. The stench was really appalling. And it was a fat lot of good to expect the Egyptians to do anything about it as they would think it was quite normal. The problem was resolved by an executive decision. A Junior Engineer would have to “volunteer” to go down, open the tank and withdraw the macerator rod and propeller. Poor sod. People gave him a wide berth for days afterwards. Made him wash his own beer glass and that sort of thing. The problem? Back in Plymouth a few wives had been on board with small children, and no-one had said that the ships system wasn’t designed to cope with disposable nappies….or tampons. So eventually they (the disposables) clogged up something or other and it all sort of ground to a halt.
I eventually got around to asking the J/Eng what it was like “down there”. He was an ex-submariner, broad Geordie. “Divent knaa, wasn’t gannin te hang aboot lang enuff te find oot like ye knaa.” And no more “poo” until Hong Kong.
But we didn’t go on to Suez. What a surprise. Instead, we were “detached” from the group and basically told to stooge around the Med between Malta and Cyprus. Eventually we were given a rendezvous point about 50 miles south of Cyprus and were “requested” to stop engines and “drift” at a particular time. All very odd. I suppose the Deity knew what was going on, but he hadn’t let anyone into the secret.
At the appointed time and place at late dusk, in a nice empty part of the sea, I and other senior officers were summoned to the bridge. After about half an hour just stood around (including the navigator, who also hadn’t a clue what was going on), we were all a bit surprised to see one of our nuclear submarines surface about half a mile away on our stbd side. Now this was interesting! I’d never seen one of these things surface before and was surprised how graceful she looked. If a submarine can look “shy” then that was the impression I got. Periscope up, then down. Then very slowly the sub emerged. Getting dark now. But light enough to see a small boat being launched, filled with people and heading our way. Are we being hi-jacked? Perhaps our Captain had been “turned”? Nah, about a dozen UK Marines or something came aboard, the little boat returned and the sub sank (again gracefully) back to where she’d come from. This bunch of “visitors” were an SBS raiding party.
What on earth was going on here. Had we declared war on somebody? Soon all (or some of “all”) was explained. This little squadron had been given the task of infiltrating the RAF base at Akrotiri to sort of test their defenses….but without the usual cutting of throats and other stuff that seemed to be the preferred way of doing things.
This was all sort of interesting, but how were they going to get to Akrotiri from way out here? It seemed a bit optimistic to think that a 660ft long ship could just turn up and not be noticed.
Then a second rendezvous was produced. About 30 miles east of wherever we were at that time. Same procedure. Get there on time, stop engines and drift. Again at late dusk. This time I did have a “job”. At an appointed time I was to turn on the flight deck lighting…on “low” setting. Again, this was odd, as the flight deck team wasn’t closed up. Just me. It wasn’t long before I heard the familiar growl of a Hercules approaching. Bloody hell, we’re not going to land that thing are we! Obvious fantasy. So I realised the deck lights were only on so the Herc could be sure he was circling the correct ship. This was followed by a low and slow close fly-past with his stern ramp open and the “loadmaster” easily visible standing on the ramp just like a tourist.
Next pass was a bit higher and a great bundle was shoved off the ramp and parachuted into the sea about (again) half a mile away. Our “RIB” was launched with both its RFA crew and a few of the SBS guys. As you’ve guessed, this was the SBS boat meant to get them to wherever they’d decided to land.
This dropping of a boat close to a stopped RFA had been practised a few months earlier. Not “Fort Austin”. Somewhere between Poole and Portland. It was just an unfortunate coincidence that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been invited to view this demonstration of accurate load dropping. Too accurate. According to the newspaper reports I read at the time, the load skimmed the upper bridge area where the VIPs were and landed on the forecastle head. Not the half a mile away where it should have landed.
But back to “Austin” and our part in the invasion of a friendly nation.
The SBS team became really obsessive about secrecy and locked themselves in a spare cabin to do their final planning. A bit over the top really, but that seems to be the way they do it.
Then came the “big night”. “Austin” was steaming at about 10 knots east to west around 25 miles off the south coast of Cyprus south of Limassol. The boat was ready for launching. The SBS were all togged up in their scary black suits and loaded down with all sorts of lethal “stuff”.
Ready to go!…and the boat wouldn’t start. After all the testing and so on when it had worked perfectly. Our engineers were called to have a look at it and declared it “totally goosed”. It was then suggested that our RIB could be used instead, after all, it was just as fast as the SBS one, and our coxwain was leaping up and down in his eagerness to take part in an SBS “raid”. Nah, said the men in black, and called the whole thing off. A nuclear submarine, a Hercules aircraft, hundreds of hours of planning….and the boat didn’t work.
Perhaps the RAF regiment at Akrotiri are still waiting? The SBS blokes were taken ashore by one of our Sea Kings, and that’s the last I saw of them.